NC Senate bill would give parents power to challenge school leaders

RALEIGH, NC (CNN) — The North Carolina Senate released a bill Wednesday aimed at giving parents more power to challenge school leaders.

Senate Bill 90 will make it easier for parents to do many things —- including getting the superintendents fired.

Critics say the bill is focusing its attention on the wrong thing.

The bill would give parents a way to sue school superintendents in court for violating their fundamental right to parent their child.

It does not explain what that fundamental right includes.

If five parents sue and win in court, the superintendent would have to be fired or lose their salary.

Rep. John Torbett said it would make superintendents accountable to parents.

“The intent is for somebody who does nothing about these occurrences over and over and over again to make sure those occurrences do not persist,” Torbett told WRAL.

Torbett’s bill would also ban school counselors from counseling students without parental permission, and teachers would be required to tell parents if a child is questioning their gender identity.

It would also require all public libraries to lock up all material that could be considered harmful to children at risk being sued or held criminally liable. minors could only use the library with parental consent.

And it would tightly restrict what teachers in each grade could and could not tell students about health, reproduction or sexuality.

“We have a big issue now about what are the legal rights of parents over their minor child and there’s a group of people out there that evidently wants to strip those rights away from the parents,” Torbett said.

 “There is an all-out assault on public education,” House Democratic Leader Robert Reives said.

Reives called the bill reprehensible. He said republicans should be working on pay raises for teachers, not giving them new reasons to quit. there’s already a shortage.

“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. not run teachers out of all education — just run them out of public education.”

Lawmakers are also considering a number of other key education proposals — including a major funding expansion for the state’s private school vouchers program.