Conservative Sacramento school board candidates skeptical of LGBT student protections
Two conservative candidates for the Natomas Unified school board are skeptical of LGBT policies and celebrations in California schools, raising alarms among some advocates that their election could set a different direction in the Sacramento district.
The candidates, Megan Allen and Monique Hokman, caught the attention of Sacramento LGBT activists after an Oct. 12 forum where Allen said that all-gender restrooms could lead to sexual assault, a statement that advocates and sexual assault service providers view as biased against transgender students.
In a subsequent interview with The Sacramento Bee, Allen criticized California curriculum that includes age-appropriate information about LGBT families. Hokman had criticized such teaching at a public meeting last year.
Asked whether classroom materials in kindergarten should acknowledge that LGBT people exist, Allen said, “That’s a tough one.” She said she would want to ask a psychologist, “Is this harmful? Is it not harmful?”
Furthermore, Allen said, if kindergarteners aren’t necessarily asking about LGBT people, “Do we need to mention it?”
Annamarie Smith of the Stonewall Democrats of Greater Sacramento said Allen’s reasoning was offensive: “‘Let’s wait for them to bring it up?’ That’s what you would do if you were ashamed of us. And we do not applaud any curricular approach based on shame.”
Allen and Hokman are part of a larger movement: Nationwide, conservatives have been increasingly focused on gaining control of school boards, motivated in part by opposition to transgender athletes and the depiction of LGBT people in classroom materials.
Additionally, Republicans in other states have crafted anti-trans laws including bans on trans student athletes and prohibitions on trans children using multi-person restrooms if they aren’t deemed to correspond with the students’ genitals. The ACLU has called it “a coordinated attack on trans youths” across the country. This year, Florida adopted what became known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which forbids educators from teaching about gay and trans people to children before fourth grade.
No such legislation is currently under consideration in California.
Since 2012, the state has required history and social studies curricula in first grade through 12th grade to include people with disabilities and members of the LGBT community along with other marginalized groups.
The exact content is decided at the local level, giving school board members influence over what materials make it to the classroom and what materials are excluded.
Smith, the communications chair for the Stonewall Democrats of Greater Sacramento, said the candidates used language that reminded her of bigotry in the 1980s.
“Curriculum guidelines in the state of California clearly encourage teaching that is age-appropriate on LGBT matters,” Smith said. “The simple acknowledgment of the presence of LGBT students in every classroom — or kids with LGBT parents — is a minor, moderate gesture of decency and inclusion.”
What happened at Natomas Unified forum
This is the first year that Natomas voters will choose trustees by geographic districts, and Allen is running against Sacramento State community partnership coordinator Noel Mora in Area 1, which covers parts of South Natomas. Hokman is running in Area 4 against Cindy Quiralte, who works for the Department of Education. Area 4 covers neighborhoods north of Del Paso Road and east of Interstate 5.
Mora and Quiralte have been endorsed by local liberal groups and the teachers’ union for the district, while Allen and Hokman have support from conservative organizations.
At the candidates’ forum, both Allen and Hokman answered a student’s question about bullying of LGBT students by saying they support “all students.”
In contrast, Quiralte and Allen pledged support for LGBT students specifically. Quiralte said, “I will be a strong ally.”
Mora pointed to his own time as a queer student in Natomas Unified schools. “I didn’t come out until I was a lot older,” Mora said, “because of not feeling like I had a space that was safe enough.”
Later in the evening, Allen answered a question about all-gender restrooms on campus in a manner that the Stonewall Democrats later condemned.
Since 2017, all single-occupant restrooms in the state must be gender-neutral, including those in schools. Such facilities allow students to use them without inviting questions about their gender.
Referencing this law at the forum, a student submitted the following two-part question: “Are you in support of incorporating gender-neutral restrooms? And do you have a plan to help create gender-neutral restroom access for students across the district?”
Quiralte said that all-gender restrooms “support gender-affirming spaces for youth. And I said earlier, I’m an ally in these spaces, in these conversations.”
Mora said, “In my opinion, it’s the very least that we can do to support our students.”
Hokman stood up and said she supported such restrooms.
But Allen responded with a hypothetical scenario: “If we’re talking about ‘all bathrooms are gender-neutral,’ I disagree with that. There have been cases where girls have gone into the bathroom and they’ve been raped. So, just keeping it real,” she said. “Now, if you want to have a gender-neutral bathroom that’s different than the other two, OK.”
The Stonewall Democrats of Greater Sacramento said her comments showed an ignorance of the law and invoked baseless anti-trans myths. A landmark study published in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy in 2018 found no link between gender nondiscrimination laws and violent crime in toilet facilities. A coalition of hundreds of rape crisis centers, shelters and other domestic violence and sexual assault service providers signed on to an open letter in 2018 saying, “we speak from experience and expertise when we state that these claims (of trans predators in restrooms) are false.”
The California law requiring single-occupant restrooms is meant in part to protect gender-nonconforming children, who are frequently targeted with abuse and violence at school.
Evan Minton, a former legislative aide who helped write the bill requiring single-occupant restrooms to accommodate all genders, said he regularly fields phone calls from parents in the Sacramento area whose children are bullied for being trans.
“All kids deserve to feel welcome, included and supported in our schools,” Minton said. When he thinks about Allen’s candidacy, “It scares me, and all parents should be concerned.”
Pride Month in Natomas schools
In interviews, neither Allen nor Hokman would say whether the school district should recognize Pride Month.
Natomas Unified Trustee Michah Grant in June voted against recognizing Pride Month, the annual celebration of LGBT history. If Allen and Hokman win election and also vote that way, the school board could have a majority of members opposed to the Pride month resolution.
“Every student has the right to express themselves,” Hokman said, declining to answer the question whether the district should recognize Pride Month.
“This is a tricky question,” Allen said. “Why does there need to be a Pride Month?”
Allen said that recognizing Pride could be a slippery slope to exposing children to drag queens, who have become a target for conservative activists along with transgender people and others who do not conform to gender expectations.
Allen also said that she had reservations about having a Pride Month because “we only have so many months in the school year.”
But Allen said she is not against LGBT people: “I’m not homophobic — I’m not. Ugh. My neighbors across the street from me (are) a guy couple. I talk to them. We’re friendly. I’m not homophobic.”
Smith, the LGBT rights advocate, said that Hokman and Allen were aligning themselves with “the very, very far-right fringe” by declining to say they support Pride Month in schools.
Pride, she said, “is so mainstream now” that failing to embrace it is a glaring red flag.
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
