Editor’s note: Taking the queue from B&R readers speaking in Durham on August 24, the B&R’s own Andrew Branch addressed the Wake County Board of Education September 5. The B&R’s goal is to make this normal in the Reformed & wider Church by making information easy to find and otherwise lowering the barriers to getting involved.
Murmuring discontent continued at another Triangle school board meeting Tuesday.
The Wake County Board of Education met Sept. 5 for its regular meeting. And local news covered a $1000 bonus to returning bus drivers as the district tries to work out transportation kinks and driver shortages.
But Tuesday was the first opportunity parents had in Wake County to speak after three LGBT-related bills and new charter school rules passed the state legislature last month.
The terse comment session was an echo of meetings across the state as school boards faced the public for the first time since the Aug. 16 veto overrides.
B&R readers spoke in Durham Aug. 24 and in Wake on Tuesday. The B&R thus thought it prudent to revisit the laws passed and highlight reader comments, as both likely preview the roadmap for the statewide battles to follow.
The B&R has not analyzed the charter school expansion rules also passed Aug. 16. But below is a summary of the three new laws addressing LGBT issues and kids, two of which directly affect the schools.
- HB808 — Gender Transition/Minors — bans hormones/surgeries on minors who identify as transgender. And while probably most important, the bill has less of a direct impact on school boards or other local governments.
- HB574 — Fairness in Women’s Sports — limits student sports categories to “a student’s sex … recognized based solely on the student’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” The bill covers middle school through college, including NCAA competition in the state.
Last year, a Cherokee County high school volleyball player received head and neck injuries when a trans-identifying male spiked the ball into her head. - SB49 — Parents’ Bill of Rights — directly addresses education through transparency and curriculum.
The broad bill begins with a list of rights that largely codifies what has been recognized by the Supreme Court for decades (not to mention that they’re responsibilities given by God). For example, the law says parents have the right “to direct the education and care of his or her child … [and] … to direct the upbringing and moral or religious training of his or her child.“
The bill also creates a number of requirements and postures for school systems to be more transparent and welcoming to parental involvement. For example, it changes certain sensitive information student surveys from an “opt-out” to “opt-in” posture.
The bill’s most controversial aspects, however, are perhaps best previewed by Durham’s bizarre public comment period Aug. 24, where three B&R readers spoke amid distilled, archetypal progressivism. See 40:15-60:00
- The bill requires schools to keep parents abreast of student physical and mental health, including pronoun changes. School personnel may be liable to disciplinary action if they engage in behavior that “encourages, coerces, or attempts to encourage or coerce a child” to keep things from parents.
The bill has implications for both the classroom and on-campus counseling — and it overrules a Durham policy encouraging school officials to hide gender transitions from parents. Durham Board Member Natalie Beyer decried this, as opponents lambast the so-called requirement to “out students to their parents.” - The policy most confused on both sides bans teaching the concepts of sexual orientation or gender identity until after the fourth grade. Opponents liken this to Florida’s law wrongly deemed “Don’t Say Gay” … when the bill explicitly only applies to curricular instruction and not everyday classroom questions.
Bill supporters confuse this policy, though, as well. Wake County passed a contentious update to its instructional materials policy in May — largely in response to obscene LGBT books showing up in school libraries. Many parents on Tuesday who were dissatisfied with the May policy demanded books be removed from libraries in response to SB49. It’s the B&R’s (non-expert) impression that SB49’s definition of supplemental materials does not affect library books.
- The bill requires schools to keep parents abreast of student physical and mental health, including pronoun changes. School personnel may be liable to disciplinary action if they engage in behavior that “encourages, coerces, or attempts to encourage or coerce a child” to keep things from parents.
The State of Play
Charlotte-Mecklenburg is the state’s most prominent school district to officially update its policies to comply with SB49 (news story), despite consternation from some on the board at having to do so.
Questions remain as to whether school boards like Durham, Wake, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro will attempt to circumvent requirements. Public comment in Wake largely focused on the response (or lack thereof) to the bill so far.
And nationally, leftist bureaucrats are fighting back. State governments in both New Jersey and California in recent weeks sued dissident school districts over policies like those in SB49. The states are explicitly seeking to force the districts to favor hiding gender transitions from parents.
Federal coercion may factor into future battles as well, as a Durham official alluded to in August.
Durham Board Member Beyer’s Comments Explained
Durham School Board Member Natalie Beyer took a personal privilege Aug. 24 to chastise B&R readers who commented in favor of parents. See video.
Beyer makes allusions to federal law she says supersedes state law on LGBT issues in schools. Echoed in public comment in Wake County Sept. 5, this is largely a hat-tip to efforts from the Biden administration to expand a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Bostock v. Clayton County was a 5-4 decision joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and written by Neil Gorsuch — both appointed by Republicans. That decision ruled that in employment (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), the ideas of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” must now be encompassed under the word “sex.”
Gorsuch made a behavioral argument that if, say, you don’t want a man wearing a dress but you don’t mind a woman wearing a dress, you are discriminating because of his sex.
That surface level sense collapses under further scrutiny, as nature itself and the very text “because of his sex” assumes the binary — that there is a distinction. The effect of the ruling is to make it illegal to act as if that binary even exists, let alone that those distinctions matter.
Ever since Bostock, progressive governing bodies (and now the Biden administration) have been applying that definition to other parts of the Civil Rights Act, including Title IX, which affects education and women’s sports.
But displaced girls are making Title IX claims against men in women’s sports as well. Bring in the aforementioned state-level cases in New Jersey and California … and the upcoming legal landscape is a messy rainbow explosion of Bostock contradictions with long-held parental rights precedents.
And as I, the B&R’s Andrew Branch, stated in my Wake County comments, these aren’t rights and responsibilities parents give up even if future courts say so.
This is about Truth. This is about God’s law and Gospel, which calls school board members to repentance — not just in their personal lives, but also in their offices.
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