Among his proposals that includes restrictions on teaching sexual education, removing protections that schools provide to students from abusive situations at home, and making it easier to sue schools and teachers, the bill includes a proposal which would make it so "Teachers and administrators would be prohibited from using new names or pronouns used by students without permission from the students’ parents." Of the many problems with this bill, this one section shows how poorly thought out this proposed legislation truly is. Let me spell it out. The actual language from the bill reads that "The policies must include ... (7) requiring written permission from a parent before the name or pronoun used by a public school to address or refer to the parent's child in person, on school identification, or in school records is changed ..." ["changed" meaning changed from the birth certificate].
While this is clearly targeted at transgender students who have taken on a name more appropriate to their identified gender, this is a bureaucratic nightmare for any child who has nicknames or prefers to go by their middle name. This bill literally forbids a teacher from using any name other than what is listed on the child's birth certificate without the parent's written permission first. No more Bob, Rob, or Robby; it will always be Robert. The same goes for Kay, Kat, Kate, or Katie; it will always be Katherine. To be clear, there will be a policy which allows parents to let teachers know which names can be used, but teachers are certainly NOT allowed to just call the students by their own preferred nickname.
I feel for the foreign language teachers who would normally have their students take on names in the language they are studying. It also makes me wonder about the process with foreign exchange students or students with exceedingly long names whose parents refuse to sign the paperwork to shorten them. I'm in particular trouble, as I have accidently called a student by the wrong name on multiple occasions--I would be a major lawsuit liability.
The willfully ignorant whom I mentioned in yesterday's post champion this as a protection of parental rights--clearly the rights of the students themselves don't matter. I will say this, any supporter of this bill had better get my name right each and every time. After all, I should be able inflict a "civil penalty of not less that $5,000" and maybe even "treble damages upon showing of a violation established by clear and convincing evidence."