Is SB 24 a Door to Social Engineering in Our Schools?

SB 24 is a bill that would add “mental health education” to the K-12 curriculum in public schools. I had tremendous reservations about the bill as written, so I crafted language changes to the bill.

First, I need to explain that because I am a huge advocate for safe schools and preventing school shootings, I want to see front-end measures in place that will help prevent problems progressing. One of those is students and teachers being able to pick up on warning signs that might lead a person to go down this dangerous path.

We know some parents prefer teaching their children altogether. Some want to teach their children on certain subjects, and some are fine with others covering matters.

Going back to the parents who are more inclined to teach their child directly on certain topics, we should note that we have seen a decline in brick and mortar school enrollment because a number of parents are not comfortable with some of the perspectives that might be portrayed in the classroom and topics that might be covered during the school day.

For those concerned about the declining enrollments in neighborhood schools, the amendment would help because it narrows the mental health topics to the ones we’re all concerned about, that most parents are likely concerned about: those involving  injury or death of the student themselves or those involving a student causing injury and death of others.

If we leave the bill as is and the mental health topics wide open, brick and mortar school enrollments will continue to decline. We have to recognize that a number of parents are already worried about social engineering and don’t want the schools delving into certain areas.

Although the bill as written includes a basic notification be sent to the parent that the class will take place, and parents always have the option to pull their child out of the classroom if the parent doesn’t agree with something, this amendment would ensure parents would know they have the ability to do that by including an opt-out form with the notification.

The amendment would also ensure the parent has a more thorough understanding of the mental health instruction. The notification would include the topics, the curriculum, and the intervention resources that could be suggested to their child. This information would help a parent know whether they want their child to participate or not participate.

Lastly, the amendment encourages local control through the school board’s involvement in determining which intervention resources the schools should provide to students. It is important that this list be regionally-based and involve public input because certain services may be considered controversial.

The bill sponsor and most of the majority members voted against the amendment but very oddly, the bill sponsor described the bill as pertaining to the very items to which I limited the instruction – things that lead to suicide, self-harm, addiction – but never explained on the floor why it was necessary to keep the language so broad and not be transparent with parents.

When the same policy proposal was on the House floor in 2022, the House amended the bill to prevent instruction and intervention resources on sexual/gender identity and abortion issues from being part of the curriculum. Rather than allowing the bill to return to the Senate for a concurrence vote with these changes, the bill sponsor chose to kill the bill.

I don’t think it is a stretch to conclude that the reason my amendment was rejected was so that these types of controversial topics and intervention resources can be part of the classroom instruction and that parents would not know that they are unless they initiated research to find out.

The bill passed the Senate 15-4; I voted against it. The bill is now in the House. If the House decides to move the bill through the process and to the floor, let’s hope they fix it.