A bill harshly penalizing school systems and educational employees who stray from the state’s sex-ed curriculum has passed the house floor--it's bill HB 5291 Education Omnibus.
We start with State Representative Tim Kelly, explaining his part.
“The current law reads that there would be a 5% penalty to your school aid for a district in which a board member or staff distributes family planning drugs or devices or makes referrals for abortions.”
When Governor Rick Snyder turned in his recommendations for this year’s budget, that language was not there.
“He wished that this language be struck, as it currently is. We struck the current language, but replaced it with, I think, what’s better, less punitive, more flexible language.
Kelly’s new language includes penalties for teaching anything outside of the approved curriculum and takes 3% of the school employee’s annual salary for any violation. If the school doesn’t enforce that penalty, the school system is fined $100,000. In fact, not everyone sees the new language as less punitive. Here’s State Rep. Sarah Roberts.
“You’ve got to have some local control and allow these districts to determine and manage how they’re going to uphold the current law.”
Kelly’s rebuttal:
“Democrats, don’t want any restrictions on what schools could be able to do as far as handing out of devices or referrals to abortion clinics.”
Robert’s response:
“If this was a real problem, the governor wouldn’t have stripped it from his budget recommendation—and he did.”
Though the souse passed the bill, the senate version doesn’t include this language so it will now go to committee as what is known as a point of difference.
