Madam Chair, I include in the Record the following letter from First Focus Campaign for Children in opposition to H.R. 5. First Focus, Washington, DC, March 20, 2023. Hon. Julia Letlow, Member, House Education & Workforce Cmte, House of…
Madam Chair, I include in the Record the following letter from First Focus Campaign for Children in opposition to H.R. 5.
First Focus,
Washington, DC, March 20, 2023.
Hon. Julia Letlow,
Member, House Education & Workforce Cmte, House of
Representatives, Washington, DC.
Hon. Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Hakeem Jeffries,
Democratic Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
Hon. Virginia Foxx,
Chair, House Education & Workforce Cmte, House of
Representatives, Washington, DC.
Hon. Bobby Scott,
Ranking Member, House Ed & Workforce Cmte, House of
Representatives, Washington, DC.
Dear Congresswoman Letlow, Speaker McCarthy, Leader
Jeffries, Chairwoman Foxx, and Ranking Member Scott: I am
writing on behalf of First Focus Campaign for Children, a
bipartisan children's advocacy organization dedicated to
making children and families a priority in federal budget and
policy decisions, to express opposition to H.R. 5, the
Parents Bill of Rights Act. We do not believe this bill
strikes the right balance between the duties of schools, the
rights and responsibilities of parents, and the oft-ignored
but important rights of children.
Parental Engagement Is Critical
First, let's be clear: Parents are fundamental to the
upbringing of children and absolutely should be engaged and
involved in the education of their children. In fact,
children have better outcomes when their parents are
involved. As a parent of four children myself, I have engaged
with my children's schools by voting in school board
elections, attending all parent-teacher conferences,
volunteering in my children's classrooms, scheduling time to
meet with teachers and administrators when important issues
arise, serving on the PTAs at my children's schools, serving
on athletic booster clubs, and volunteering as an assistant
boys and girls basketball coach for two county schools.
In addition to my personal experiences, I have learned a
great deal over the years from both of my parents, my step-
mother, step-brother, my uncle, and several cousins, who are
all educators. Consequently, I have immense respect for the
work, talent, dedication, and concern that the vast majority
of teachers and educators bring to their profession on a
daily basis--all with the goal of educating our nation's
children to best achieve their hopes and dreams while also
trying to provide a place of safety and compassion for each
and every one of their students.
Again, we strongly support parental engagement in
education, but parents should not control all curriculum and
educational decisions. Doing so is unworkable.
For example, imagine an elementary school of 500 students
where 12 parents oppose the teaching of evolution, 8 parents
believe the earth is flat, 21 are Holocaust deniers, 14
oppose learning about slavery, 7 believe in racial
segregation, 17 believe in the concept of schools without
walls, 27 believe in corporal punishment, 12 want Harry
Potter books to be banned, 25 want books banned that mention
the Trail of Tears, 31 believe parents should be allowed to
overrule a physician's decision that a child with a
concussion should refrain from participating in sports, 39
oppose keeping kids out of school when they have the flu, 4
believe that a child with cancer might be contagious, 34
believe students should be ``tracked'' in all subject areas,
12 believe students should not be taught how to spell the
words ``spinal tap'', ``quarantine'', or ``isolation''
because they are too ``scary of words,'' 41 don't like the
bus routes, 45 want a vegan-only lunchroom, 4 demand same-sex
classrooms, etc. Even though most parents oppose these
demands by some parents and many of them are completely
false, undermine the purpose of education, threaten the
safety of children, or promote discrimination, H.R. 5 would
seek to push their accommodation in some form.
The Real Parents Agenda for Children
We must all do better by our kids.
By an overwhelming 77-11% margin, a May 2022 poll by Lake
Research Partners found that parents believe ``policy
involving children should always be governed by a `best
interest of the child' standard.'' By a 60-19% margin, the
American people believe we are spending too little as opposed
to too much on public education. And when it comes in
investing in children, 9-in-10 voters (90-7%) agreed with the
statement that ``investing in children helps improve their
lives, development, and outcomes.''
When it comes to children's policy overall, a nationwide
survey by Global Strategy Group in February 2023 found that
American voters have strong priorities in favor of ``creating
more effective childcare options for all families'' (87-8
percent), expanding family and medical leave'' (82-12
percent), bringing back the improved Child Tax Credit (76-13
percent), and ``expanding universal preschool for all 3- and
4-year-olds'' (73-16 percent). The support for this agenda
stands in sharp contrast to the opposition that American
voters express to an agenda that would call for ``passing
legislation banning transgender-focused health care options
for young Americans'' (41-47 percent), ``banning books that
some parents find to have questionable content'' (32-57
percent), and ``banning high school classes like AP African-
American history'' (21-68 percent).
