A bill before the state Legislature aims to ensure parents are notified by their local school district if their child chooses to “socially transition” genders or start using different pronouns.

The proposal, An Act Relative to Parental Rights in Education, was the subject of a hearing before the Joint Committee on Education on Monday, when lawmakers heard from dozens of concerned parents during an occasionally emotional hearing.

Filed by State Rep. David DeCoste, the lawmaker said the bill is written to be “very narrow” in order to put power back into the hands of parents.

“This was drafted, just as background, with some folks who are way over the other side ideologically from me. So, I think it is written fairly to address some very specific concerns,” the Republican said.

According to the text of the bill, if it were to pass the state would ban all “instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” for students in kindergarten through third grade.

The proposed legislation would require schools to come up with a plan to notify parents “if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student.” The proposal also mandates that districts not adopt procedures which would prohibit such notification, unless it is to prevent abuse or neglect as defined in state law.

“The procedures must reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children by requiring school district personnel to encourage a student to discuss issues relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent or guardian or to facilitate discussion of the issue with the parent,” the bill reads, in part.

Beth Kurth introduced herself to the committee as a “liberal democrat” and parent who supports the bill. Her son’s school district, she said, needed her permission in order to administer aspirin to treat a headache, but wasn’t required to notify her of some dramatic changes in their life.

“The idea that schools would have a right to intervene in a child’s gender nonconformity without parental involvement is mind-boggling,” she said. “Make no mistake, social transitioning — giving a child a new name and gender — is a very big intervention.”

Some students who chose to transition, she said, only do so because the idea that their gender may have been improperly diagnosed at birth was put in their heads when they were too young to understand the implications. Kurth said that the entire idea of transitioning only serves to force children to choose which gender stereotypes to accept, and that kids aren’t ready to learn about sexual identity or orientation at a very young age.

“Let’s leave the kids be,” she said.

According to Pew Research, a sizable portion of parents would prefer that their young students do not learn about gender ideology or transitioning from teachers or via school instruction. About 45% say their children did learn those topics at school, and think that’s a bad thing, or didn’t and think that’s a good thing. Around 13% said it was good their children learned these topics at school and bad if they didn’t. The rest, according to Pew, didn’t see either scenario as good or bad.

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