Posted on 05/05/2015 6:35:04 AM PDT by wagglebee
ANKENY, IA, May 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a private e-mail exchange with a concerned parent, Republican state legislator Josh Byrnes of Iowa said there is “nothing worse than homeschool parents” making their views known on public school policy.
The statement came as Jeff Moorman took exception to a pending bill allegedly dealing with “bullying,” the “Bully Free Iowa Act of 2015” (HSB 39).
The proposal would allow school districts to monitor students outside of school hours and punish – or contact law enforcement officials and state bureaucratic agencies over – any communication it deems “bullying” – even if that behavior takes place inside a private residence or on social media. Some of these complaints may be filed without first notifying parents.
School administrators could accuse a child of bullying if any comment dealing with “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” – as well as a broad swath of categories encompassing everything from “behavior, friendship or relationship with others” to “political party preference, political belief...or any other distinguishing characteristic” – created a “hostile school environment.”
Parents are concerned this would lead to teachers and public education union employees launching surveillance of students' Facebook or Twitter accounts for stray comments about homosexuality or transgender status.
“This bill infringes on parental rights” and allows teachers to “invade [a] student's rights and privacy,” Moorman, who is part of the educational watchdog group Iowa for Student Achievement, told State Rep. Byrnes, R-Osage. Moorman said the proposal grants school officials “overreaching authority.”
Rep. Byrnes replied by asking, “Which Ankeny school are your kids part of?”
After Moorman answered his question, Byrnes wrote, “That’s good. I was making sure you didn’t h[om]e school.”
“Nothing worse than homeschool parents trying to tell us legislators how to run public schools when they don’t use them themselves,” State Rep. Byrnes wrote.
Moorman provided the e-mails to the blog Caffeinated Thoughts. The full exchange may be read here.
“Nowhere in the language of the bill does it restrict the school’s scope to just students enrolled in their school district,” wrote Shane Vander Hart, who broke the story. “Homeschooling parents have reason to be concerned.”
He also blasted Byrnes' dismissal of homeschoolers' right to have a voice in the legislative process. “Actually, there’s nothing worse than a state legislator demonstrating he lacks the maturity and temperament to serve in his current office,” he added. “It seems that the fact that homeschooling parents are taxpayers and that in itself gives them the right to weigh-in on any bill – education policy or otherwise.”
The state teachers union supports passage. Jean Hessberg, a spokeswoman for the Iowa State Educational Association, said the union would oppose any provision requiring the school district to report anti-gay or transgender “bullying” to the victims' parents, since they may not know their children were having sex with members of the same sex or choosing to identify as members of the opposite sex.
The bill's supporters are a hybrid of Republicans and Democrats. Despite the strong political backing of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, it has failed to pass the state legislature after numerous attempts.
Famous sayings:
Get your children off the ship. Titanic 1912
Get your children out of Michale Jackson’s house. 1993
Get your children away from BoKO Haram. 2014
Get your children out of public schools. Now
Why? Homeschooling parents still have to pay taxes to support public schools.
Excellent list.
The actual reasoning behind this is completely different. I know that this would NEVER apply to any of the parents that post on Free Republic or any of their children. Believe it or not on occasion things posted on Social Media sites such as Facebook have been known to spill over into schools. On one occasion that I personally know of, resulted in criminal charges and imprisonment. NOTICE I am not saying the legislation is either right or wrong, I am just explaining the reasoning behind it.
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“Nothing worse than homeschool parents trying to tell us legislators how to run public schools when they don’t use them themselves,” State Rep. Byrnes wrote.
Let's follow that logic on a few other points:
1. Nothing worse than tax consumers trying to tell us legislators how to allocate public expenditures when they don’t contribute anything themselves.We could really make quite a list if we keep trying.
2. Nothing worse than anti-war activists trying to tell us legislators how to vote on issues of defense when they don’t serve themselves.
3. Nothing worse than anti-police activists trying to tell us legislators how to handle things in crime ridden neighborhoods when they don’t live there themselves.
4. Nothing worse than environmental extremists trying to tell us legislators how to protect predatory species like wolves and coyotes when they don’t live in areas or work in occupations impacted by them themselves.
5. Nothing worse than elitist, statist, career politicians trying to tell the common folk how wonderful the public schools are while 90% or more of them send their own kids to private schools.
pgyanke
You get the picture perfectly. I suspect we could expand this list by ten-fold without even breaking a sweat.
Nothing worse than upstart colonials trying to tell the British Sovereign how to handle its international affairs when they are merely subjects and not citizens.
A simple solution to this whole problem: ELIMINATE compulsory public school education, and ELIMINATE the federal department of education.