Children Have Fundamental Rights Too
Before diving into the details of H.R. 5, it is important
to acknowledge that children need the support BY parents and
government to be successful, and that they also sometimes
need protection FROM parents and government.
The fact is that children have unique and fundamental human
rights that should not be ignored or dismissed. These include
the right to an education, the right to health care, the
right to be protected from abuse and violence at home and in
schools, the right to be protected from gun violence and
school shootings, the right to not be discriminated against
because of their race, ethnicity, gender (including gender
identity and sexual orientation), economic status,
disability, religion, immigration status, or age.
As for parental rights and H.R. 5's attempts to modify the
Protection of Pupil Rights Act (PPRA) and the Family
Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), it is important to
highlight that PPRA was originally enacted nearly 50 years
ago (in 1974) and has been modified several times, including
in 1978, 1994, and 2002, in order to broaden access and
consent requirements.
H.R. 5 Adds New Bureaucracy to Schools and Detracts from the Time,
Attention, and Funding Dedicated to Students
While the impetus for aspects of H.R. 5 are well-
intentioned, our first concern is that the language is
duplicative of language already in federal law, policies in
state law, and general practice by school districts all
across this country in many respects but also potentially
adds new bureaucracy and red tape to schools and school
districts all across this for no apparent benefit.
Unfortunately, these proposed changes may potentially harm
children. Any funding, time, and attention that is shifted
away from students and their learning toward added
bureaucracy and red tape can be detrimental to students. But
H.R. 5 provides no funding to address the many newly imposed
bureaucratic requirements upon schools.
For example, H.R. 5 proposes new reporting requirements for
schools to include in their ``local educational agency report
card'' a budget that is detailed ``for each elementary school
and secondary school served by the local educational
agency.'' Requiring detailed accounting of costs, some of
which are shared across school campuses (e.g., school nurses,
bus drivers, etc.), for the more than 90,000 public schools
across this country will likely greatly increase the
employment of accountants. However, H.R. 5 does not provide
funding to pay for such a mandate. Before proceeding, we
should acknowledge that this newly-imposed mandate detracts
from the funding, time, and attention school districts and
educators have for improving the education and well-being of
children.
First Focus Campaign for Children supports tracking funding
that is allocated for children's programs as a share of
government spending, and thus, annually produce a Children's
Budget that analyzes the funding of more than 250 federal
programs. We share this report with Congress to raise the
awareness and transparency of funding for children. However,
we would urge Congress to focus as many of those dollars as
possible on the children themselves and not on excessive
accounting and reporting measures that consume much of the
attention and focus of H.R. 5.
H.R. 5 Promotes Book Bans Rather Than Access to Books and Reading
Another important concern is language from Sec. 104 and
Sec. 202 that would require schools to share with all parents
of students at every school ``a list of books and other
reading materials available to the students of such school in
the school library.'' Again, compiling, cataloging, and
sharing such information to all parents would come at great
time and expense that is not paid for by H.R. 5. That money
and time would come at the expense of librarians and other
educators focused on the education of children. Parents
already have the right to visit their child's school and its
library, to request such information, and to ask their own
children what they are learning and reading in school.
Rather than adding the burdens of more bureaucracy and red
tape to schools and creating a chilling effect through
increasing incidences of censorship and book bans, we should
be working together to pass legislation to encourage students
to read and learn through greater access to books, such as
Reach Out and Read, First Book, Reading Is Fundamental, and
other literacy programs. An individual parent should not
solely be allowed to object to a book and cause its
censorship for all of the children in a school or school
district. This violates the parental rights of the vast
majority of parents who do not support book bans or
censorship.
Even more importantly, it violates the fundamental rights
of children. As Justice Abe Fortas wrote in his majority
opinion in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District
(1969):
Students in school as well as out of school are ``persons''
under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental
rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves
must respect their obligations to the State . . . In the
absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid
reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to
freedom of expression of their views.
Justice Fortas adds:
It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers
shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or
expression at the schoolhouse gate.
In the Supreme Court case Island Trees School District v.
Pico (1982), the Court ruled that children have a fundamental
right to an education and access to learning that is not
limited by the censorship of books based on ``narrowly
partisan or political'' grounds. As Justice William
Brennan writes:
Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression
of ideas. Thus, whether petitioners' removal of books from
their school libraries denied respondents their First
Amendment rights depends upon the motivation behind
petitioners' actions. If petitioners intended by their
removal decision to deny respondents access to ideas with
which petitioners disagreed, and if this intent was the
decisive factor in petitioners' decisions, then petitioners
have exercised their discretion in violation of the
Constitution.
