BOISE, Idaho — When education is in the news lately, it seems the theme is controversy. To address some concerns, Idaho’s new Superintendent of Public Instruction, Debbie Critchfield, is sending a strong message on the relationship between schools and families with new legislation.
“I want to take the politics out of being a parent. And that's what we've heard from parents around the state. They want to be a part of the process. Schools want to partner with parents. And if we can remove any of the barriers or just kind of that stigma of parents versus schools or teachers, the better off we are,” Critchfield said.
House Bill 163, referred to as a 'Parental Bill of Rights,' aims to encourage transparent communication between parents and schools about what is going on during school days.
“We spend a lot of time communicating with parents, districts and teachers do. Hey, sign this permission slip. We want to take your first grader to the pumpkin patch or parent teacher conferences or coming up or even some fun things,” Critchfield said. “We want to include other very important sensitive topics that if there is a survey, a nonacademic survey let the parents know, let's make the survey available and allow parents the opportunity to decide whether or not their child participates.”
Critchfield is very clear, this is not about state control over local districts.
“What the bill doesn't do is limit local decision making so a local board can still decide to do the things that they want to do, whether it's a survey or having outside industries or entities come to support school services. "Let parents know,” Critchfield said.
The bill touches on things like communicating with parents if a student is showing signs of being troubled, or letting families know about the health services a school offers, or if a school resource officer has questioned a student on something. The key here, according to stakeholders, is to let parents know what is happening in schools so they can be in the loop.
“Parents are the primary and main factor in the success of their child. And I think about it in as kind of a school with three legs. You have the parent who is the expert on their child and you have the teacher who's the expert about education. And then when you add a child who's then responsible for their own learning, that's a perfect recipe for academic and emotional success,” Critchfield said.
Communication, though, is also major factor in success.
“If the parent feels like they're outside of that system or limited or shut down, then that's imbalanced," Critchfield said. "And really, we want to restore that balance again. And I think taking the tension out of it, we're talking about parents and we're talking about students and it's become so politicized that I'm hoping that we can really right-size this and restore that.”
She said the concept for this ‘Parental Bill of Rights’ is rooted in her campaign for the Superintendent Office. She heard a lot from Idahoans about communication with schools, so she came up with a list of 10 things she believes parents are entitled to. She furthered that parents have thanked her for facilitating the idea of having conversations with their child's teacher about any concerns.
“I think that that's a big topic. I'm not a fan of implied consent. Me not telling you, no, does not mean I told you, yes. As a parent and how do we open up these lines of communications and how do we talk about this with our parents is really the theme in this legislation,” Critchfield said.
Critchfield said she knows schools across Idaho do a great job with communication, this just puts a baseline of expectations in Idaho Code.
“We want to ensure that there's some uniformity. We've got most of our school districts do a fantastic job, if not everyone trying to do a fantastic job in communicating, you know, what's happening in the school," Critchfield said. "But for districts maybe who are unsure about how to go about this, this provides that level of confidence that regardless of where you are in Idaho, here is a bare minimum expectation as a parent."
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