The Senate Education Committee has heard mayors plead to stop funding cuts, teachers describe being head-butted and hospitalized by elementary students, and residents protest paying more property taxes for their $150,000 houses in one town than people with $3/4 million houses in another. About which topic do I receive ten times more email? SB196, requiring parents to opt out of non-academic student questionnaires.
For years, students have answered surveys about stress, substance abuse, bullying, home violence, and many other personal issues. Honestly, I am appalled, not because schools ask about these issues, but because schools must deal with them. Why do so many children lack good parenting and moral guidance that now the responsibility defaults from home and church to the schools?
Our Senate committee learned that schools need survey results to fund mental health, substance misuse, home abuse and other issues that plague student populations. Surveys do not collect data that identifies individuals. They track trends and demonstrate need.
The choice with SB196 is not opt-out versus opt-in. It is between collecting acceptable data or not. Opt-in policies, whether for employment benefits or for student surveys, always result in low participation. Low participation renders surveys useless and jeopardizes over $30 million in federal funding for mental health, dependency prevention and other support services. If we do not gain resources to deal with these issues, we put our neediest students at greater risk.
Consequently, our committee voted to revert to opt-out surveys. However, we added a provision requested by a parent who opposed the bill. We required that schools notify parents by email or text, as well as with backpack notices. The electronic notifications will contain a link to the survey and an opt-out option. We feel that this protects parents’ rights, while offering the data our beleaguered educators need.
But the real question here is not about surveys. It is “What is wrong with our society?” We need to work together, as a state, to reduce the divide between affluent communities and struggling cities and towns. We must stop cutting school funding, pay working parents enough to live on, tax fairly and ensure early intervention with at-risk children.
I totally sympathize with people who seek to shield children from the dysfunction in our society. However, the only way to truly shield them is to fix it.
Jeanne Dietsch of Peterborough is the District 9 representative to the New Hampshire Senate.