H.R. 5 Threatens Access to Health Care, Privacy, and Confidentiality of
Students
Concern about access to health care for our children leads
us to oppose the language in H.R. 5 with respect to school
health. There were more than 4 million children in this
country that were uninsured in 2020. In 2016, the Children's
Health Fund estimated that over 20 million children lacked
``sufficient access to essential health care.''
Therefore, the role of school based health clinics, school
nurses, school counselors, coaches, social workers, and
physical trainers in schools is critically important to the
health, education, and well-being of children. The language
in H.R. 5 appears to dramatically expands the potential
incidences in which all of these school personnel would have
to seek out parental notification and consent prior to
performing care, such as to check whether a student has a
fever, has an ankle sprain, may have experienced a
concussion, or need to check for a possible broken bone. In
many cases, these may not be considered emergencies, but in
the meantime, children languish or must wait while school
personnel spend large amounts of time trying to track down
parents for consent.
In the report accompanying H.R. 5, the House Education and
Workforce Committee majority write, ``Americans should never
be forced to relinquish these parental rights to government--
whether that involves curriculum decisions or personal
medical choices'' (emphasis added).
We strongly disagree.
First, such a statement would threaten the health, safety,
and lives of some children in our country. For example, based
on that statement, does the Committee majority reject the
ability of schools to set graduation requirements? Oppose the
teaching of evolution? Allow parents to send children to
school even if they are vomiting, have a fever, diarrhea, or
have a communicable disease? Does the Committee majority now
oppose school vaccine mandates? School concussion protocols?
Even more fundamentally, the sweeping statement in the
Committee report would seemingly reject actions by government
to protect the lives of children, such as that by a
Hillsborough County judge in Florida who ruled in 2019 that a
3-year-old should continue chemotherapy treatment at Johns
Hopkins All Children's Hospital at the advice and consent of
doctors rather than the parents desire to stop cancer
treatment and use ``other methods such as an alkaline diet
and cannabis.''
At its extreme, parental rights are granted in virtually
all matters related to the health of their children in Idaho,
including the use of faith healing rather than medical
treatment. This has resulted in tragic health outcomes,
including the death of children. The Washington Post reported
in 2018 that, ``Child advocates estimate that 183 Idaho
children have died because of withheld medical treatment
since states across the nation enacted faith-healing
exemptions in the early 1970s.''
We urge the Committee majority to reconsider its language,
as it raises grave concerns about the role some parents have
played in decisions to impose female genital mutilation,
conversion ``therapy,'' rebirthing ``therapy,'' certain types
of involuntary institutionalization of children, seclusion
and restraint, forced sterilization of children with
disabilities, and other harmful or detrimental ``personal
medical choices.''
On this last point, there are also very troubling stories
in which some parents bought into an array of false or
dangerous treatment for autism that included ``industrial
bleach. . ., turpentine or their children's own urine as the
secret miracle drug for reversing autism.'' We would hope
that everyone would agree that children should be protected--
by government--from that.
We also support the affirmative right of children to seek
out health care services in schools and, when requested, to
have their privacy and confidentiality respected. And for
decades, so has Congress. In fact, some of the language being
amended by H.R. 5 comes from the Protection of Pupil Rights
Act.
Therefore, for a student that seeks out a medical
professional at school and desires privacy and
confidentiality, we strongly urge that the request be
respected. As Abigail English and Dr. Carol Ford explain in
The Journal of Pediatrics, confidentiality and privacy is
critically important to adolescents:
Decades of research findings have documented the ways in
which privacy concerns influence adolescents' willingness to
seek healthcare, where and when they seek care, and how
candid they are with their healthcare providers. In the
absence of confidentiality protections, some adolescents
forego care entirely, some delay care or avoid visiting
providers they perceive as not assuring confidentiality, and
some limit the information they are willing to disclose.''
The authors highlight an important reality:
Not all adolescents have parents who are available,
willing, and able to communicate with them about sensitive
issues, and not all adolescents are willing to share
information about all sensitive health issues with their
parents. In this context, confidential consultation with a
healthcare provider can play an essential role. Eliciting
candid information about adolescent concerns, health
behaviors, and symptoms clearly increases clinicians'
opportunities to address concerns, provide evidence-based
prevention and risk-reduction counseling, and ensure timely
diagnosis and treatment.
