WASHINGTON – A former University of Louisiana Monroe administrator and professor, U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow already had the bonafides to lead the effort to pass a national “Parents Bill of Rights Act.”
The act, officially H.R. 5, is a response to parents’ anger: over COVID-caused school shutdowns, masking and the discovery of a curricula that some felt had veered too far from an American exceptionalism theme. The bill is a GOP legislative priority and will receive a floor vote this week in the majority Republican House.
Academic credentials aside, Letlow suspects part of the reason House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, chose her to shepherd the national bill is because Louisiana knows a thing or two about satisfying angry parents.
Louisiana passed a similar law in 2014, a response to parents’ anger about the Common Core State Standards Initiative, new expectations for what students should learn and know. That bill was not only “effective, but passed with broad bipartisan support,” said Letlow, R-Start, in a recent interview.
At that time, many parents, largely in St. Tammany Parish but also in other corners of the state, were calling Common Core an illegal usurpation by the federal government.
In response, state legislators pushed bills that criminalized distribution of student data, set student performance standards and allowed local school boards to develop their own content. They also established a Parents Bill of Rights, codifying parents’ long-held rights to examine school textbooks and inspect their children’s academic records.
At the state Senate Education Committee hearing on April 21, 2014, senators weren’t against the parents rights bill, but questioned the need for it.
“We’re passing a law that restates what’s already in current law,” said Eric LaFleur, then a state senator from Ville Platte who like all but a few Democrats backed the legislation.
Despite its redundancy, state House Education Committee Chair Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, said last week that the 2014 law, and the tweaks made since, was largely responsible for the current relative peace in Louisiana over education issues. “I have heard from parents that they’re glad that they know now they have that capability,” said Harris, who ran against and lost to Letlow in the 2021 congressional race.
Supporters of the national bill hope some of that peace can be extended to parts of the country where communication between parents and local school officials has become increasingly stormy. In October 2021, the Department of Justice, citing an increase in “harassment, intimidation and threats of violence” against public school board members and teachers, said it would meet regularly with law enforcement to discuss ways to address the problem.
And in February, Reuters counted about 220 threats parents lodged against a handful of school districts, none in Louisiana.
The concept of parental bills of rights has its critics, however.
“A bill of rights is not something I see as helping. I can tell them firsthand that our commitment to students is already there,” said Tia Mills, a former teacher and now president of the Louisiana Association of Educators, the state’s largest labor organization.
“It’s extremely controversial and it takes away from what is really important, and that is training our children,” Mills added.
The issue also diverts attention from the fact that teachers are leaving the profession in droves, said state Sen. Cleo Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat who chairs the state Senate Education committee.
Fifty-five percent of educators are considering other jobs — wrung out by stress from long hours, low pay and partisan sniping, according to a National Education Association survey released last week and reported by The New York Times.
“At the end of the day, there are more important things I would like to see my Congress focusing on,” Fields said March 2. “If the federal government would do anything, they would be better served putting money into renovating schools, paying teachers more, and investing in early childhood education.”
The debate may all be for naught. The bill is expected to advance to the U.S. Senate but be shelved by Democrats, which control the upper chamber.
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