Written by HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

As the North Carolina legislative session winds down and budget negotiations plod along, House Republicans are pitching an eleventh-hour overhaul of public education laws that would take power away from superintendents and the State Board of Education while giving parents and lawmakers more control.

Republican committee chairs pulled the proposal — introduced earlier Wednesday — from the House Education Committee after they decided their members needed more time to review it and assess its potential impacts, said co-chair Rep. John Torbett of Gaston County.

The bill is not dead, just on pause, he said, adding that he’s optimistic it will pass the House this year. It remains to be seen whether the Senate, which did not convene Wednesday, will have an appetite for the assortment of House priorities contained in the proposal.

House Democrats raised alarms about several provisions, including one that would allow local school boards to fire superintendents or automatically dock their pay if parents present five affidavits demonstrating that a superintendent violated their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. The bill establishes a parent’s right to appeal those cases to a superior court and collect damages.

“This basically just says, if you allow that kind of bad actor to promulgate throughout your system and you do it five times, there’s a pattern there, so chances are, you need to find other work somewhere else,” Torbett said.

State Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston County, answers questions about his bill to limit how teachers can discuss certain racial topics during a House Education Committee meeting on Tuesday, March 14, 2023. Torbett is the co-chair of the House Education Committee and said a new bill that would limit superintendents’ power and cede more control to parents will be taken up again in the future. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum)

The General Assembly would also give itself greater authority over the State Board of Education under the proposal, which calls for a new commission to recommend academic standards to the board. The GOP-controlled House and Senate could each appoint six commission members, and the Democratic governor could appoint six of his own.

Children would also need parental consent under the bill to access libraries, school extracurriculars and mental health services. Parents would have more opportunities to review and challenge books or other instructional materials and would have full access to their child’s library records.

New rules for teachers would require them to publish a detailed syllabus at the beginning of every semester and to inform parents if a student self-identifies as a gender different from their sex assigned at birth. A similar provision appears in an education bill vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper, which the legislature’s Republican supermajority could enact over his opposition as early as next Wednesday.

House Democratic Leader Robert Reives called the bill a “continued assault on public education” and warned it would make school a hostile place for students and teachers alike.

Other Democrats, including Reps. Julie von Haefen of Wake County and Amos Quick of Guilford County, criticized Republicans for introducing a bill that they said could worsen the state’s teacher shortage by imposing more restrictions on educators. Finalizing a budget that adequately funds schools and improves teacher pay should be the priority, they said.

“This is the type of legislation that people ought to be running up here and protesting because you’re already doing your best to run teachers out of public education,” Reives said of Republican legislators. “And then doing things like these to make it an untenable environment is reprehensible.”

 

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