California students and parents have had it rough during the first four years of this decade. Not only were children locked away at home, condemned to “learn” behind a screen long after experts determined that youngsters faced only nominal risks from COVID-19, but parents were also stonewalled, sued, and threatened when they questioned their children’s curricula. Consequently, millions of California schoolchildren suffered years of deferred learning and stunted social skills that they may never recover.
Instead of addressing these concerns, state leaders doubled down on orienting our public schools away from students and their parents, who should be deciding what their children learn. Woke school administrators demonstrated they are content to hand our children over extremist ideologues who clearly believe public education exists to carry out radical indoctrination, not to serve the best interests of our children.
In the Fall of last year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit against Chino Valley Unified School District for mandating that parents be informed if their child identifies as transgender or “gender non-conforming.” Evident in the Attorney General’s heated rhetoric about “forced outing” and “expos[ing] our most vulnerable students” is that state leaders think parents are villains, and that government is the primary protector for children. A court ruling ultimately led the District to weaken its policy, generalizing parental notification to include any changes to a student’s record. Yet pro-child transition advocates say it’s still discriminatory.
In the latest segment of this saga, Murrieta Valley School District explicitly defied state orders by reaffirming a parental notification policy similar to that in Chino. If the voices heard at their April meeting were any indication, the Board is acting in line with the wishes of the parents who showed up in droves to support these protections. Similar lawsuits are ongoing throughout the state, including in nearby Temecula where a parental notification policy similar to that in Chino Valley remains in place.
The state’s ongoing persecution of these school boards expose the astounding level of disorder in our officials’ thoughts on education. First, Bonta and his acolytes seem content to discount the legitimate interests of the overwhelming number of parents who wish to raise their children according to their values and judgments. It is parents who know what is best for their children and how to help them when with difficult questions. Yet, when the state will not allow parents to be informed about serious issues that arise at school, they are deprived of an opportunity to counsel their children through sensitive situations.
Second, Bonta and others seem to think that government agents such as school administrators are well-intentioned and trustworthy figures when it comes to guiding children in these life-altering decisions. Even more shocking, they make it clear that the greatest risk to children who may be struggling with gender issues are parents! Speaking about the Chino Valley mandate that parents should merely be informed, Bonta’s own deputy said, “we can’t gamble for safety of students.” Yet who bestowed on school bureaucrats and politicians the prudence to determine what is best for any particular child? And what makes their claim to be the protectors of children greater than a parent’s natural prerogative?
Implicit in these criticisms is that simply expressing reservations about gender transitioning for children and adolescents is dangerous, even if such concern is for one’s own child. The truth is that Bonta and others’ opposition to parental notification of transgender identification has little to do with protecting children and everything to do with using public schools as a carte blanche space to indoctrinate children and further their radical cultural agenda.
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Youngsters are merely their pawns in this sick game, as Bonta himself admitted when he framed his lawsuit against the Chino Valley School District as part of his cultural war, saying, “the LGBTQ+ community is under attack, and transgender and gender-nonconforming students are on the front lines.”
The reality is that parents are on the front lines as defense against this attack on their rights to guide and teach their children and protect them from those who would irreversibly mutilate them. The attorney general and school bureaucrats are not trustworthy or protective figures if their priority is to hide life-altering surgeries from parents.
School districts in Chino Valley, Murrieta Valley, Temecula, and throughout the state are doing the right thing by restoring parents’ natural right to be informed of life-altering developments regarding their children. Other school districts across the state need to follow suit before politicians can further harm California families.
Melissa Melendez is the Executive Director of the California Chapter of the America First Policy Institute. She previously served as a California State Senator and Assemblymember.
