By Sen. Jay Kahn, D-Keene and Sen. Tom Sherman, D-Rye
This week we are honoring New Hampshire’s educators as we join together to celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Week. To say that our teachers have risen above impossible and unpredictable challenges would be an understatement. For the past two and a half years, educators have valiantly continued to provide NH students with a quality education, despite disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While confronted by everchanging education mandates, rapid turnaround times to master new technologies, and constantly adapting school policies to health and safety protocols, our teachers have provided our students with the most invaluable resource, an education.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our teachers were heralded as heroes. Letters to the editor and op-eds filled local papers congratulating them for their Herculean efforts to keep our children’s education moving forward. But over the past two years, we have seen a seismic shift in the way public officials treat public school educators. Heroes have been recast as supervillains, who, according to an extremist minority, must be controlled at all costs. One needs to look no further than the New Hampshire legislature to see how ingrained this disdain has become.
Take for instance HB 1431, known as the “Parental Bill of Rights.” Masquerading as a pro-parent piece of legislation, this bill is one of the most harmful, dangerous bills we have seen all session. Its lengthy, confusing language creates requirements for parental notifications for nearly every in-school activity in which a student may engage. The bill opens with “The general court finds that it is a fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their minor children.” In principle who would disagree that parents have the right to raise their children in the manner they see fit. However, the overly broad language that follows creates questions about who is responsible for reporting on the individual actions of every student as outlined in the bill, as well as what materials parents feel they are not currently privy to despite compliance with existing laws. (As the bill reads now a school nurse might very well have to obtain parental permission to apply a band-aid.) The bill also sets expectations about reporting on “gender expression or identity, disability accommodation, and special meal prescription.” Aside from the obvious confusion over what it means to notify a parent about how every single child is expressing their gender, does a mother need to be alerted daily if her son is dressing like a cis-gendered boy? What kind of scrutiny and judgment of the routine daily life of our schools will the bill now require?
In HB 1431, we again find legislation motivated by out-of-state groups designed to erode confidence between parents and educators. Much like the gag rule prohibiting teaching about discrimination that passed in the budget bill last year and was signed into law by Governor Sununu, HB 1431 introduces ambiguous, broadly-worded language clearly designed to enable accusations against schools. The additional work that these bills require actually takes teachers away from teaching. And, in spite of the budget’s gag rule becoming law and sitting on the books throughout this school year, not a single complaint has been filed with the State’s Human Rights Commission. What purpose do these legislative acts serve except to sow seeds of mistrust that undermine confidence in educators and schools? Educators deserve better including full recognition for their dedication to supporting our children’s development and learning.
As legislators, we should be embracing efforts to improve student educational outcomes. State government could be focused on enhancing early childhood education opportunities and building career technical education credentials in all high school students to improve workforce entry opportunities. But instead the legislature’s majority continues to propagate prohibitions that divert the state from achieving this more meaningful educational progress. Our collective focus is further distracted by partisan debates over Republican efforts to cut state aid to schools, to continue uncontrolled spending of taxpayer dollars on a school voucher program for attending private and religious schools, to reject bills that address childhood hunger by streamlining enrollment in free and reduced lunch, and to override local control of school boards by instituting a one size fits all budget cap on school districts.
There is no greater investment in the future both of our children and of NH than the one we make in our public schools. By supporting that investment, we realize the great potential that can be derived from our dedicated teachers, support staff and administrators. Their success in motivating students to succeed, to discover and to learn, and to contribute back to their communities that are supporting them, is an irreplaceable social and economic gain to our state.
That’s why we want to recognize educators–the teachers, paraprofessionals, support staff, principals, and superintendents–who have endured shifting health and education mandates over the last three school years and dedicated themselves to supporting students and families during this global pandemic. It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and we thank you for your critical role in developing the most precious asset of our state, our students.
Jay Kahn Tom Sherman
State Senator, District 10 State Senator, District 24
Keene, NH Rye, NH