Glendale Unified Targets Dissenting Parents and Teachers in Latest Actions
The most recent Glendale Unified School District school board meeting on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 was riveting to watch as parent after parent took to the podium to tell the school board the same message: ‘Leave our children alone!’ One parent told the district not to steal his children’s innocence with its political and sexualized ideologies. Another parent described how grateful she is that she attended GUSD schools decades earlier when she could be a normal tomboy without activist teachers encouraging her to chop off her breasts. Several parents told the district that they just wanted it to focus on teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.
One person who spoke is a fifth grade teacher, an openly gay man who has spoken out before about the dangers of gender ideology in schools. In the past, he warned parents and administrators about the potential harms to gay students who are being told that if they are gender non-conforming, then they may need to be pipelined into a medicalized gender transition process to fit the “correct” gender stereotypes.
We encourage you all to watch his one minute speech (minute 44:25) from the meeting. It took tremendous bravery to speak out to these administrators that loathe people with his beliefs, knowing he has to walk into work the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that....
At the beginning of the meeting, someone took a photograph of him holding a sign, which had four unaltered ‘progress pride’ flags on it arranged in a pinwheel shape. There was nothing added to the sign, it was merely four progress pride flags – the same flags that many teachers in GUSD hang in their classrooms to show their support of trans ideology. We do not know the intent of the speaker’s sign. To some, the triangle portion of the progress pride flag arranged into a pinwheel shape looked like a swastika. The sign was provocative to some and offensive to others. Whatever its intent, the teacher who brought the sign attended the board meeting as a concerned local resident, not as an official spokesperson for the district or district teachers, and was exercising his First Amendment right to speak about public policy.
The morning after he made his comment at the school board meeting, he was approached by the principal and a GUSD administrator in front of his students, escorted out of his classroom, removed from school grounds, and placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
While we don’t know the nature of the investigation against the teacher who spoke out against the district’s gender ideology policies and was removed from his classroom the following day, we can speculate based on statements that were released by Glendale Unified after the school board meeting. The principal at the elementary school where he taught issued a public statement on Wednesday, April 19th that read, “Hate speech and hate symbols have no place in our community.”
Shortly afterwards, GUSD Superintendent Ekchian sent out a district-wide email that stated, “I want to be very clear that hate speech and hateful behavior of any kind is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in our schools.”
Parents, if you think this threat of being accused of “hate speech” won’t apply to you, please keep reading.
It has come to our attention over the past week that GUSD teachers and the Glendale Teachers Association quietly lobbied State Senator Portantino to author a California-wide bill, S.B. 596, to criminalize parents or guardians who engage in “harassment, or similar conduct,” against school staff after school hours. In one of his press releases supporting the bill Portantino wrote, “Teachers are being intimidated and harassed for doing their jobs…SB 596 will ensure that educators can safely continue to be educators, helping their students thrive unencumbered by fear and intimidation. I am very grateful to the teachers in my district for their commitment to our children and for bringing the need for this bill to my attention.” Portantino then wrote, “Last year, a local elementary school teacher was transferred to a different school site due to safety concerns after receiving threats for talking to students about LGBTQ Pride Month. Incidents of teacher harassment not only occur at school sites, but also in off campus settings and on social media platforms.”
We’d like to remind readers that no Glendale parent or Glendale community member was publicly identified as responsible for threats allegedly made against the local elementary school teacher referred to by Portantino. And yet GUSD took this as an opportunity to attempt to thwart parents’ right to freedom of speech, with threat of financial penalties and up to one year in jail.
How does the bill define “harassment?” The bill’s language is vague – it could be something that “alarms, annoys” or “serves no legitimate purpose.” Who determines what alarms or annoys a public school employee, and who defines what a “legitimate purpose” is?
The Portantino press release includes a statement by GUSD teacher, Patrick Davarhanian, that states, “Across the country, educators are facing an eminent (sic) threat against our profession and our livelihoods. … There is a calculated effort by radical extremists to ban books in our libraries, censor classes that teach accurate and honest history, and harass educators in the process. These extremist elements are targeting the core tenants (sic) of inclusive public education and using threats of violence to achieve their means. We must stand with our educators, protect our students, and defend public education.”
Yes, anyone with a dissenting opinion on gender ideology is called a “radical extremist.” Parents who question what their children are taught in school are “harassing educators.” Apparently, expressing opposition to curriculum or opposing the placement of age-inappropriate books in school libraries and classrooms will soon be considered “hate speech,” and will be subject to criminal penalties if S.B. 596 is passed.
It really makes you wonder: Who do they believe these children belong to?
Meanwhile, Superintendent Ekchian and the GUSD board are salivating over the opportunity to use this bill once it passes. During the school board meeting on April 4, 2023, one concerned parent was repeatedly accused of “denigrating” and making personal attacks against Assistant Superintendent Kelly King over a video in which she directed male coaches to supervise biological females changing in the male locker rooms. We strongly encourage you all to watch this short clip, and look at how loosely they throw around the term “personal attacks.” They had already drafted this bill with State Senator Portantino when this school board exchange took place. They are just waiting for the opportunity to use it against a parent who speaks out against a district employee.
Making public threats or harassing people is already a crime in the state of California. In fact, the individual who reportedly made a threat against the GUSD teacher at the center of the incident referenced by Portantino was identified by law enforcement and reportedly dealt with under existing California laws. The real intent of S.B. 596, as one parent pointed out during public comment at the April 18th GUSD board meeting, is to intimidate parents into not speaking out for fear of retaliatory prosecution.
It used to be that if you attended a protest and someone showed up with a sign that you disagreed with, you went up to that person and said, “Hey I don’t like your sign.” Now, not only do they not let you hold up a controversial sign, they also don’t let you speak, and they want to limit your ability to post content critical of school policy or personnel on social media.
The impact of GUSD’s “hate speech” policies and the proposed S.B. 596 will not only silence parents, teachers, and community members, it will also teach students and children during a formative time that free speech does not de facto exist in the United States. These efforts to publicly shame and destroy the reputation of people with different viewpoints and beliefs are imparting a life lesson to your children – that if the beliefs formed or discussed at home deviate from the district-approved viewpoints, those home beliefs are shameful, they are suspect, and they must be whispered or discussed in secret.
While we expect this type of intimidating behavior from the government in totalitarian countries like Venezuela, Iran, or the former Soviet Union, we don’t expect it to happen in Glendale, California. Anyone who has come from a country without freedom of speech protections knows where this is going. And Glendale Unified is leading the way.
Thank you,
The Gender Identity K-12 Team