The Minnesota Senate, on Thursday, advanced a proposal to require K-12 teachers to make public their class syllabus and update parents if there were meaningful changes during the course of the academic year.
The plan is the latest piece of GOP lawmakers’ so called “Parents Bill of Rights” to advance through the chamber and the bill’s author said it comes on the heels of the pandemic and after parents reported that they had trouble getting information about their kids’ syllabi from public or charter schools.
On a 36-31 vote, senators advanced the proposal, which will face an uphill climb in the DFL led House. Republican lawmakers around the country have introduced similar bills ahead of the midterm elections in the fall.
Democrats pushed back on the need for the bill and cited concerns from Education Minnesota, the state’s largest teacher’s union, nothing that the requirement would be hard on educators who are already stretched thin. The Minnesota School Boards Association, Association of Metropolitan School Districts and Minnesota Association of School Administrators, in written testimony, said they supported efforts to get parents involved in the classroom, but hoped lawmakers would avoid “time consuming and costly new mandates.”