NOT UNLIKE recent state legislative sessions, this past one saw a lot of crazy education proposals that could have become law if not for some level-headed Republicans who had to draw the line and join Democrats. I guess we know who was really looking out for the kids and local property taxpayers -- and it wasn’t Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut.
Thankfully for our public school students, rational thinking trumped thoughtless adherence to extremist conservative ideology, for the most part. Supporters of public education didn’t get any new legislation to improve schools, but we managed to fight off bills that would have been ruinous for our kids. Supporters of public schools and students will accept that as a victory.
Take the proposal that would have allowed anyone to teach part time -- 30 hours or less a week -- even if they had no college degree, were not certified to teach or had no work experience in a specialized field. Apparently, Edelblut cares so little about who teaches our public school students and has no respect for the kids themselves that he would allow someone with just a high school diploma to teach and then expect students to excel. That bill didn’t make it.
The Legislature has killed about a half-dozen attempts to expand the school voucher scheme. The most serious bill passed both the House and Senate during this session, but in different forms. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed when the compromise bill came back for a final vote, and it failed.
If passed, that bill would have provided millions of additional dollars to private schools that are not held accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars, most of it new spending for students already attending those very same private schools. Here’s an idea: How about taking those millions, which the state obviously has available, and plowing them into our public schools? The state has not been meeting its constitutional duty to fully fund its public schools. This places a disproportionate burden on local property taxpayers to pick up the difference; otherwise, students go without the necessary resources.
And while book bans are all the rage across the country in places that don’t believe students should be free to read what they want to, the Legislature held back and killed two book ban proposals here.
Perhaps the biggest victory for sanity was the U.S. District Court ruling on the ban on teaching so-called divisive concepts. The law that was struck down threatened to fire teachers for teaching so-called divisive concepts involving gender, race, history and identity. Judge Paul Barbadoro said the law was so unconstitutionally vague that teachers would be “incentivized to steer well clear of anything that could be construed as violating” the ambiguous law, without really understanding what actually was illegal.
Teachers shouldn’t fear intimidation, being fired or loss of their teaching license just for doing what they’ve been trained to do. Perhaps the divisive concepts law was purposely written vaguely so it would give wide latitude for enforcement to anti-public education officials like Edelblut. Although only one complaint was ever filed under the law, Edelblut used it as a pretext to pressure school districts to informally investigate a number of teachers and school staff. Judge Barbadoro saw through the deliberately vaguely written law and smacked it down.
The Legislature, however, did pass a somewhat related measure that will require teachers to give parents two weeks’ notice for any curriculum, material or program related to human sexuality, sexual education, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or gender expression. Parents already can opt their children out of the sex ed portion of health or biology class, but this expands the topics that require notice. So now time has to be wasted if teachers, for example, will be teaching Romeo and Juliet or studying the Stonewall riots in an American history class.
Given the judicial ruling striking down the divisive concepts law, perhaps Gov. Chris Sununu should veto this bill.
Throughout this past legislative session, supporters of public schools had to fight off a lot of assaults on public education, knowledge, learning and history. I would like to see a fresh start for the next legislative session, in which we can achieve actual gains for our public schools and students.
We should take the victories -- which actually were the deaths of bad bills -- and use that momentum to give our public schools an infusion of much-needed funding and resources so that our Granite State kids and communities can thrive.
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