As Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a new law on Tuesday, dubbed the “parental bill of rights,” distrust in the public school system that’s been percolating for years culminated with full force.

Championed by State House Republicans, the law reiterates the rights that parents already have to direct their children’s education, with a notable addition: parents who make inquiries to their kid’s school must “promptly receive accurate, truthful, and complete disclosure regarding any and all matters related to their minor child.”

Conservatives frame it as a win for both transparency in public schools and parents’ right to be informed of and involved in their children’s lives.

“No one loves a child more than a parent, and making sure that parents have rights and can understand and know what’s happening in their classrooms, when their children are in school, is so, so important,” Ayotte said prior to signing the law, which goes into effect on July 1.

The new law, as written in House Bill 10, also instructs local school districts to form policies promoting parental involvement and codifies many of parents’ existing rights, like the option to exempt their children from sex education, some statewide learning assessments and, in limited cases, vaccines. A few new rights will be added, too, such as the right to be notified of nonacademic surveys and district-level data collection and opt their children out unless participation is required by state and federal law.

LGBTQ rights advocates view the mandatory disclosure component of the law as an invasion of privacy that could endanger transgender youth. Teachers’ unions have called it “unworkable.”

Deb Howes, president of the American Federation of Teachers-New Hampshire, who spent 18 years as a K-12 teacher in Nashua, said the new law could make students feel uncomfortable at school.

“They need to be able to feel they can be themselves, feel they can trust the people around them, and if they always feel they’re in the middle of a surveillance state, it is not conducive to learning,” Howes said.

Schools will be prohibited from infringing on the law’s long list of parental rights unless they have “an actual and objectively reasonable belief, supported by clear and convincing evidence” that the action would prevent abuse, according to the law. Democrats in the House of Representatives assert that the high legal standard could cause confusion or delays in teachers reporting potential abuse to the state’s Division of Children, Youth and Families. Howes said she worries that in those rare cases of abuse, school personnel could also be legally required to disclose to a parent if they did make a report to the Division of Children, Youth and Families.

Rep. Jim Kofalt, a Wilton Republican, said last week while debating the Senate’s version of the proposal on the House floor that the law won’t interfere with current safety standards.

“We have procedures to handle those situations,” Kofalt said. “I wish they were perfect. They’re not. But this bill does nothing to undermine those.”

LGBTQ advocates, too, have pushed back on these laws for years, especially on mandatory disclosure provisions. While the law Ayotte signed Tuesday doesn’t specifically mention LGBTQ children or parental inquiries surrounding their child’s gender or sexuality, some fear the law will force teachers and other school personnel to out students to their parents.

Linds Jakows, founder of the 603 Equality advocacy group, previously called on Ayotte to veto the legislation.

“Of course parents should have rights, and they have many already existing in law,” Jakows said in a statement after the signing. “But that doesn’t mean that teachers should be forced to ‘out’ a gay or trans student to an abusive family, or that teachers should be prevented from acting to support a student who says they’re being sexually abused at home.”

Howes said that as an educator she doesn’t mind questions about a student’s grades or behavior, but she thinks the provision that mandates answers to “any and all” parent questions is too broad.

“With it open-ended like that, the first question is always, ‘Well, what are we supposed to be watching out for?’ Are we supposed to know ahead of time what parents are going to want us to notice and keep track of?” Howes said. “We have a job to do, and that’s teaching. We do not have the capacity to notice everything that every student does.”

In the Republican party, which came out on top in last year’s elections by no small margin, many people campaigned on a parental bill of rights. Among constituents, however, the proposal elicited some mixed and largely negative reactions. During the bill’s public hearing period in the Senate, 739 people opposed it in online testimony, with just 39 people in support.

Calls for more parental involvement and power in education have swept the country over the past several years, with more states enacting parental bills of rights or laws to that effect. The movement represents a growing subset of parents who distrust the public school system. Some feel that teachers and administrators are indoctrinating students with liberal bias and withholding information from parents, including about their child’s gender and nicknames used at school that may not conform to their biological sex.

Supporters, including almost all Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire, argue that no information should be withheld from parents, who have a fundamental right to be informed and involved in their child’s upbringing and education.

“Knowing what’s happening with your child is the responsibility as parents, to be engaged in the education of your child, to be engaged with what’s happening with your child, so I think this is very important legislation,” Ayotte said.

Jeremy Margolis contributed to this story.

Charlot te Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.