Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill Tuesday to protect the rights of parents in education, which would include parents having the right to access their child's school curriculum.
The Parents’ Bill of Rights Act outlines eight parental "rights" regarding their child's education that, if restricted, would allow parents to sue federally funded schools.
Schools would be required to disclose information about curriculum, outside groups the school has signed contracts with and reported incidents that could affect their child's safety. The bill would also make it to where extracurricular activities and field trips require a parental opt-in standard rather than the current opt-out one.
It also states that school board meetings about "curricula, safety, and other student issues" must be held in public and allow for public comments.
"America has long recognized the right of parents to direct their children’s education but we are now seeing a concerted effort by the Left to shut parents out," Hawley said in a press release.
"Whether it’s Joe Biden’s Justice Department attempting to classify parents as ‘domestic terrorists’ or activists funded by dark money who seek to quietly introduce critical race theory into school curricula, education has taken a back seat to radical politics in many schools and parents are taking notice," he continued. "It’s time to give control back to parents, not woke bureaucrats, and empower them to start a new era of openness in education."
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This comes after the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the White House in September asking for federal assistance to deal with "threats" posed to school officials by parents expressing concern over school policies such as mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory that the organization said could be likened to "a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes."
This letter led Attorney General Merrick Garland to issue a memo just days later directing the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other law enforcement agencies to "address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff."
The NSBA later apologized for the language used in its letter. However, the Department of Justice said it stands by Garland's memo because he did not adopt the same language the NSBA had apologized for.
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