Chino chose cruelty against transgender students. California can’t allow it to happen | Opinion

“Dear Parent,” begins the notice from the school district. “Student (insert name here) is transgender.”

With this new notification policy from the Chino Valley Unified School District, parents and the board of education there have succeeded in teaching their children a lesson — a lesson on how to vilify their peers, violate equal protection rights, ignore basic human autonomy and disrespect authority.

The school board’s recent decision to notify all parents of the presence of a transgender child is a grievous abuse of a school notification system that is intended to inform parents of pep rallies and school lunches. It is an unsurprising and uninspired tactic from a right-wing school board with numerous ties to Christian fundamentalism, inside a conservative county that attempted to secede from the state last year.

When, at the request of concerned students, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond came to the Chino Valley Unified school board meeting last week, he was met with heckling and physical removal at the request of school board president Sonja Shaw. Shaw ordered Thurmond to leave after only one minute of his public comment period, and accused both Thurmond and state leaders in general of “proposing things that pervert children.”

“I ask — if I am forcibly removed from a public school board meeting as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction,” Thurmond wrote in a series of tweets, “how are everyday parents and students in Chino Valley Unified supposed to have their voices heard?”

They’re not — and that’s the entire point of Chino Valley Unified’s cruel, new policy.

Shaw and her conservative band of like-minded autocrats clearly would rather place other people’s children in danger of harassment and increased risk of suicide or self-harm rather than recognize the civil rights of those children. Nor does Chino Valley apparently wish to abide by the laws of the state, as established by the California Department of Education and the School Success and Opportunity Act.

The law requires that pupils be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs, activities, and use facilities consistent with their gender identity, without respect to the gender listed in a pupil’s records. It was signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013. It is the same law under which the Sacramento County Office of Education has based its policy, which is to not disclose a student’s gender status without that student’s prior consent, unless it is otherwise required by law.

“That includes respecting a pupil’s desire not to inform parents,” said SCOE Superintendent Dave Gordon. “The idea was that if this came up at one of our schools, school personnel would talk to our students and encourage them to communicate with parents when appropriate.”

However, there may be situations when informing parents would create a safety concern for the student, Gordon said, and then the appropriate course of action is decided on a case-by-case basis.

California’s education and political leaders, however vilified by a small school board, cannot allow segregation and inequality to exist at any level. It is time for Thurmond and Gov. Gavin Newsom to jointly call for legislation that would remove the ability to segregate and abuse gender-nonconforming children and their families.

Transgender and non-binary children are not at a higher risk of suicide or self harm because of their gender identity, but because of the stigma they face from society.

LGBTQ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers; and even beyond that upsetting number, transgender and non-binary youth were twice as likely as their cisgender LGBTQ+ peers to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide and attempt suicide. According to the Trevor Project, more than 1.8 million LGBTQ youth between the ages of 13 and 24 seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S. — and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds.

We cannot idly allow such cruelty to occur in our public schools, nor allow local governments of any size in California to play political games with the bodily autonomy of our state’s most vulnerable children.

This story was originally published July 26, 2023 at 5:00 AM.