Roseville high schools pass new ‘balanced’ parents’ rights policy, skirting gender identity

The Roseville Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a slate of new and revised policies covering parents’ rights and responsibilities.

The changes represent a watered down version of policies passed in neighboring Placer County school districts earlier this fall. These explicitly require school staff, including teachers, to inform parents if a student indicates a change in gender identity by asking to go by a different name, use different pronouns, or use facilities that do not match their biological sex.

While Roseville’s policies make no mention of gender or gender identity, they do require that parents get more information about their students’ on-campus behavior.

“Both students and parents have rights,” said Board President Pete Constant. “This issue is one of those areas where we have a conflict ... there’s a fairly diverse set of opinion on this, it’s important for us to take a balanced approach.”

One of the four changes approved at the session in Oakmont High School’s theater is a revised Parents Rights and Responsibilities regulation. It requires that district or school staff inform a parent if their child misses class to attend a counseling session or visit a campus wellness center, or when a change has occurred in a student’s records (a name change, for example).

The vote comes after the board’s five members heard public comment at its Sept. 28 meeting. Over several hours, students, teachers, parents, and staff spoke about parents’ rights and the privacy and safety of LGBTQ students. The board and district staff have spent the last several weeks updating the policies in response.

A handful of members of the public spoke out Thursday, too.

Alicia Watkins, a Placer County resident, called the policy “an egregious approach to student safety,” especially students who may be experiencing abuse.

“How do you think abusive parents will react when they hear their abused child is talking to a professional?” she asked the board. “How likely will it be that an abused child visits a counselor if they know their parents will be notified?”

Sarah Jabbarnia, an Oakmont High School senior, encouraged the board to reconsider some of the updates, particularly the counseling and wellness center notification policy.

“I have nothing against the parents in this room and your abilities to parent your children,” she said. “But it is the student’s right to have access to a safe and comfortable student experience,” she said.

George Buljan, the Oakmont student board representative, took issue with the potential for excessive surveillance.

“Does this mean parents will be notified every time students go get a muffin?” he said, half-joking. He also pushed back against parents being notified about wellness center visits.

“I think this is going to discourage a lot of kids from wanting to go to wellness, I think that it takes away a big aspect of it, which is just having somebody to go talk to without someone needing to know. Sometimes you just need to vent ...”

Students can still visit wellness centers before or after school, or during lunch and passing periods, without parents being notified. But Jabbarnia told The Bee that students don’t get much time at wellness centers anyway — around 15 minutes — and that not being able to go during class time will create a huge lunchtime bottleneck.

“This is making students just not want to even bother going,” she said.

Parents speak out on notification policies

Plenty of parents supported the proposed changes, like Jay Reed, a Granite Bay High School parent.

“I’m happy,” he said. “These are common sense approaches. I absolutely believe that parents have a right to be notified if their kids were struggling with their mental health.”

Michelle Peterson, an Oakmont alumni and parent wearing a sweatshirt that read “BLESSED,” supports parents’ rights.

“I think we all are being told we’re evil parents, and we’re not,” she said. “We’re responsible for our kids ... I would like to know if my kid’s out of class.”

Another parent (who did not want to be named) asked the board to consider “the why” of such policies, and reminded the board — and fellow parents in the room — that “the parents are not the victim in this situation.”

One revision focuses on “balancing education rights,” acknowledging the potential conflict between parents’ rights and students’ privacy.

“The Board acknowledges that, in certain circumstances, the rights of students and the rights of parents/guardians will be in conflict,” members wrote, in the statement that Superintendent John Becker said is meant to be more philosophical about the district’s approach.

The initial version of the document included a paragraph that allowed counselors and staff to withhold certain disclosures if they think it would cause harm to or put the student in danger, though they would have to provide a specific basis “that a clear and present danger exists.”

Trustee Marla Franz moved that the board remove that language from that specific statement and put it in the students’ rights policy. The board agreed.

The district, with more than 10,000 students at Woodcreek, Roseville, Granite Bay, Oakmont, Antelope, and West Park high schools, is the latest to consider the role of parents and parents’ rights — though the Roseville policy updates are less explicit about gender and gender identity.

District cut ties with LGBTQ support group

Critics of parental notification and supporters of LGBTQ students have voiced concern over “forced outing” policies like those passed by the Rocklin Unified School District in September. They require school staff to inform parents if their student has requested to change their gender identity via different pronouns or a different name.

The changes the Roseville board passed are not so explicitly about trans or gender nonconforming students, but they seem to be the impetus for such updates.

It’s also already an especially sensitive topic since the board decided last spring to cut ties with an LGBTQ support group called the Landing Spot. In March, Project Veritas (a far-right group known for its deceptively edited videos, whose founder was recently fired and is under investigation for misuse of funds), recorded the LGBTQ peer support group founder, Pastor Casey Tinnin-Martinez, talking about parents who don’t affirm their transgender children.

RJUHSD students protested the district’s announcement that it would no longer work with or refer students to the Landing Spot.

The five-person Board of Trustees is led by Constant, an academic program chair at William Jessup University, the Christian college in Rocklin. He is running for a seat on Roseville City Council in 2024. For his school board campaign, Constant received endorsements from several prominent Republican politicians like Congressman Kevin Kiley and Rocklin City Council candidate and controversial restaurateur Matthew Oliver. Two other trustees, Marla Franz, elected in 2022, and Heidi Hall, elected in 2020, received similar support. The fourth board member in attendance was Ludmila Karkov, and trustee Julie Hirota was absent.

The two remaining updates involve students’ rights and responsibilities, with one particular “right” acknowledging a discrimination-free educational opportunity.

“All students should experience an educational environment that does not discriminate against them by race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, appearance, disabilities, and all other legally protected categories and backgrounds reflected in the student body.”

Students should also, according to the document, “experience and receive legally protected privacy in their education, including but not limited to their final course grades and other confidential student information.”