Most parents approve nurse services in Williamson County Schools

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Williamson County is among several Middle Tennessee school districts pivoting policies after a new state law went into effect aimed at giving more control to parents.

Williamson County Schools (WCS) Superintendent Jason Golden shared an update on how the district has been handling the change during his recent video report.

“Parents can make choices about what services their children receive in schools,” Golden said. “That’s really the key takeaway.”

He explained that due to this new law, students cannot receive non-emergency healthcare services or counseling services unless a parent chooses to receive those services.

“Traditionally we’ve said we’re providing these services and if you don’t want them let us know,” he said. “Now that’s been flipped where we can’t provide services unless a parent says yes.”

State leaders have allowed school districts to provide blanket permission form for parents to sign with their decision, which WCS included in their enrollment package this school year.

“The reality is across the state people are a little confused on this particular law so I suspect there’ll be some discussions and some guidance at some point but school’s already started so we’re trying to do the best we can with the law,” he said. “The vast majority of our families in the enrollment package did sign that blanket ‘yes.'”

He said WCS nurses then called every single parent who said “no” to figure out the parents concerns to make sure the schools are serving their child the best they can based on that child’s individual needs. It’s a process also applied to school counseling because of the legislation.

“The law included a definition that included giving… using professional counseling techniques for educational services and career services,” Golden said. “It was a lot broader than that but for us that was the relevant part. We had the same structure where the state allowed us to send a blanket approval.”

He clarified for families who did not sign “yes” saying they want these services, it’s an automatic no under the structure.

“We made sure to call those parents and said what do you want what are you comfortable with. And so parents were able to say for example I’m okay with my child going to assembly but I don’t want one-on-one career counseling for what their job’s going to be,” said Golden.

He added that parents who signed “yes” are allowed to change their minds.

“What we learned from some of those conversations with parents was that there is some miss out there about what we do that we just flat don’t do: A discussion of sexual issues, we had some parents say I don’t want my child to receive immunizations. Schools don’t do that,” he said. “I do know in the ’50s some of those things were happening in schools with some national efforts to protect against polio and some of those diseases. We’re not doing that and so we’ve had those conversations with families as well.”

He encouraged all parents to continue communicating with school officials if they have continued concerns.

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