Editor’s note: This article liberally uses links to timestamped portions of the YouTube playback of Thursday’s meeting. We encourage you to click through to get a full feel of the board’s position and posture toward parents.
The Durham Board of Education on Thursday highlighted several opportunities for Christian truth-telling, even as it loudly voiced its opposition to a new parents rights law.
The work session saw the board begin its debate on policy updates to comply with the Parents’ Bill of Rights (SB49) and other laws passed in August.
The superintendent’s staff brought six policy updates for initial consideration, most of which center on less controversial aspects of the law, with its postures toward overall parental involvement.
The board spent the rest of its time discussing how to find loopholes and signaling its empathy to the LGBT activists who spoke in public comment.
Only LGBT activists spoke in public comment. No one else came.
The board, though, highlighted several action items, key dates, and opportunities for B&R readers and other voices to be heard.
- New policy proposal posted Friday. Revisions to the board’s parental involvement policy (Policy 1310) were not ready for Thursday’s work session. The board announced they would be posted Friday on a dedicated page with a dedicated public comment email, policy1310@dpsnc.net. First official discussion of this policy will take place at the Nov. 16 board meeting.
- November 9. The board announced a dedicated public comment session on Nov. 9 from 4:30 to 6:30. The focus is the extensive parental involvement policy above, as it more or less encompasses the key points of SB49. The public hearing will be at 511 Cleveland Street.
- November 16. The next business meeting where any votes on policy could take place is Nov. 16, and public comment will take place there as well. Any of the policies discussed Thursday could be voted on, or revised and brought back a third time (likely Dec. 14).
Overall, the meeting oscillated between exasperated board members and staff walking them through their obligations under the law. Those staff members were superintendent’s Chief of Staff Tanya Giovanni and board attorney Rod Malone.
Multiple board members wore rainbow logos as board member Natalie Beyer sneered, calling SB49 “nonsense” created to “address issues that weren’t even happening in school districts across the state and nation.”
Policy documents discussed Thursday, with Chief of Staff’s Powerpoint
Precis- Multiple policies- 11.2.23.pdf (249 KB)
3210 – Parental inspection 11.2.23.pdf (168 KB)
3540 -Comprehensive Health 11.2.23.pdf (143 KB)
4335 – Criminal Behavior 11.2.23.pdf (135 KB)
4720 – Surveys 11.2.23.pdf (242 KB)
6120 – Student health services 11.2.23.pdf (160 KB)
The two most controversial parts of SB49 would 1) prevent “instruction on gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in kindergarten through fourth grade, as well as 2) require parental notification prior to children changing their names or pronouns used at school. (Side note: The law does not require parental permission, only notification.)
Board Vice Chair Emily Chaves identified herself as an “out queer person” and specifically named those two aspects of SB49 as unacceptable to the board.
“We are not inculcating [indoctrinating] our students. We are creating safe spaces for kids,” she said. “And I know I personally ran for the board in order to protect children, and not to undermine their safety.”
Read about the B&R at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals—Why speak when your vote doesn’t matter? It’s three minutes, they’re required by law to listen to you, and God’s Word won’t return void.
The state legislature in its recent budget package postponed some SB49 compliance dates to January, but these two aspects were not delayed.
“The crux of the law certainly that you are most concerned about,” Malone informed, “is in effect currently.”
The board remained resolute throughout the night.
“We are committed to doing things the Durham Way,” Jovonia Lewis said.
These laws put “lives at risk,” said Alexandra Valladares. “Children will not have a trusted adult to speak to because of legislation that pretty much puts them in harm’s way.”
Beyer further demonstrated how the board views parental knowledge as a potential threat.
“We have to figure out a way that the notification piece actually respects the identity and the rights that students have as individuals as well,” Beyer said.
Malone, though, clarified things for the board.
“Whether you have a policy or not, it doesn’t change what the law is,” he said regarding K-4 instruction and parental notification. ”That is the law, regardless of whether your policy aligns with it.”
Broad observations and takeaways
- The only public comment Thursday was against parents’ rights, mourning the “harm” done to those who identify as LGBT (roughly minutes 8:00-24:00 of video).
The Christian speakers at the August 26 meeting caught the public and the board so off guard that they are still being referenced at board meetings. Conservative speakers, let alone Christians ones, are extremely rare in Durham. - Giovanni noted that updates at future meetings will be coming to the LGBTQIA+ and Gender Supports Policy, though she gave no date. That policy most clearly stakes out the board’s postures in favor of, say, men in girls locker rooms and the hiding of gender confusion from parents.
- Encouraging the board to defy the law, a male “educator” dressed and identifying as a “mother” articulated an eerie echo of a Reformed doctrine: The doctrine of the lesser magistrate states that those in power should actively oppose unjust laws sent from higher positions of power. (In keeping with Romans 13, this doctrine articulates how to actively oppose evil while eschewing the mob overthrow of rulers put in place by God.)
- Alix Adrian of Rainbow Collective for Change identified himself as a member of the board’s LGBTQIA+ task force in his public comments. Adrian had spoken August 26, decrying (among other things) how SB49 allows parents to see what their child checked out of the school library. Members of the task force are not listed on the board website, and the B&R has not yet been able to attend a task force in person. Read more about the task force here.
- Comments by the Rainbow Collective for Change may preview upcoming lawsuits. They at the very least reveal arguments for the explicit teaching of sexual and gender ideology to the smallest kids: “Every student has a right to see their own identities and their own families represented in the school curriculum. They also have a right to learn about identities and families that are different from their own.” Click the link and watch the first two speakers.
Alternative public comment
- Board Chair Bettina Umstead offered herself and other board members for coffee to concerned parents. “We’re happy to catch a coffee with you or do something different,” she said. This is an opportunity that Christians should be able to utilize even though the immediate context and audience of Umstead’s remarks was left-wing parents and allies in the room to organize to overturn “oppressive laws.”
- The superintendent’s Chief of Staff Tanya Giovanni invited parents to email her at Tanya_Giovanni@dpsnc.net. The superintendent’s staff crafts policies and procedures to bring to the board for debate and approval. They’re the executives to the board’s legislative function.
Giovanni said she reads those emails and may flag things for the board. The board is ideological and big-picture oriented. Giovanni put herself forward as a potentially valuable person to direct substantive concerns—more or less because she is the person who helps draft policies before they ever reach the board.
Full Video
(All relevant content occurs before the board goes to closed session around 1:18:00)
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