The battle for LGBTQ+ visibility in schools

From book bans to parental notification to hateful rhetoric, school boards have faced an organized attempt to marginalize and vilify the LGBTQ+ community in public schools. The question then becomes, how do school districts navigate polarized school boards and community demands while continuing to support LGBTQ+ students and families? Two districts in Southern California have had vastly differing experiences with their school boards and communities around LGBTQ+ policies. Their experiences provide us with a toolbox to navigate difficult political realities while ensuring the safety and well-being of our students.

A tale of two districts in Southern California In June 2023, the regular meeting of the Glendale Unified School District school board had to be locked down in the middle of public comment due to the increasing violence of the protests outside. The Pride Month resolution was on the agenda. More than 60 cards for public speakers were submitted and a few hundred protesters engaged outside the board meeting, escalating to violence. Despite the protests, violence, and public comment, Glendale USD passed the resolution supporting Pride Month by a 5-0 vote.

Glendale USD is a TK-12 district in Los Angeles County that serves a diverse population of around 25,000 students. Thirty-five different languages are spoken in the district with Armenian, Spanish, and Korean being the three largest language populations. Glendale USD passed the first Pride Resolution to support the LGBTQ+ community in June 2019 with the City of Glendale following a year later, in 2020. In the years that followed, the district routinely passed Pride Resolutions and implemented affirming policies for LGBTQ+ students and families. It wasn’t until 2023 that members of the community tried to violently upend that decision-making process through board meeting disruptions and protests in the parking lot.

Just 40 miles away, the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education discussed implementing a parental notification policy for students who use a gender pronoun that differs from their sex at birth. A few weeks later, at the July 20, 2023 board meeting, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond was forcibly removed from the boardroom after his public comment and response to the board president, which the board deemed out of order, resulting in his ejection from the meeting. The board voted at that same meeting 4-1 in support of the parental notification policy.

Chino Valley USD serves over 26,000 students, with large Spanish and Mandarin speaking populations. While still within the predominantly liberal state of California, Chino Valley USD in San Bernardino County is generally a more conservative electorate when compared to other school districts in Southern California. The November 2022 school board election signified a shift in the district’s governance and its alignment to the larger conservative movement emphasizing parental rights in education. The district then gained national attention in 2023 when the school board passed a policy requiring schools to notify parents within three days if a student identified as transgender or used different pronouns.

The rise and fall of the parental rights movement In both districts, groups advocated to the board under the banner of “parental rights.” This concept has been defined in both district’s board meetings as the right of parents to limit or deny access to information or education about LGBTQ+ existence in schools. This “right” includes the right to eliminate LGBTQ+-themed books from school libraries, to eliminate references to LGBTQ+ persons in history books, and to not allow students to define their own name or pronouns without parental consent.

There were no specific, new policies introduced by the Glendale USD School Board during the time of the increased advocacy for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Rather, the call for new policies was driven by community members and parents upset with existing policy. Pressure increased for several months, and finally began to wane when the primary leader of the parental rights movement in Glendale lost his election bid by a significant margin. Since the election, the parental rights advocacy groups have largely stopped attending board meetings and are no longer visibly active in the community.

The board consistently upheld the existing policies, continued to pass the LGBTQ+ Pride Resolution and implemented social justice curriculum districtwide. Board members spoke to the value of diversity and the importance of ensuring that schools are safe spaces where all students are valued for their unique contributions to the community. The protection and safety of students is frequently mentioned in the board comments as a rationale for continuing existing policy.

Despite state interventions, the Chino Valley USD school board continues to attempt policy implementation that garners media attention at the expense of LGTBQ+ stakeholders’ safety and purposefully stokes fear amongst parents. In October 2024 the Chino Valley USD board voted 4-1 for the “no deception” policy that “requires” school employees to be “honest” with parents and volunteer extensive information about a child’s health and well-being, without consideration of a child’s need or right to privacy.

Following the implementation of the ban on pride flags in Chino Valley USD, teachers utilized rainbow color note cards that stated “safe space” to show support to LGTBQ+ stakeholders, however it was deemed by the district to be in violation of the ban on pride flags and they have since been removed. The membership of ACT (Associated Chino Teachers) has been opposed to the book and flag banning and parental notification policies. ACT has actively opposed the book and flag bans and parental notification policies and ran an opposition candidate who narrowly lost the election to the parental rights candidate. ACT has been supported legally and financially by the California Teachers Association, which is also combating other district attempts to implement similar anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

Lessons for leadership From the varied experiences of both the Chino Valley and Glendale unified school districts, we can find the following lessons learned.

Values: Board members and staff should be clear about their values and priorities in implementing policies. In this divisive time, being clear about the need to stay focused on student achievement and well-being may keep the distraction of external political movements at bay.

Ed code: District leaders need to have a clear understanding of Education Code. As board members and community leaders advocate for policies, district leaders need to have a clear understanding of what is and is not supported by California Education Code in order to guide their board members and educate the community.

Community outreach: Districts that are able to maintain strong community outreach and communication are better able to navigate these sensitive political issues.

Elections matter: District leaders are counseled to stay out of the school board political cycle — and for good reason. However, leaders should be aware of the political movements in their area and prepare for the impact of those movements on the elected board and policy advocacy in the district.

For school leaders, values matter. While administrators, board members, and cabinet level leaders have been trained to act with a degree of neutrality, in this divisive age, school districts need values-based leadership. Carl Cohn speaks to the need to “act without fanfare” and just quietly do the work of equity and inclusion. School leaders do not need to make loud statements, but they do need to ensure that their school sites and policies are designed to support each and every student in the district.

References Cohn, C. A. (2023). Public Schools as Contested Places. School Administrator, 80(7), 26-31. http://ccl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/public-schools-as-contested-places/docview/2834982535/se-2

Jennifer Freemon, is a retired GUSD school board member, Ph.D. student at Claremont Graduate University and a Southern California high school assistant principal. Patricia K. Hanson is a Ph.D. student at Claremont Graduate University and a Southern California high school principal.