Teachers’ names have been changed to protect their identity.
On July 3, 2023, the North Carolina Senate ratified Senate Bill 49, better known as “S.B. 49” or “the Parents’ Bill of Rights.” In short, the bill’s proffered intent is to give parents more access to and control over their children during their schooling. The Parents’ Bill of Rights, along with other sections on transparency, seeks to make teachers give notice to parents when their child may be experiencing changes in their “mental, emotional, or physical health,” (i.e. bruises/scars, seeming unhealthy or ill, mental health changes) which also includes if a student has asked to go by a different name or pronouns. The school board has until Jan. 1 to implement the bill into the CHCCS district.
At East, discussion of the bill has been limited among the studentry; some aren’t even aware of the bill’s existence. But for teachers, talk of the bill has been present since last school year.
“It’s been a huge deal to us since we first heard about [the bill] last March,” said teacher Judith Dench. “I don’t want to contribute to a system where I could cause harm to my students. My worst nightmare is one of my students being hurt or kicked out of their house because their parents found out that they were going by a different name and pronouns at school.”
Dench’s sentiment is shared by a number of teachers; if S.B. 49 gets implemented in its current state, this nightmare for many teachers and queer students alike is at risk of becoming a reality.
“There were three times in my career that I’ve had to find emergency housing for a student in the middle of the night,” said East teacher Katie Harlow. “And they were all because their sexual or gender identity was revealed to their parents and they were immediately unhoused.”
The bill briefly touches on primary education, specifically the ban of “instruction on gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” within the curriculum from kindergarten through fourth grade. None of these topics are defined in the bill, and the bill’s definition curriculum is outlined incorrectly. Section 115C-76.55 of S.B. 49 reads, “For the purposes of this section, curriculum includes the standard course of study and support materials, locally developed curriculum, supplemental instruction, and textbooks and other supplementary materials, but does not include responses to student-initiated questions.” This is an incorrect and broad definition of curriculum. Curriculum does not include supplemental materials as doing so would essentially make everything curriculum.
This ban will outlaw any mention of the LGBTQ+ community in elementary schools, as well as potentially ban teaching children “safe touches” and may lead to book bans. The bill bans all inclusion of said topics in the curriculum for these grades, whether taught by the teacher or by other materials. The bill does not ban school personnel from answering student initiated questions.
According to “Chapelboro” safe touch programs are already being paused throughout the state until further notice.
Harlow brings into question the universality of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which might ultimately prove to be the fault of the bill.
“So my question is, does that mean I can’t introduce myself as Ms. Harlow or Mrs. Harlow? Because if you have a plot line that runs on Charlie Brown, having a crush on a redheaded girl, that implies a heterosexual orientation,” Harlow said. “If [characters] are married man and wife, that implies a heterosexual orientation and identity of those characters. When I say, ‘That’s Racheal’s bag. Can you hand me her bag?’ You are speaking about cisgender identity. Is cisgender identity a gender identity that’s problematic?”
With the Parents’ Bill of Rights being written so vaguely and having multiple definitions missing and/or incorrect, it becomes easier to find grounds to challenge the law.
“If you apply the law universally, it’s a ridiculous law. If my student James, who goes by Jim doesn’t get a phone call home, but my transgender student does, how is that fair,” Harlow said. “But if the law is applied unfairly, we have systems in place to rectify that.”
The school board met on Nov. 2 and discussed the bill. Board Member George Griffin called S.B. 49 “discriminatory, mean-spirited, and hostile” towards LGBTQ+ students. “I don’t really even want to participate in a discussion if the group thinks that what we’re trying to do is make discrimination more palatable or okay, because it’s just not,” Griffin said.
The board agreed that they will not move forward with the policies and instead send a directive back to the policy committee telling them to “take out the parts of the [bill] that are harmful to children, rewrite it, and ignore whether you’re breaking [the Parents’ Bill of Rights].”
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