The decisions concerning the education of our children need to to be made at the most local level possible, and NONE of those decisions need the input of any government official or agency, period.
This education model worked just fine for the US for most of our history, and it was the advent of compulsory government education mandates when the whole institution started going downhill.
As for this asshat politician in Iowa, maybe he should be more concerned about the “angry parents who are going to show him what bullying really means”, because it may lead him to sponsor the “Iowa please don’t lynch the stupid politician who make’s incredibly stupid legislation” law.
Yep, no taxation without representation. Thanks to the monster welfare system, that horse has left the barn long ago.
They are also, presumably, still voting for people who are expected to represent them.
And they are likely turning out better “citizens” than a good number of those in public schools.
My wife is a public school teacher. She promotes homeschooling, discretely, of course.
Precisely. Also, why write a bill that invades private homes and pretend it is about public schools?
Josh Byrnes is withdrawing from public meetings and has chickened out from appearing on Jan Mickelson’s radio show.
While I agree that the federal Department of Education needs to be eliminated, it's incredibly naive to think it would be effective here. This ALREADY IS a state issue.
As for eliminating compulsory education, I think that is an incredibly shortsighted idea.
And before you jump to any conclusions, I am VERY much in favor of EVERY child either going to private schools or being homeschooled. Neither I nor anyone in my family attended public schools and I oppose public schools whenever possible. That being said, I am also aware that private schools or homeschooling simply isn't an option for every family, many families do not have the money for private schools and a great many parents (especially among the inner-city poor) are not educated enough to homeschool.
The decisions concerning the education of our children need to to be made at the most local level possible, and NONE of those decisions need the input of any government official or agency, period.
Do you want it done at the local level or do you want no government involvement at all? You can't have both.
Moreover, what makes you think that decisions made at the local level are any better than at the state or federal level? EVERY DAY we see stories of disgusting and asinine policies approved by local school boards or even individual schools themselves.
The libertarian notion that state and local governments somehow possess a "purity" that disappears at the federal level has absolutely no basis in fact.
This education model worked just fine for the US for most of our history, and it was the advent of compulsory government education mandates when the whole institution started going downhill.
While this sounds wonderful, it's not actually true. By the mid to late 19th century nearly all states had begun public education and were in the process of making it compulsory. The ONLY reason that not making education mandatory ever worked is due to the fact that America was almost entirely agrarian or industrial through the 19th century. It simply wouldn't work now.
The surest and quickest way to turn the United States into a third world nation (and I can assure you that ANYONE who believes we are one already has NEVER been to a third world nation) would be to eliminate public education and make education completely optional. What would arise within a decade or so would be a nearly permanent upper class and the majority of the middle class would be relegated to the lower class.
Education controlled at the local level, and the local government has no say in the curriculum, only financing. The parents have the final say.
As for the arguement of quality of education pre-compulsory education, the student, and their parents, ultimately decide what their child is capable of, and make their decisions on further education accordingly.
Compulsory education, and the strict government mandated curriculum serves no purpose other than to reduce education down to the lowest common denominator, provide a means of government indoctrination, feed the government-union teacher mill, and keep the whole education meritocracy mill going.
Education is about LEARNING, not about keeping schools and teachers employed.
Get government OUT of education, period!
McConnell and Boehner will be asking this guy to run for congress, he is exactly what they are looking for.
They do now at the local level, it's called school boards.
Additionally, why should only the parents have a say? What about the taxpayer? My guess would be that in most, if not all, localities the majority of the tax money comes from those who DO NOT use public schools. In most communities a large percentage of property tax comes from commercial property and they don't use schools (I understand that people who work there do, but you can't count this), expensive homes are more likely to be owned by upper income people who send their children to private schools or don't have school-age children, and the upper income people and corporations also pay the majority of income tax. The reality is that the only real taxes that families that use public schools pay is sales tax.
As for the arguement [sic] of quality of education pre-compulsory education, the student, and their parents, ultimately decide what their child is capable of, and make their decisions on further education accordingly.
I never suggested that there was anything wrong with the quality of education before compulsory education, I simply pointed out that it will no longer work.
Compulsory education, and the strict government mandated curriculum serves no purpose other than to reduce education down to the lowest common denominator, provide a means of government indoctrination, feed the government-union teacher mill, and keep the whole education meritocracy mill going.
I agree with you, but elimination of public schools won't fix that. Moreover, are you suggesting that state governments somehow lack the authority to mandate education?
Education is about LEARNING, not about keeping schools and teachers employed.
I've never disagreed with this.
Get government OUT of education, period!
Why don't you explain EXACTLY how you think the elimination of public schools would work out.
I emailed him and received this response: “I already apologized”.
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Good question.
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