State House Republicans say two bills passed this year restrict parental rights in schools. But do they actually?

New Mexico House Republicans on Monday released a form they said aims to affirm the rights of parents to have a say in the medical services, including abortion and gender-affirming care, and instructional materials their children can receive while at school.

The form, which parents can sign and send to their students’ schools, offers an opportunity to lay out the types of information and health care services they want school personnel to tell them about before providing to their children. That request, said Rep. Luis Terrazas, a Silver City Republican, is one he hopes districts will honor.

The caucus said the form comes in response to bills passed this year they argue could limit parents’ involvement in such decisions.

“These bills cut at the very fabric of the family unit, and undermine the rights (that parents have) when it comes to their children,” Terrazas said during a Monday news conference.

But it’s not clear how the laws House Republicans lashed out against restrict parental involvement the way they say they do.

Caucus leadership singled out two bills passed this year — House Bill 7, an anti-discrimination bill aimed at protecting people based on their decisions over whether to use services such as gender-affirming or reproductive health care, and Senate Bill 397, which established school-based health centers.

In a letter, addressed to parents, the caucus argued the bills “could restrict … parental involvement regarding certain types of medical services and instructional materials provided to minors during the school day, regardless of age.”

But neither bill mentions any sort of confidentiality from guardians nor makes a specific provision allowing school personnel to speak with children about things such as abortion services or gender-affirming care without parental approval.

“It doesn’t touch on that at all, to be quite frank,” HB 7 sponsor Rep. Linda Serrato, D-Santa Fe, said of her bill. “It simply says that you can get gender-affirming and reproductive health care and that they can’t persecute you or prosecute you.”

It appears that the closest either bill comes is in HB 7, which states that public bodies or people working on their behalf cannot deny, restrict or interfere with someone’s access to such services — but even that language, Serrato said, “doesn’t broach” interfering with parents’ involvement.

“It feels to me … like more of what you’d see out of Florida than out of New Mexico, because it just feels like a way to get attention that could actually really hurt people,” she said. “It definitely misleads individuals on what this bill does.”

When asked where he sees an effort to conceal medical services or instructional materials provided to students from their parents in the language of the bills, Terrazas didn’t point to any specific language, saying the form mainly seeks to let parents be explicit about their wishes.

“There hasn’t been any clarity. And so this form, that’s exactly what it does,” he said at the news conference. “It just gives a parent the right look over the form, decide what they want to participate or not participate (in), (and) submit it … so that we get a clear directive of what they’re comfortable or not comfortable with.”

“Even if these issues weren’t ambiguous in the law, why is it a problem for parents to ask to be notified about what their children are being presented in the classroom?” he added later in a written statement.

But Albuquerque Public Schools, for example, doesn’t provide the medical care or education the House GOP targeted in its letter, spokeswoman Monica Armenta told the Journal on Tuesday.

And while she said it’s too soon to tell how the forms would be treated by APS, which is the largest in the state, she did point to a district policy calling for provisions to be made “for review of student or parent objections to presentations or to print or multimedia instructional materials” about controversial or sensitive issues.

Both HB 7 and SB 397 have been hotly contested measures during the legislative session and beyond. In fact, they’re among six total bills being targeted in a repeal effort by a coalition of Republican-leaning groups.