The Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) continues to find itself at the center of controversy due to its new policy requiring educators to inform parents if their children indicate that they wish to “transition” to the opposite sex. The policy flies in the face of progressives in the Golden State and elsewhere who insist that parents do not have the right to be notified if their children exhibit symptoms of gender dysphoria.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued threat after threat to cow the district into falling in line with progressive gender ideology. Now, the state’s attorney general is also set to take action.
The standoff between the district and Attorney General Rob Bonta began in earnest when his office sent a letter on July 20 to the district’s school board castigating its members for enacting the new gender policy. The next day, the board held a meeting. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond tried to crash the proceedings but was summarily ejected for trying to disrupt the meeting. Incidentally, Thurmond has presided over two whole years of decline in learning and attempted to hide his apparent incompetence.
Sonja Shaw, the newly-elected board chair who opposes transgender ideology in K-12 classrooms, urged the irate crowd to treat Thurmond with respect. However, the superintendent escalated the situation when he continued trying to speak after his turn was done. Shaw did not allow him to raise a point of order, which did not sit well with Thurmond.
The board ended up sending a gigantic middle finger to Newsom and Bonta by voting in favor of the policy. However, this move did not only anger government officials. Shaw has also received numerous death threats. In one case, law enforcement arrested one of those sending these threats. She discussed the issue during an August 7 interview.
But Bonta isn’t giving up yet. On August 4, he announced that he plans to launch a civil rights investigation into CVUSD’s gender policy. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. This official believes that requiring teachers to inform parents about important mental health issues regarding their children could somehow be a violation of civil rights.
This latest move on Bonta’s part underscores the unnerving reality that progressives have begun intensifying their efforts to use the government to enforce their asinine gender ideology in K-12 schools, even in districts whose parents do not want it. It appears to be an effort to intimidate members of school boards who might dare to defy the marching orders coming from the upper echelons of California’s government. The powers that be are attempting to dissuade others from opposing the progressive gender agenda.
There are a multitude of issues with this situation.
For starters, whose “civil rights” is Bonta actually trying to protect here? It certainly isn’t the rights of parents who have entrusted their children to government-run schools. The attorney general has clearly taken the far-leftist view that one’s children do not belong to them; they belong to the state. What Bonta is doing here is exerting more government control over children under the guise of protecting civil rights.
Next is the intimidation factor. California’s government is not only trying to frighten school board members into following the program, but it also seeks to silence parents who would speak out about it at school board meetings. In May, the state’s Senate passed a measure that would allow the authorities to charge parents who protest policies at school board meetings:
SB 596, which the California State Senate passed in May, 30-8, would expand state law that bars adults from subjecting “a school employee to harassment.”
The bill, now making its way to the floor of the lower chamber, the California State Assembly, would expand the definition of “school employee” to cover any employee or official of a school district, charter school, and county or state education board or office.
The bill also would outlaw, as a misdemeanor, actions that cause “substantial disorder” at a school board meeting.
Parents who are charged and convicted under this law could be subject to up to $1,000 in fines and a year behind bars. Let me put this bluntly: Lawmakers want to throw parents in cages and extort them for money if law enforcement deems them to be too disruptive during school board meetings.
In case you were wondering what the term “substantial disorder” means in this context, it isn’t defined. That is by design, folks. By employing an ambiguous term such as this, it gives progressives a wider berth to use this proposed law to leverage the state against parents who oppose the gender ideology agenda in the education system.
The backlash against efforts to indoctrinate children through the education system has not slowed down ever since it began a few years ago. Republican and Democratic voters alike have indicated they are not in alignment with this undertaking. This is why the hard left is stepping up efforts to weaponize state power to compel the rest of us to acquiesce. Nevertheless, CCVUSD’s willingness to fight back against California’s government is encouraging to the rest of us. If they can stand toe-to-toe with one of the most authoritarian progressive states in the union, there just might be hope after all.