If you're a parent and you live in Florida, you're probably feeling pretty good right about now. And if you're a parent and you don't live if Florida, you probably want to move there:
The Florida Senate Education Committee passed a controversial bill on Tuesday that would bar school districts from encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity. The Parental Rights in Education bill, commonly referred to the "Don't Say Gay" bill by its critics, would apply to such topics in primary grade levels, as well as in cases where the discussions are deemed "not age-appropriate."
The bill, proposed by Republican State Senator Dennis Baxley, would extend to student support services, including counseling, and would require school district personnel to give parents all information related to a student's "mental, emotional or physical health or well-being," unless it's believed that such disclosure would result in abuse. Parents would be able to sue districts that do not follow these requirements.
Okay, that's the surface-level mainstream media interpretation of the bill, which, unsurprisingly, is treating it like a DEFCON-1-level nuclear threat. Here's what the actual bill is meant to do:
- It does indeed prohibit school officials from "encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels" (i.e. schools may not discuss sexual activity and "gender identity" with students roughly kids 11 years and younger).
- It would make it illegal for schools to bar parents "from accessing any of his or her minor child's education records created, maintained, or used by the school district."
- It would forbid schools from "adopt[ing] procedures or student support forms that require school district personnel to withhold from a parent information about his or her student's mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being;"
- Nor may school districts adopt policies that "encourage or have the effect of encouraging a student to withhold from a parent" information about their child's "mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being."
See anything to complain about??
The issue here seems to be that a lot of people want schools to be able to (a) discuss highly sensitive sexual subjects with very young children while (b) keeping it secret and hidden from those childrens' parents.
When you see people making this kind of push, you can really only have one reasonable conclusion:
Big Ronnie D and the Florida GOP are taking care of business though!
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