On my first day of freshman year, my teacher asked us to make place cards for our desk so she could learn our names faster. She passed out paper and had us write our names, the phonetic spelling, and our pronouns. A couple weeks later, I joined way too many clubs at Club Rush (as any freshman does) and attended several club meetings, without committing or necessarily being a member. 

On the first day of my sophomore year, I was told that students could not go by any nicknames or be referred to using different pronouns unless their parents approved it on the name change form. When Club Rush came around, whether I wanted to go to one meeting or planned on being a long-term member, I had to get a paper signed by a parent that said I’m allowed to enter the classroom where a club meeting was being held.

Over the past five years, under failed 2024 presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron Desantis’ administration, parental control over student lives and their participation in school activities has become more prevalent in legislation, and its effects are becoming more apparent with each school year.

One of the most well-known bills that brought up this concern over parental rights is The Parental Rights in Education Act (HB 1557), more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, passed in 2022. This name was given to the law due to its ban on the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity…in kindergarten through third grade or in a manner that is not age-appropriate,” which was later extended to eighth grade in 2023. 

This law does a lot more than just ban sexual orientation and gender identity from being taught in schools. It also requires a signed form to attend club meetings, out-of-school events, guest speakers, and even student visits to the nurse. 

Now, for a fifth grader, this bill seems fair. A parent should at least be aware of his/her child’s activities while they are still young. The issue is that these laws should not apply to high school students.

According to the Pediatric Clinics of North America, 16-year-olds have adult levels of cognitive capacity and decision-making skills. I’m not saying that just because I’m 16 years old I have every right to make all decisions on my own, but if I’m independent enough to drive myself to school and home every day (as many students are), why do the same laws that apply to somebody who learned how to walk a couple years ago apply to me as well? The reasons, in my opinion, are the control and prevention of student rights.

“The government should never take the place of a parent,” Florida Speaker of the House Chris Powells said after the law’s passing in an article on DeSantis’ official website. Yet the issue was never the government taking the place of a parent. By making it easier to prevent a high schooler from expressing their sexuality, socializing through clubs, or furthering education through books, they aren’t giving parents more freedom in raising their children; they are taking away the freedoms of the students. Preventing education and exposure is the absolute antithesis of schooling. Students shouldn’t be sheltered, living in a bubble, and unable to learn new things through clubs and school activities just because their parents said so.

These Laws Oppress LGBTQ+ Students

In our school, around 35% of students identified themselves as LGBTQ+ according to a casual survey given by The Muse in 2023*. Legislation like this law restricts student voices and freedoms if a student’s parents are not accepting. 

In a 2023 revision to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, it expanded its ban of “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” up until eighth grade. In my opinion, this is just clear homophobia. The vague description of “gender identity and sexual orientation” should just say  what the legislators really mean: LGBTQ+ people. If we are banning any sexual orientation or gender identity from being discussed in school, including heteronormative, cisgender identities,  think of the years of history that would be ignored. This is not what the bill writers intended. 

They have no issues with heterosexual examples of sexual orientation or identity such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Henry VIII and his six wives; they just want to ban the discussion of homosexuality in schools without saying it. They used vague terms that meant nothing so that if a teacher mentions anything close to what is considered to be “inappropriate” instruction, he/she could potentially lose his/her job or be sued. These restrictive laws don’t help reduce LGBTQ+ youth mental health issues or ensure safety of our youth; instead, they just make people more prone to mental health issues if their identity is restricted further.

Furthermore, these laws make life for LGBTQ+ students harder since they can’t go by their preferred pronouns or names, unless their parents approve of such, and that’s only at our school because of a pronoun change form signed by parents put in place by faculty due to our high LGBTQ+ population. In other Florida schools, under this legislation, a student cannot go by alternative pronouns: “No employee or contractor at a public K-12 educational institution may provide to students his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex,” said HB 1069, passed in May of 2023. This statement means that even if a student is accepted by his/her parents,  he/she is not permitted to identify in his/her preferred way.

