On Sept. 20, Paso Robles High School got the news that student organizations would have to require parent permission slips for any student looking to join them.
The rule had been in the district’s board policy manual for the past 10 years, according to Paso Robles Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost, before being enforced.
“There’s nothing new being enforced because of concerns that have been expressed from parents—unrelated, by the way, to anything related to LGBTQ issues. Most people think that this has something to do with LGBTQ and it does not,” DuBost said. “Although there’s an impact on that, that was not the genesis for this in any way, shape, or form.”
But Paso High teachers like Geoffrey Land and Josh Gwiazda disagree with DuBost’s decision, claiming that it targets LGBTQ-plus students.
“We’ve been doing this for years without any incidents. And that is a policy that is not even in compliance with the state—California School Boards Association’s guidelines for clubs, which don’t require parent notification,” Land said. “No other school in the county requires this kind of notification. So the fact that this parent notification policy is being dredged up now at a time of antagonism towards LGBTQ students on campus is highly suspect.”
The policy does reach beyond the recommendation of the California School Boards Association, which doesn’t require parental permission for student participation in clubs.
After an incident last year involving students who ripped down a Pride flag, defecated on it, and posted a video on TikTok, the high school has taken steps to create a more inclusive environment for its students. Some of those moves rubbed parents and district board members the wrong way, leading to recent controversy at some school board meetings over LGBTQ-plus policy discussions, including a resolution protecting the use of “traditional” gender-specific language in its schools.
Students like high school senior Israel Perez say he feels that the permission slip policy takes away safe spaces for gay students like himself.
“And for those parents who are homophobic and the student happens to be queer, they don’t want to reach out to the parents and that sort of permission, so they’ll probably quit the club entirely to not have to go through that, and all these kids are left without a safe space,” Perez said. “And I know what that feels like. I hated how that felt.”
DuBost said the aim of the policy—which goes into effect on Oct. 3—isn’t to violate any students’ right to privacy. He assured that there would be protections for students with legitimate reasons to not inform parents about club involvement, but DuBost added the real intent of this policy was to facilitate conversations between parents and their children.
“The whole point of this is for parents to have discussions with their kids about what their interests are, and what clubs they are involved in,” DuBost said.
But high school junior Eve Barajas doesn’t believe those conversations are always necessary or helpful.
“Students in high school are on their way to becoming independent adults. And part of that is starting to explore new ways of thinking. And as long as it’s not really something that’s being taught to them by a teacher, I honestly think clubs having opportunities for difference in opinion, things like that, is a good thing,” Barajas said. “Having parents be required to be alerted about these could possibly hinder some students from attending these [clubs].”
Some teachers, including Land and ceramics teacher Gwiazda, met with DuBost over the course of the past month, urging him to wait on implementing this policy. While Dubost told New Times that he spoke with club advisors and went to faculty meetings to explain the policy to staff before it was enforced, teacher concerns didn’t do much to stop the policy from being enforced.
“He’s [DuBost] the kind of superintendent who listens to all sides and tries to find a middle ground where nobody’s happy,” Gwiazda said. Δ
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 9, 2022.
I suppose that there was less pressure to enforce the parental permission policy when clubs focused on things like chess, ham radio or theater, but a lot of parents are unlikely to be happy about having their kids learn techniques for makeup application, exfolliation regimes, or outfit accessorizing for men.