Save Our Students

The 2020 law that led to a State School Board mandate that enforces compliance with multiple controversial programs

By: Sloan Rachmuth, edfirstnc.org 12/13/2021 

[editor's note: The bold and colorful print is mine for emphasis.  Some visuals have been edited out.  If you wish to read the original, click herel.]

Many parents wonder how lessons teaching that systemic white supremacy currently holds back black and brown students ever made it into classrooms. We now know that CRT is connected to encouraging children to change their genders and to be sexually active in early grade levels.  The same goes for surveys that ask children about their sexual partners, their drug use, and their parents' voting habits.

Yes, NC State and UNC's teaching programs are partially to blame. They teach units on bringing down America's oppressive education system. Most graduates of these universities teaching programs go directly into the bloodstream of our schools.

But CRT and those invasive student surveys that are now mandated by the state are due to a bill passed by the General Assembly in 2020. The School Mental Health bill was proposed as a way to stop teen suicide and school shootings: two vital problems that society must address.

Highlights from the bill:

• Requires that teachers receive training on identifying serious mental health problems in children that could lead to suicide

• Requires teacher education on childhood sex abuse and human trafficking

• Requires all schools to develop a mental health plan

These are obviously valid preventative steps to curb suicide and violence in the youth population.

The bill also directed the State School Board (SBE) and DPI to apply the recommendations of a May 31, 2018, report of the Working Group on Student Health and Well-Being commissioned by then-Superintendent Mark Johnson.

Here’s where we got CRT, Social Emotional Learning (SEL), invasive surveys, and in-school psychiatric clinics. The 2018 Working Group recommendations undergird the State's current Mental Health Policy which requires schools’ compliance with reporting obligations to the DPI.

Here are the details:

• The Workgroup’s recommendation that schools must provide a continuum of care for all students effectively puts the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) inside of every school to health coordinate services for children.

Of note: Children of every age can consent to treatment for emotional problems without asking their parents. It is conceivable that children may be treated in secret while at school for "gender dysphoria," depression, anxiety, or ADHD under the new plan.

The Workgroup’s recommendation that schools must teach preventative mental health coursework has given us the SBE’s requirement that SEL is taught in all 12 academic subjects. 

The Workgroup’s recommendation that the DHHS coordinate with schools to intervene early in students’ emotional problems has given us SBE’s requirement that each school screens all students for problems, even when students don’t show problem behaviors. Through repeated, and often illicit surveys, students are forced to allow school staff and government health workers to examine the contents of children’s minds, then share that data with Federal government workers at the CDC and elsewhere.

The State also requires teachers, not psychiatrists, to screen, diagnose, and treat students for emotional problems. This practice, the SBE tells schools, should be done in lieu of punishing or suspending students as part of a “restorative practice” scheme that puts hundreds of thousands of students and teachers in peril.

All of these policies from the Workgroup, which are now law, encroach on too many civil liberties to count. But the most dangerous aspect of the Workgroup’s recommendation is that it gives government workers and volunteers involved in performing these medical actions on children qualified immunity.

Say for example, you learn an untrained teacher has diagnosed your 10-year-old with ADHD, and the school tells you the health department requires that your child be medicated before returning to class. This law and policy exempt teachers and schools from liability should they misdiagnose your child or rob them of in-person learning.

What happens if your 14-year-old child, after years of brainwashing in the classroom, tells the on-site clinician that he would like to become a girl? And then, without your knowledge or consent, he receives medication and transition services paid for by Medicaid? School officials and government psychiatrists are protected by this law. Unfortunately, your child and you are not.

Superintendent Catherine Truitt and others have been telling parents for nearly a year that the state has nothing to do with CRT and SEL being taught in schools, and that the DPI has nothing to do with data mining students with endless surveys. There's no truth to that.