Additional rights would include the ability to make health care decisions for their children and to be notified if a government agency suspects a crime has been committed against the child. The measure would broaden the rights parents already have in state and federal laws. “Efforts by parents to ask that their children be protected from harmful, inappropriate content has also been met with hostility. “They broke our trust,” Pat Blackburn with the advocacy group Moms of Liberty, told senators. Scenes from school board meetings of adults complaining about books and instruction have been common. Republicans said the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” is largely a response to parents whose frustrations grew during the COVID-19 pandemic as their children learned from home. “However, the last thing our state needs is another Republican political ploy like the bathroom bill which hurt our people and cost us jobs.” Cooper vetoed a Republican bill last year that would have limited how public school teachers can discuss certain racial concepts. “Schools are grateful for involved parents and we need even more of them working together with teachers to educate our children,” Cooper said in a prepared statement. Pat McCrory addressing bathroom use by transgender people that costs the state sporting events and billions of dollars. Roy Cooper, whose vetoes can be upheld if enough lawmakers from his party remain united, told legislators to "keep the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ culture wars out of North Carolina classrooms.” He also referred to House Bill 2, a 2016 law signed by GOP Gov. has no censorship in it at all.”ĭemocratic Gov. Michael Lee, a New Hanover County Republican and a Senate education committee co-chairman. “This is about not teaching 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-year-olds things that are not age appropriate," said Sen. And they say it would allow passing mention of a teacher or parent's same-sex relationship, for example. Senate Republicans disagreed, saying the prohibition of instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in curriculum for kindergarten through third grade is more narrowly tailored than the Florida law. They said the measure contained items reminiscent of a recently approved Florida law that critics have dubbed the “Don't Say Gay” bill. The bill, which wades into other contentious issues around pronouns for children and their medical treatment without parental consent, received criticism from some who said GOP colleagues are wrongly interfering in the classroom. A Republican measure supporters say would empower North Carolina parents to better monitor their children's public school education - and also would bar K-3 class curriculum from addressing LGBTQ issues - received approval Wednesday from a state Senate committee.