Suing schools? Axing superintendents? NC Republican proposal is a doozy | Opinion

A frightening new bill proposed by GOP legislators would make it possible for parents to sue school boards and potentially show superintendents the door. The bill — a 13-page monstrosity titled the “Children’s Law Omnibus” — was scheduled to be heard in a House committee hearing Thursday but was removed at the last minute.

We doubt it’s gone forever.

Among the many provisions in the bill is one that permits parents to take school boards to court over alleged violations of their “fundamental right to parent.” If the appeal is successful, parents would be entitled to damages no less than $5,000 (which would likely come out of taxpayers’ pockets).

The bill does offer a definition of the “right to parent,” but it’s hardly specific, described only as “the liberty of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of the parent’s child.” That’s dangerously vague, and the ambiguity makes it far too easy for the bill to be weaponized by angry parents seeking to oust educators with whom they disagree. At what point, for example, is an educator encroaching on a parent’s right to direct their child’s education? At what point is a school counselor encroaching on the right to direct a child’s mental health?

While there’s no guarantee that a parent’s claims will be successful, the mere ability to lodge a complaint for virtually any reason will inevitably bog down the system as well as put school districts on edge.

The bill invites further chaos by putting superintendents in the crosshairs as well. A superintendent’s contract could be terminated after five successful claims of violations of the described right to parent, the bill states. If the school board chooses not to terminate the contract, the superintendent’s salary would be reduced.

Seriously? That’s a disaster waiting to happen. There are certainly more than five parents unhappy with the school board or the superintendent at any given moment; there are at least a dozen of them at most school board meetings. Superintendents would then be at the mercy of those parents, who typically represent a small minority of all families in the district. One would imagine that few candidates would be interested in such a job in the first place. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether those complaints have to involve five separate incidents, or simply successful complaints from five separate parents regarding the same issue.

All of that is bad enough. But the bill goes further still, containing a sweeping list of provisions plucked straight from the culture war playbook.

One provision tightly regulates public libraries, which would now be required to give parents access to their child’s library records and keep “harmful” materials in an age-restricted section of the library. Another part of the bill makes it easier to prosecute school officials and librarians for “disseminating harmful materials” to minors.

And, much like the “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” there’s a provision requiring school officials to notify parents of any changes in a student’s gender identity, unless they believe it would put the student at risk of abuse or neglect. This bill, however, expressly clarifies that a parent refusing to accept a child’s gender identity does not constitute abuse or neglect, despite the mental and emotional harm it may cause.

The bill was abruptly pulled from committee Thursday. That doesn’t necessarily mean the sponsors had second thoughts, despite how much backlash it quickly received on social media. There’s no guarantee that the proposal is dead, and it could very well reappear in committee in the coming weeks.

We’re almost tempted to wish that Republicans do little to fix these issues before inevitably reviving the bill, because passing a poorly constructed grab bag of goodies for extremist voters will inevitably lead to political consequences and a likely defeat in the courts, given its ambiguity. But a revived version of this bill will cause urgent damage to schools.

It would empower extremist parents, which would inevitably create dysfunction in our public schools. Working in a classroom would be like navigating a minefield, and even the smallest misstep could cost educators their jobs. Teachers, school boards and superintendents would be beholden to and paralyzed by parents at the fringes of public opinion, lest they do something that triggers legal action. That limits their ability to do their job — making this legislation detrimental to the very children it claims to protect.

This story was originally published July 13, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Suing schools? Axing superintendents? NC Republican proposal is a doozy | Opinion."