The LGBTQ+ youth are already a group of people who disproportionately are affected by mental health issues. According to a survey by the Trevor Project (a suicide prevention non-profit supporting LGBTQ+ youth mental health), “LGBTQ youth who felt high social support from their family reported attempting suicide at less than half the rate of those who felt low or moderate social support,” and  42 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth reported that they stopped speaking to a family member or relative because of anti-LGBTQ+ policies and debates in the last year.

If students’ parents aren’t accepting, they can’t identify the way they choose either at home or in schoo. At most Florida schools that don’t have pronoun change forms like ours, even if students are accepted by their parents, they still can’t identify the way they choose. Before legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, school was a place where students who weren’t accepted at home could feel free and be able to identify how they wanted. Now these students can’t even have school as their safe space to have the freedom to express themselves, which could leave LGBTQ+ students struggling without anywhere to express themselves. This legislation endangers our LGBTQ+ youth and makes children’s lives harder with unwelcoming parents. Making a safe space that was once the only area where some could be accepted into another oppressive institution where students are restricted is a complete injustice and inservice to our LGBTQ+ youth and completely prevents them from freedom.

These Laws Prevent Students From Education and Social Activities 

When we were young, we mostly grew up thinking the same thing as our parents. This ranges from politics to religion, and to what your favorite sports team was, but usually, growing up and becoming your own person causes you to form different opinions than your parents. According to a study by Pew Research Center, most parents pass along religious and political affiliations to their children. This is why we should not let these laws prevent students from learning more or socializing with people they share common interests with in clubs, just because their parents haven’t signed a form. 

In my freshman year, what I thought was so amazing about the clubs at our school was that you didn’t need to be an official member or be in the yearbook picture to go to a couple of meetings and learn from the club. But now, with laws preventing this from ever happening, to participate in any club-related activity, you need signed papers. 

In a 2023 poll by Gallup and Meta given to teenagers ages 15 to 18 in over 142 countries, around 25% of respondents said they felt lonely. During a time when loneliness is so prevalent among teenagers, why pass legislation now that makes it even harder for kids to socialize or have friends?

Out of all places where your child is going to be exposed to unsafe or inappropriate ideas, why would it be at school? Why would it be at a club meeting, where there is an adult present, making sure everyone is safe? Club meetings provide opportunities for students to have new experiences, learn, and flourish, and they are all opportunities students could be barred from if their parents haven’t signed a form. 

Moreover, school is a place where students are supposed to become more autonomous and build social skills. Part of this socializing includes group collaboration, which is a large component of clubs. According to Carnegie Mellon University, “If structured well, group projects can promote important intellectual and social skills.” Clubs foster collaboration and growth, but by adding an extra step that can possibly prevent a student from participating in meetings, our government is setting our students up to struggle to socialize.

This Legislation Promotes Restricting, Absolutist Ideals

Moreover, legislation like this can restrict education by banning books through the vetting process. In this process, if anybody in the school district makes a complaint saying a certain book shouldn’t be taught in schools, then it could be put under review. This review is a result of House Bill 1467, titled K-12 Education. According to the bill itself, “Each district school board must adopt a policy regarding an objection by a parent or a resident of the county to the use of a specific instructional material, which clearly describes a process to handle all objections and provides for resolution.”

This, in my opinion, doesn’t give parents more rights. It gives a group of parents with certain opinions more rights while taking away the freedoms of students. I am currently in AP English Language and Composition, and we just finished reading “The Scarlet Letter” (I hate you, Nathaniel Hawthorne). Over the summer, if my English teacher put “The Scarlet Letter” on the vetting list and even one person reported it, it would have gone under review, and nobody would have been able to read it in class for at least this school year. 

This vetting process isn’t freedom for parents. Freedom for parents is the right parents have to contact my English teacher and tell him they don’t want me to read Hawthorne’s long, confusing book because they are afraid Pearl will indoctrinate their child to become a ghoulish imp. Every parent has the right to request that his/her child does not read something that is assigned to them, and in fact, this was the norm and law before this newer policy. Taking away the book from not only my class, but the entire district is completely unfair. This absolutism of either everybody or nobody is not a parental right; it’s a lack of student rights completely.

