After reading the document and many of these comments, I see a lot of valid concerns and also a lot of overreactions (in my opinion).  Overall, I very much support social/emotional learning.  I think it does have a place in public schools and that all schools should place an emphasis on it.  All students can benefit from it.  I do not see these standards as being extremely political or ideological, although I can see why some people think that way.  To those people, I want to say that I don't know of any public school teacher/counselor/administrator who wants to foster hate and division.  We can talk about group differences without doing that, and I think that's an essential skill that we all should have, whether those differences are in race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, or ability.  I think people are making this out to be more political than it is.  Regardless of their political affiliation, all educators want to help students.  And yes, that means going beyond academic subjects some of the time.  Obviously teachers will still spend the majority of the time teaching their subject matter.  

With that being said, I do have a couple concerns with the standards.  One of them is that these are a lot of standards.  Teachers already have a lot on their plate, and I feel like asking them to infuse all of these standards into their curriculum is a bit much.   My other concern is that all of these standards are from the state.  I think that rather than mandate a lot of standards for all school divisions to incorporate, it would be better for the state to require all school divisions to do something with SEL.  It might be standards, it might be a specific program, or something else.  Divisions can get input from administrators, teachers, school counselors and other mental health professionals, and parents as they develop their SEL approach.  Another thing that I think may be necessary is allowing parents to opt out their children.  Some parents might want to opt their child out of the entire program, while others might only want to opt them out of any discussions about bias/stereotypes/injustice/prejudice/racism.  While I personally think that shortchanges those students, that's not my call to make.  Parents should have that right.