Stop Stacey Campfield from marginalizing LGBT students and burdening schools with unnecessary paperwork. Campfield’s proposed legislation has risen again and is on the calendar of Senate Education Committee hearing on Wednesday, Feb. 8. 

How do you take a good piece of legislation and turn it into an administrative nightmare? Leave it to Senator Stacey Campfield. HB0432/SB0426 originally allowed parents to opt their child out of participation in a school club or organization. Now Sen. Stacey Campfield has resurrected his unwelcomed version of this bill from last year that would change the requirement. If the parents want their child to participate in any school club or activity, they have to give written permission for them to participate.

While this sounds like another way of doing the same thing, it is not. Opting your child out of one club with a note is not the same thing as having to give written permission for every club your child may participate in. Asking our already overburdened school administrators to sort through hundreds of permission slips every year and police which clubs the students can attend will create unnecessary paperwork, consume too much time, and place yet another level of bureaucracy on schools activites.

The amended version of HB0432/SB0426 will create an undue burden on parents and schools. Such legislation has also been used in other states to eliminate Gay Straight Alliances from high school campuses. Students who attend schools with Gay Straight Alliances are less likely to experience anti-LGBT hostility and harassment on campus.

We must act now to stop advancement of HB0432/SB0426 and recommend passage of a new and appropriate bill, SB2488 sponsored by Education Committee Chair Delores Gresham.  Senator Gresham’s bill is meant to require less burdensome to students, parents and schools. 

Tell the Tennessee State Senate’s Education Committee to vote to place HB0432 in General Subcommittee and vote yes on the bill filed by Committee Chairman Gresham SB2488 when it is placed on notice.

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