(Radio Iowa) – Republicans in the Iowa Senate have approved most of the elements in the governor’s wide-ranging education bill. The legislation would require educators to tell parents if a child asks to be known by a different name or gender at school and it would prohibit teachers from leading discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. Senator Ken Rozenboom, a Republican from Oskaloosa, says those topics are totally unnecessary for elementary students. “Parents and guardians that wish to have that conversation with their child can do so,” Rozenboom said, “…but to have that in the public school most of us, many of us believe is inappropriate.”

The Senate bill also calls for removing books from school libraries that describe or depict sex acts. Democrats in the Senate voted against the legislation. Senator Molly Donahue, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, is a teacher. “This country is supposed to be a country of freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of ideas,” Donahue says. “But those freedoms end when politicians begin censoring certain ideas because they find them uncomfortable.”

House Republicans have approved elements of the governor’s education package as separate bills. Republican legislative leaders now have to decide whether to approve the policies separately or together in one large bill.