Rocklin Unified School District is now the fourth California district requiring schools to notify parents when students ask to identify as a different gender.
The Rocklin school board approved a parental notification policy in a 4-1 vote on Wednesday night.
“We are here today because bureaucrats — unelected bureaucrats — decided that they know what’s better for their children than their own parents,” state assemblyman Bill Essayli, the author of the parental-notification policy being discussed throughout the state, told the board on Wednesday. “The California department of education issued guidance last year instructing school boards such as yours to keep transgender plans and actions of schools hidden from parents under an alleged right of privacy that they say children enjoy. There is no right to privacy between children and their parents. The Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that parents have a constitutional right to raise their children without government interference. ”
Teachers must notify parents within three school days “when their child requests to be identified as a gender other than the child’s biological sex or gender; requests to use a name that differs from their legal name (other than a commonly recognized nickname) or to use pronouns that do not align with the child’s biological sex or gender; requests access to sex-segregated school programs and activities, or bathrooms or changing facilities that do not align with the child’s biological sex or gender.”
Rocklin’s policy contains a provision that parental notification may be delayed up to 48 hours if a staff member determines “based on credible evidence that such notification may result in substantial jeopardy to the child’s safety.”
The policy’s opponents say that parental notification could put transgender and gender non-conforming students at risk if parents don’t accept students’ chosen identities. Rob Bonta, California attorney general and potential gubernatorial candidate, announced a lawsuit in August against Southern California’s Chino Valley School District for enacting the state’s first parental-notification policy. He claims the “forced outing” of students violates their civil rights.
A San Bernardino County superior court judge halted Chino Valley’s policy on Wednesday in response to the attorney general’s probe, which means that Chino Valley schools are free to hide a child’s gender identity from parents.
California’s Murieta Valley Unified School District and Temecula Valley Unified School District have both adopted similar policies, and Orange Unified School District will vote on a parental notification policy on Thursday evening.
“What this whole issue is about, is who gets to raise our kids? Who gets to raise the next generation of Californians?” Essayli asked on Wednesday. “Is it the government, or is it their parents?”