As you may have heard, SB272, the Parental Bill of Rights, has successfully advanced through the Senate and will be voted on in the House on May 18, 2023. The current version of the bill includes vital language to ensure that parents, or those who have legal custody over children, are kept informed about their children’s academic and social behavior in school, and among other things, will help prevent the covert social and gender transitioning of children by public school systems. The bill can be read here: https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/billinfo.aspx?id=1079&inflect=2

Parental rights in NH are in crisis as school systems deliberately hide information from parents, especially when parents inquire about how their child is doing in school. There should be no “secrets” kept from parents. On top of this, more and more children are being exposed to inappropriate sexual materials at very young ages and being encouraged to question their gender and sexuality. This has no place in public education! Many school districts in NH have enacted nearly identical policies based on an ideologically-driven model from the left-wing advocacy group, GLSEN, which supports covert gender and social transitioning of children while deliberately concealing this process from parents.

SB 272 will provide needed protections for parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children without authoritarian state interference that has already caused irreparable damage to many young lives.

Progressives argue, without evidence, that parents can’t be trusted, and that open communication with those legally responsible for their child’s welfare will cause harm. But these assertions are without merit and only serve to undermine parents, their relationship with their children, and their authority under the law. Parents are being portrayed as enemies to their own children! By keeping secrets and deliberately withholding information from parents about their children’s social well being, essentially gives schools sweeping and unprecedented authority to make critical health and treatment decisions for children and appear to be driven more by fact-averse ideology than true concern for the individual child.

Loving parents, who at the end of the day are responsible for their own children’s health and welfare, can’t be left out of the equation, and schools should not be making these decisions for emotionally immature and vulnerable children. The fact is that we should let teachers teach and let parents parent.

With regards to SB272, the bill came out of the Education Committee on a tie vote with no up or down recommendation for the House vote. Because of this, the first motion on the floor of the House on May 18th will be OTP, or Ought to Pass. We urge you to contact your state House Representative and urge them to vote YES on this OTP motion, and help protect loving parents and vulnerable children throughout the Granite State.

Here is who your State Reps are in Sullivan County and how to contact them: http://www.sullivancountynh.gov/207/Delegation

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House Republicans and Friends Across New Hampshire,

You may have seen my recent op-ed in the Union Leader on the conservative case for legalizing cannabis. I understand this is not a partisan issue and many of you may disagree with my position, and that is ok. What I do believe is that this is an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to come together to compromise and solve a problem our constituents have been asking us to address for years. Politics is not about getting what you want when you want it, but about getting as much as you can while giving up as little as you must – in the end delivering results supported by those we serve. We don’t always get to just jump in front of parades that are already underway, but sometimes we also need to do the hard work of tackling controversial topics.

What I believe we can all agree on is the need for expanding Education Freedom Accounts. The Senate has two important hearings this coming Tuesday in the Education Committee. The first, HB367, raises the income cap from 300% of the federal poverty level to 350%. While I believe there should be no income cap on this program, this modest increase at least keeps up with the rampant inflation we are seeing. It is a step in the right direction and will allow more families to access the program.

Additionally, the Senate will be hearing HB464, which expands eligibility to marginalized and at-risk students. This bill was vehemently opposed by teachers’ unions in the House. As Rep. Erica Layon said about her bill, “Simply put, the unions would rather tie persistently bullied students to their local school than lose the state funding tied to that student. This is oppression by the system – systemic oppression- and the solution is to help these oppressed students take their state funding with them, not hold the student and their state funding hostage.”

Please reach out to your senators and urge them to support these two bills. Given how wildly successful the program is, it is only natural we extend it to a larger portion of the population.

All the best,

Jason Osborne, House Majority Leader