OMAHA -- The controversy over health-education standards for schools is spilling into the Legislature.
​A Nebraska lawmaker introduced a bill (LB768) Wednesday that would prohibit members of the Nebraska State Board of Education from adopting health-education standards for schools.
"I just hear the call of the people," Sen. Joni Albrecht said in an interview on Tuesday.
The bill would restrict the board's authority for developing new standards to the core academic areas of reading, writing, math, science and social studies already authorized under state law.
The state currently has no statewide health-education standards. They are developed by local districts.
In addition, the bill would scrub the word "comprehensive" from a couple of passages of Nebraska law dealing with health education in schools.
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Under the bill, local authorities would still be directed to provide for instructing public school students in a health education program, but the law would no longer define it as comprehensive.
Albrecht said the term comprehensive was too broadly interpreted.
"I think they feel that with the word comprehensive in there that they can develop whatever they want to, but that was not the intent," she said.
Nebraska Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt said Tuesday he would not comment on the bill until it is submitted and reviewed by a committee of the state board.
Board president Maureen Nickels was not available for comment Tuesday night.
Albrecht said the bill would provide a long overdue check to the Nebraska Department of Education.
She said the state board shouldn't be adopting health-education standards without express authority of the Legislature.
The board should focus on improving the standards in the five core subjects they are authorized to develop, she said.
"Everything else should be local control," she said.
The state board touched off a firestorm of controversy last year when it proposed new health-education standards. There was no legislative mandate to create them.
The proposed standards were aimed at being more inclusive and would have taught schoolkids about gender identity and sexual orientation.
The standards were assailed by critics, and board members in September indefinitely postponed development. The vote was 5-1, with one abstention, but board members indicated the standards could be reconsidered in the future.