The Senate Education Committee on Monday passed on a 7-4 party-line vote an amended version of the controversial bill. The measure passed the House of Representatives last week.
The committee approved changes to the bill to specify what information school districts, charter schools, intermediate units and career and technical centers would be required to post on their websites and periodically update.
That would include a course syllabus, course summary, the state academic standard to each instructional course, and title or link to textbooks, but not if it violates a copyright law. Another change it made more clearly defines which school administrative official is responsible for posting the information on the website.
Critics have said the bill could be another mechanism to bring classrooms into the culture wars, with residents applying pressure on schools not to use certain books or content in their teaching.
Regardless of the changes, the bill’s chances of becoming law appear to be bleak.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Tom Wolf called it “an unfunded mandate and a potentially harmful means to incite further resistance to ensuring all learners have access to accuracies in history, and exposure to content reflecting multiple student identities.”
Wolf spokeswoman Lyndsey Kensinger went on to say Critical Race Theory is not taught in any state-directed curriculum in Pennsylvania’s K-12 schools. She added, “To prepare our Pennsylvania learners for a global marketplace, they require the ability to learn about others and their experiences. That should not be a political discussion.”
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Andrew Lewis, R- Dauphin County, described his legislation as an effort to modernize parents’ access to curriculum information by placing it online. He said schools are already required to make curriculum information available to parents. Some already put it online, but he said his bill would standardized that practice.
During the Senate committee’s discussion, Sen. Doug Mastriano, R- Franklin County, said the bill would allow parents to “play a greater active role in the oversight in what their children are being taught.” He also said he thought it would “help alleviate a lot of the distrust currently between the public and the government schools.”
Sen. Michelle Brooks, R- Mercer County, said her hope is that it would do even more than that.
“My hope is this legislation will begin to heal some of the rifts we see not only across Pennsylvania but across the country in adding this transparency but also creating a partnership with parents and the school district so that we can move forward with confidence and understanding and knowing what’s being taught to our kids,” Brooks said.
But Sen. Lindsey Williams, D- Allegheny County, joined the three other Democrats on the committee to oppose the bill.
While saying she supports transparency, Williams agreed with the governor’s sentiment about it placing an unfunded burden on schools and “is also part of a larger movement to pit the public against teachers and politicize education.”
She later added in a statement that the bill “is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem, another effort to stir up controversy. It’s time that we get back to ensuring that our teachers and school districts have the resources that they need to do the critical work of educating and supporting our students.”
Lewis said later he supported the changes the Senate committee made to his bill. The changes address the major concerns opponents had raised, he said. Lewis expressed his hope that the governor will come around and sign the bill if it passes the Senate.
“To anyone still opposed to this common-sense transparency bill after all concerns were addressed through the amendment process, I would simply ask them what they are trying to hide from parents,” he said.
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