SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Emotions ran high in a debate over parental rights versus the privacy and safety of LGBTQ+ students. It played out Thursday night at the Chino Valley Unified School District board meeting in Southern California's San Bernardino County, part of a broader conversation happening throughout the state.
At the center of the conversation was a controversial proposed Parental Notification Policy (pages 10-14 here), which a majority of board members ultimately approved after hours of public comment.
It requires teachers and staff to alert parents if a student is having suicidal thoughts or gets injured at school.
It also says teachers, counselors and staff members are to notify a student's parents within three days of learning the student wants to be treated as a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth. That includes asking to go by a different name or pronouns, use a different restroom or join a sports team that doesn't correspond with their assigned sex at birth.
California's Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond spoke during the public section of the meeting, telling ABC10 in an interview the next day that students in that district invited him to come weigh in.
“I asked people to think from their heart about the impact that certain policies can have on young people,” said Thurmond. “I raised the example of a number of young people who are not in a home where it's safe for them to talk about their sexual orientation. I talked about the 40% of students who identify as LGBTQ+ who have thought about suicide and that a policy like this creates a high risk for many students to find themselves having suicidal thoughts. That, from a humanitarian standpoint, we should be thinking about what's best for our kids.”
He said Chino Valley is the first district he has seen take up this issue.
Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli also spoke at the meeting. He told ABC10 how he believes "several other districts" will follow in Chino's footsteps.
He authored a parental notification bill which would require a similar practice at all California public school districts. It died in committee this session, but his office says he's committed to bringing it back next session.
“I do think it's important for parents to be involved,” said Essayli. “When a child is experiencing gender dysphoria, it's a real issue and it puts them in a higher risk for mental health issues, including suicide. We know through studies that the students do better with parental support, so to exclude parents, I think, is actually more harmful to the kids than positive.”
Thurmond said he thinks there’s a balance to be struck between parental rights and “the right of our students to be safe.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta also weighed in Thursday. In a letter to the district and news release, he said, “by allowing for the disclosure of a student's gender identity without their consent... [this policy] would strip them of their freedom, violate their autonomy and potentially put them in a harmful situation."
He adds he "will take action as appropriate to... protect students' civil rights."
ABC10 asked Thurmond and Essayli why they think this is a state issue and not something strictly for the local, district level.
Essayli said he wrote that bill in response to the California Department of Education, which has previously issued guidance saying students are allowed to keep their gender identity private from their parents. He said writing a bill is his way of pushing back on what he thinks is bad policy.
Thurmond said he feels it's appropriate for the state to step in when school board policy is causing students to feel threatened and endangered, as he believes is the case for LGBTQ+ youth who aren't yet ready to share their gender identity with their families.
WATCH MORE: Audit finds California State University campuses mishandled sexual harassment allegations
