The Murrieta Valley school board approved a policy Thursday night to let parents know if their children identify as transgender.
The lengthy meeting included opinions by community members, parents and board members on both sides of the issue.
“The stakes are really, really high,” school board member Nicolas Pardue said during the meeting. “We have young kids who are flirting with these different ideations about what their gender is at a very young age because right now the state of California, for whatever reason, is intent on allowing minors to alter who they are physically … and I think parents are very, very concerned about that.”
Pardue went on to say that “at the very least they (parents) get a heads up. ‘Hey, this is happening to your fourth-grader, fifth-grader, sixth-grader. You might want to know about this.’”
Board member Nancy Young spoke out against the proposal.
“It’s not like these kids are not telling their parents that they’re LGBTQ, they are. If they don’t, they have a very good reason,” Young said. “I had another male student about five or six years ago who was openly gay. His parents told him to kill himself, and he had an older brother who did kill himself for exactly the same reason. So, these laws are there for a reason.”
Young said that most kids do talk to their parents but warned that “there are those very few where it’s not safe.”
The plan, which mirrors a policy passed by Chino Valley last month, was approved Thursday night by a 3-2 vote.
The final vote drew cheers from dozens of people who remained to hear the outcome, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The policy adopted by the Chino Valley school board in July requires staff to notify all parents in writing within three days after a student requests to identify with a gender different than what is on their birth certificate, is involved in violence or talks about suicide.
A request to use a different bathroom would also activate the notification policy.
Murrieta Valley proposal was approved despite concerns that it could put the district on shaky legal ground, according to the Times report.
In a statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta denounced the school board’s “forced outing policy.”
“I am deeply disturbed to learn another school district has put at risk the safety and privacy of transgender and gender nonconforming students by adopting a forced outing policy,” Bonta said. “My office remains committed to ensuring school policies do not target or seek to discriminate against California’s most vulnerable communities. California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights.”
Just days ago, Bonta announced he is opening a civil rights investigation into potential legal violations by Chino Valley Unified School District’s adoption of their “identical” policy.