With potentially tragic consequences, H.R. 5 appears to
undermine the affirmative rights of young people to seek out
or health care providers for suicide prevention, mental
health, substance abuse, asthma, infectious diseases, or
other health care services without schools first obtaining
written parental consent. Furthermore, H.R. 5 is silent on
the matter of when parents may disagree over consent and the
default should never be that kids are denied or left to
languish with respect to access to essential services that
are important to their health, well-being, and safety.
School Personnel Should Not Be Subjected to Threats, Intimidation, or
Violence
Finally, although we often do not comment on language that
expresses the Sense of Congress, language in Sec. 105 argues
that ``[e]ducators, policymakers, and other stakeholders
should never seek to criminalize the lawfully expressed
concerns of parents about their children's education.'' While
we agree with that sentiment, it should also be said that
parents should never bully, threaten, dox, or seek to
intimidate educators, teachers, and even students themselves.
The numerous stories of threats, violence, and efforts to
intimidate school board members, administrators, teachers,
and even students is disturbing and should never be
considered acceptable.
In fact, many examples of threats, intimidation, and
violent behavior cited in footnote 16 would never be
tolerated if such behaviors were conducted by children. Kids
would be punished and even arrested for far less.
Furthermore, I would highlight that H.R. 5 would require such
violent behavior ``on school grounds or at school-sponsored
activities'' to be reported to parents (Sec. 104). Would that
also include reporting violent acts of parents on school
grounds or at school-sponsored activities, such as those
cited in footnote 16, to all other parents in the school
district?
On this point, we should all be deeply concerned about what
message adults engaging in such behaviors are sending to our
children. Our children are watching and listening, and it is
sad that so many adults are trying to make education all
about themselves rather than keeping the focus on the
education, needs, and well-being of children. H.R. 5 should
not promote such behavior.
In the report accompanying H.R. 5, the Committee majority
cite the ``Nicole Solas's story'' as a ``prime example of how
school administrators can stonewall even the most basic
attempts to uncover what children are being taught.'' Left
unsaid is that Solas and her husband filed over 300 Access to
Public Records Act (APRA) requests with multiple
requests within each individual request that the school
district estimated would take nearly 5,000 hours at enormous
cost to the schools and to taxpayers (and again, time and
money diverted away from serving children). These requests
included demands for all emails, personnel records related to
individual teachers, and records that contain personal
information, including the home addresses and medical
information of numerous teachers and educators in the school
system.
Also left unsaid is that Rhode Island's APRA explicitly
protects the disclosure of information about ``individuals
maintained in the files of public bodies when disclosure
would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal
privacy.'' This is an important fact that should not be
ignored. One APRA request could have asked for the
curriculum, as Solas claimed that she wanted, but that was
accompanied with hundreds of other requests: many of which
would invade of personal privacy of targeted teachers and
other educators in schools. We would urge the Committee to
not try to make Solas the ``poster adult'' for parental
engagement. She is not.
Furthermore, Congress should be more discerning with
respect to the types of behaviors that it finds acceptable.
Supreme Court Justice Warren Berger explains, ``Even the most
heated political discourse in a democratic society requires
consideration for the personal sensibilities of the other
participants and audiences. In our Nation's legislative
halls, where some of the most vigorous political debates in
our society are carried on, there are rules prohibiting the
use of expressions offensive to other participants in the
debate.''
For example, Congress would not allow the behaviors
exhibited in footnote 16 to take place as it attempts to
conduct its own congressional business. Thus, it is
unreasonable to expect school boards and educators to subject
themselves to extremely unproductive behavior as cited in
footnote 16 when Congress would never tolerate the same.
Threats of violence and intimidation are threats to
democracy. Instead, Congress should promote discourse and
civility.
Again, we strongly support the critical importance that
parents have in the upbringing and education of their
children. Unfortunately, we believe there is language in H.R.
5 that would prove to be unnecessarily detrimental to the
education, health, privacy, and well-being of children. We
urge you to go back to the drawing board and work with
educational and child and family organizations to improve and
rebalance the focus of this legislation, and to remember that
children have fundamental rights too.
Rather than a self-centered agenda focused upon parents,
the vast majority of parents really want what is best for
their children. They do not accept that, as a nation, the
U.S. ranks 36th out of 38 wealthy nations on measures of
child well-being. They demand that we do better by children.
That should be all of our focus.
As such, parents are far more interested and focused on
improving education, child health, and reducing child
poverty, hunger, and homelessness than book bans, censorship,
the whitewashing of history and science, and the excessive
filing of numerous records requests for personal and
confidential information about school teachers.
Let's work together toward those goals.
Sincerely,
Bruce Lesley,
President.