A law that went into effect September 17 requires that school districts in the Granite State provide parents and legal guardians with at least a two-week notice for any curriculum being taught dealing with sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and gender expression.
HB 1312 is an amendment that broadens a previous bill (RSA 186:11, IX-c), enacted in 2017, which required schools to give parents a two-week notice and opt-out provisions of “curriculum course material used for instruction of human sexuality or human sexual education.” HB 1312 adds “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.”
The bill also prohibits school districts from adopting policies that prevent school personnel from answering parents’ questions about their child’s health or well-being, “including sexuality, or changes in related services or monitoring.” The bill allows for exceptions if disclosing information to a parent is believed to result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.
A letter to New Hampshire Department of Education (DOE) Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut and school districts across the state on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire (ACLU-NH), GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire (AFT-NH), and the National Education Association of NH (NEA-NH), refers to the bill as “vague and ambiguous.”
“[The bill] plausibly could be construed to require notification and opt-out for any curriculum course materials that discuss sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity – topics that are and always have been ubiquitous in our culture. Every person has a sexual orientation, a gender, and a gender identity and expression that typically feature prominently in every aspect of their lives,” the letter states.
New Hampshire State Representative Kristine Perez is the primary sponsor of HB 1312. She says she was approached by constituents in 2023 to put forward a bill addressing curriculum material being taught to children that some parents deemed inappropriate.
“These parents wanted some type of protection. They feel they’ve lost some control over what their children are learning,” Perez says, adding that the section focused on parental notification about a student’s mental and emotional wellbeing was “changed dramatically” in the final version of the bill by the Education Committee. “Teachers are mandated reporters but they’re not always reporting. I put into the bill that if teachers don’t report they can be reprimanded but this was cut.”
Elizabeth England, a John Stark High School physics teacher, said despite the bill’s ambiguity, it won’t affect the way she teaches.
“Some English teachers, however, are asking what they can or cannot teach because of this,” she says. “I’m lucky, I teach physics. Science is science. Still, I would be willing to be a test case. There’s a lot of grey area in this bill and I would have no problem going through the legal system for kids.”
England was hired by John Stark two years ago after her teaching contract at ConVal High School was not renewed following a dispute over a requirement for staff to have permission to use a student’s preferred name and to disclose name changes to parents.
“I stood up to this [guidance] at the time because it was harmful to students,” says England, who was then serving as the advisor for ConVal High School’s student-led LGBTQ group. “I will always stand up for student rights. Look at the suicide rate of people who identify as trans. The answer is not to limit them.”
Megan Tuttle, president of the NEA-NH, said HB 1312 is “another attempt to chill classroom conversations.”
“The way [HB 1312] is worded is vague, and it is leading educators into a state of limbo. So far there is no guidance from the Department of Education on this,” she says. “Does this mean opting out of reading Romeo and Juliet? This bill expands the definition of ‘objectionable material’ so broadly that it could apply to almost anything in any class.”
Tuttle said HB 1312 also brings politics into New Hampshire classrooms, which isn’t helpful during a teacher shortage.
“There are many districts with many positions currently open and we don’t want our teachers wondering if they’re complying and taking time away from their teaching and planning for classes,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to be focusing on another new law.”
A 2023 legislative report on SB 236 Chapter 150:1, Laws of 2022, which established a committee to study New Hampshire teacher shortages and recruitment incentives, states:
“The climate and culture of our public schools has been impacted by the overall political climate of our state. Classroom teachers are feeling and reporting stress and concerns for consequence as a result of legislation proposed and passed in our state house. Teachers leaving the profession most often cite the climate and culture as the biggest factor in their departure from education and New Hampshire altogether.”
The lack of clarity concerning what can and can’t be taught in a classroom might lead to fear for teachers, England says.
“[Teachers] may think twice about saying and teaching things and keep quiet until they get tenure or choose to leave the state,” she says. “That’s not who I want to be.”
Before HB 1312 took effect in September, Perez described a conversation with a parent concerned about a book their freshman student was asked to read by a public high school history teacher. The book, Perez says, included topics of sexuality and gender identity in young Iranian women, which the parent found inappropriate.
“If you have a brain, [HB 1312] is not vague,” she says, adding that the issue in this case was that a fiction novel was used instead of a history book. “That parent couldn’t understand why this book, which was fiction, was being taught in a history class.”
Penny Culliton, an English teacher at Mascenic Regional High School, has been teaching in New Hampshire schools for 40 years. In 1995 she was fired for one year from New Ipswich High School, she said, for teaching books such as E.M. Forester’s Maurice that have positive portrayals of gay and lesbian characters.
In 2023, Culliton and other teachers in New Hampshire received an advisory from the DOE regarding RSA 186:11, IX-c, requiring school districts to adopt a policy allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable and requiring the school district or classroom teacher to provide a two-week notice of “curriculum course material used for instruction of human sexuality or human sexual education.”
“Now I put asterisks by the books on my syllabus saying something like, ‘These books deal with human beings and their relationships, including their loves, hatreds, passions, and betrayals,’ things like that,” she says. “So far, nobody has come up to me and said, ‘That’s a really wacky thing for you to put in your syllabus. Why did you do that?’ To me it would seem very strange that you would put asterisks by To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, or The Great Gatsby.”
Culliton said the law dealing with the two-week notice and the expansion of the categories of what could be considered “objectionable” material in HB 1312 implies teachers need to post their lesson plans two weeks in advance.
“I try to do that,” she says. “Other than that, I’m not really sure what else we can do.”
In the letter to Commissioner Edelblut and New Hampshire school districts, the ACLU-NH and others state that HB 1312 lacks an enforcement mechanism, comparing the issue to the state’s banned concepts law which was struck down in district court two years ago.
HB 1312, the letter states, “should be interpreted narrowly as pertaining to curriculum course material used for instruction or program of human sexuality, human sexual education, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression. The new law does not apply to books or curriculum material that merely reference or include ‘human sexuality, human sexual education, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.’”
The letter also states that HB 1312 is discriminatory because it targets course material referencing homosexual relationships or transgender gender identities.
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