School board reviews parental rights policy draft
The School Board of Lee County will consider the local impact of new state legislation dubbed the Parents’ Bill of Rights next month.
“We are not asking for it to move forward into the formal rule making process,” Board Attorney Kathy Dupuy-Bruno said on Aug. 17, adding that it was a pre-briefing of the policy to gather feedback. “This policy is specifically related to the law that is placed. There are a lot of processes and procedures in the law that passed. We are hoping at the next meeting it will go into first reading … finalize and become policy during the second meeting in September.”
The new legislation, which went into effect July 1, lists the rights of parents as they pertain to education, health care, and criminal justice procedures. The bill prohibits “the state, its political subdivisions, any other governmental entities and any other institutions from infringing upon the fundamental right of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of his or her minor child without demonstrating a compelling state interest for such actions.”
Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jeff Spiro said two long meetings, encompassing such departments as school development, curriculum, instruction, grants, athletics and all chiefs, have been held on how the legislation affects local schools.
“We are going line by line of this bill to make sure we have artifacts and processes to meet this particular bill,” he said.
The Parents’ Bill of Rights policy will be located in the parent portal with each subsection linking to additional information.
Dupuy-Bruno said they plan to have additional communication with the different board advisory groups, as well as a special day for anyone interested in providing feedback, as they want to get community involvement in the local policy.
“Hopefully by September (we will) have a good policy and the processes that go along with the policy ready to go,” she said.
The Parents’ Bill of Rights pulls from all the statutes that talks about parents rights from healthcare to education and complies it in one area.
The district’s proposed four-page policy includes three subheadings — parent rights, promoting parent involvement and parent requests for information.
One of the topics touched upon by Board Member Betsy Vaughn was the “right to consent in writing before the school district makes a video, or voice recording of his or her minor child unless such recording is to be used for a safety demonstration, a legitimate academic or extracurricular activity, a purpose related to regular classroom instruction, security or surveillance of buildings or grounds and a photo identification card.”
“I am going to assume this is an expansion of the current practice,” Vaughn said of the issue of students in classrooms video taping. This is an issue, she said, because some parents may not want that photographic imagine of their children in public.
Bruno said there are federal and state laws that specifically talk about protecting children and their confidential information, which the district has policies, practices and procedures already in place.
Board Member Gwyn Gittens encouraged the district to look into other formats than digital to share information about the Parents’ Bill of Rights to those who may not be computer savvy, or want to have something in their hands.
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