A controversial bill that would have required teachers to answer all questions from parents “completely and honestly” was narrowly voted down by New Hampshire’s House.

The 185-176 vote to kill the bill was celebrated by LGBTQ advocates and the leaders of the state’s teachers unions, who had argued that the proposed legislation would erode trust between teachers and students and lead to the forced outing of LGBTQ students.

The Republican-backed bill, which the Senate passed in a party-line vote in April, would have required credentialed educators to respond within 10 business days to written requests by parents for information about their children, and would have opened them up to professional discipline if they failed or refused to do so.

The proposed law – dubbed the “Honesty and Transparency Act” by its authors – was seen as an important component of parental rights. It followed SB 272 – voted down by the House last year – which would have established a “bill of rights” for parents with respect to education.

“I don’t think in any instance that a school should keep secrets from parents,” said Republican Sen. Tom Lang, the bill’s prime sponsor, at a House hearing last month.

Opponents of the bill contended that child development and family circumstances are not always that simple. Children and teenagers sometimes share aspects of themselves at school that they would not feel comfortable with their parents knowing, they argued.

“Children should be able to live honestly and have a say in matters about their own lives,” David Trumble of Weare testified in the April hearing about the bill. “Senator Lang’s view of the world is that a 16 or 17 -year -old is legally an infant. They have no more rights than a kindergartner.”

Thursday’s vote was celebrated as a victory for teachers and LGBTQ students by advocates.

“We are thrilled that the NH House has reaffirmed what we have been saying all along,” Deb Howes, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement. “All Granite State students have the right to feel safe, welcome and respected in our public schools.”

The House “again rejected a burdensome and overreaching requirement that teachers reveal their students’ gender and/or sexual orientation to their parents before they are ready, with no exceptions for students at risk of abuse or neglect,” said Linds Jakows, the co-founder of 603 Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy organization in New Hampshire.

Sen. Lang, meanwhile, expressed shock and disappointment in Thursday’s vote.

“The goal of that bill was to repair the relationship parents have with school districts,” he said in an interview Friday. “It’s disappointing to see we’re keeping divisiveness around that relationship parents have with schools. There are some parents who feel disenfranchised by schools.”

Lang said he hasn’t yet decided whether to re-introduce similar legislation next year, but the issue of mandatory school and teacher disclosures is not completely dead this legislative session.

A related bill, HB 1312, would require school districts to adopt notification policies for changes in “student’s mental and emotional well-being” as well as for any curriculum that covers sexuality, gender, or sexual education. That bill passed the House by one vote in March and has yet to be scheduled for a vote in the Senate.