In the Palm Beach County School District (PBCSD), we have essentially dodged the bullet of this legislation, due to our board being against it. We have had only one book formally challenged (ironically, the Bible), and it failed to be taken off the shelves. In fact, according to the Palm Beach Post in September 2023, PBCSD board member Karen Brill claimed that “one parent or one group of parents should not be making decisions for all parents” at the Bible challenge hearing. This doesn’t mean this law is insignificant, though, as all across Florida hundreds of books have been removed, such as classics like “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, and “From Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway, according to Florida Department of Education’s official list of removed books.

Not only is this  on-and-off switch of a system restrictive and unfair, but it prevents education. Sure, I might’ve had to take a break to understand the colonial English Hawthorne writes in, but “The Scarlet Letter,” and a lot of the books we are assigned in class, benefits us greatly. A lot of the books we are assigned are American classics, like the aforementioned books by Twain, Morrison, and Hemingway. They provide us not only with great stories, but deeper messages and meanings, and they help us learn. I agree with Floridian lawmakers that elementary school students shouldn’t be reading sexually explicit graphic novels, but as high school students, being exposed to information that could be shocking or disturbing (at a correct discretion) is important, and it is the reason why we are assigned these great classics. Books like these classics also introduce us to opinions and viewpoints that we haven’t seen before. Old classics, which make up a majority of books removed, usually have themes of having empathy and teach readers to value others’ perspectives, and now students can’t be exposed to points like these due to book banning. By removing books, we are limiting children from education and furthering their minds and experiences. 

 This Legislation Can Make School Less Safe

Another, and possibly the most important, reason why legislation like this is dangerous is that it could put children in direct harm. Under this new legislation, going to the nurse — including even receiving an ice pack or bandaid — is barred until a parent signs a form stating that he/she allows his/her child to see the nurse. The first thing that came to my mind when discovering this policy was the danger of an absent parent. There is a big possibility that a child’s parent will either forget to sign this form, not know of the form’s existence, or just not care enough to sign the form. This negligence poses a true risk to a child’s health. Even if a child has medical issues and needs immediate attention, if this form is not submitted, that child might be in danger.

Moreover, this legislation could have anti-LGBTQ+ underdones. Based on views and legislation that has commonly been seen as homophobic or transphobic running through the MAGA-era Republican party, as well as our president-elect Donald Trump’s past comments of “brutal operations” performed at elementary schools, these comments suggest that school employees are giving children gender-affirming care.

According to NBC, in a rally in Wisconsin leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump said, “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation?” It is simply untrue that this gender-affirming care would happen at school, and it aligns with the ideas of the modern Republican Party that schools are indoctrinating or convincing children to become transgender or have sex changes. This kind of thinking could have a strong influence on this law due to the other LGBTQ+ restrictive changes made in this bill.

Any insinuation that school nurses in their right mind would suggest for a child to get gender-affirming care without their parent’s permission is just absolutely incorrect and makes this law oppressive, offensive, and wrong.

Students at our school and in our school district are lucky to have some freedoms that other students don’t have. LGBTQ+ students in other schools might not even have the right to a name or pronoun change form, and they might feel like their school is not a safe place. Other districts have countless books banned, and their boards don’t hold the same opinions as ours. 

But just because we are lucky in these ways does not mean we are free, or even remotely as free as we were five years ago. 

Removing the rights of our LGBTQ+ students, preventing us from social activity and education through clubs and books, and overall silencing our voices does not give rights to parents. It takes rights away from students.

I believe that at its core, the idea of parents approving or denying their children’s participation  in an activity makes sense, but when students get to a certain age, having their parents decide everything for them hurts children instead of protecting them. High school is supposed to prepare students to be adults in the real world and make their own choices. High school students should not get the opposite treatment, forced to be dependent and restricted. 

Politely, I’d veto.

*The data included was gathered from a casual survey given by The Muse through Google Form via English classes Sept. 18 and 19, 2023 to 976 students.