Bill would fine parents who skip school conferences

Bill would fine parents who skip school conferences

Meet the teacher – or pay the price

11:43 PM CST on Tuesday, January 30, 2007
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Playing hooky from a parent-teacher conference? You better have a good excuse.

A Houston-area legislator wants to subject parents to criminal charges for skipping a scheduled meeting with their child's teacher.

Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Baytown, said it is time for the state to crack down on Texans who are shirking their parental responsibilities by failing to meet with the teacher when their child is having academic or disciplinary problems.

"I don't know if it's been getting worse, but it's a problem right now," Mr. Smith said. "It's certainly worse than when I had kids in school."

Under the bill, parents who miss a scheduled conference with a teacher could be charged with a Class C misdemeanor and fined up to $500. Parents could avoid prosecution if they have a "reasonable excuse" for failing to show up. State education officials or school districts would probably be left to define what's reasonable but, for example, a medical emergency would probably suffice.

Mr. Smith said his goal is not to punish parents but to get them to show up for meetings so they can communicate face to face about their child.

"The concept is to get parents into the classroom," he said. "If the child has education or learning problems, or disciplinary problems, the parents need to know about it. They need to discuss it with the teacher because the child's future is at stake."

Plenty of hurdles remain before the bill becomes law. The House's leader on education policy, Rep. Rob Eissler, said he has concerns about specifics of how it would be enforced. But some parents and education groups say the overarching goal – more parental involvement – is a good one.

Donna Holden, who has three sons in the Plano school district, likes the idea.

"Parents need to be in touch with what is going on in school, and they should be held accountable," Ms. Holden said. "If a child is acting up in school in a way that is inappropriate, and the parents refuse to come in for a scheduled meeting, they should be held in contempt, or something like that.

"Not showing up is a bad example for their child."

Ms. Holden suggested that such incidents be handled the same way as truancy cases.
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Another effort to criminalize behavior in order for the government to gain more control over your children.

iluvfreebeer wrote:Another effort to criminalize behavior in order for the government to gain more control over your children.

Did you also hear about the Cali proposed legislation that would make disciplining your child illegal?

Failing to show up for your parent teacher meetings is not a good thing but making it a criminal matter is one more step to Orwells 1984. The real sad thing is that if this is passed the fines will go towards teacher raises.

And what happens if you'r convicted twice of such a thing? Multiple class c misdemeanors must have some type of legal impact.

F*** this! My parents didn't go to any of mine because there wasn't anything the teacher could tell them that they didn't already know.

The Liberals want total control of your kids and your ability to have a say in their education. The better to enable them to indoctrinate the kids.