Emotions ran high at Tuesday’s Saugus Union High School District governing board meeting as board members, district officials and attendees discussed how best to approach gender-specific events.
The issue arose when Mountainview Elementary School parents learned that they would no longer be allowed to have events specifically centered around fathers and daughters, or mothers and sons.
According to Superintendent Colleen Hawkins, the direction from the district, which works in partnerships with the Parent Teacher Associations at each school, or a similarly named organization, is to have non-discriminatory events. In other words, dances or go-kart events, two of the events that were talked of most frequently on Tuesday, can still be held, but they must have gender-neutral names that make all students and families feel welcome.
More than 30 parents were in attendance on Tuesday, with most in support of keeping the gender-specific events — and to name them as such — that one parent called “one-of-a-kind.”
“If every function is a family event, it just isn’t special anymore,” said Laurel Castagna, a Mountainview PTA board member for 10 years. “It also takes away the recognition from us individuals who are fathers and mothers.”
One person spoke out in favor of renaming events to be inclusive. Shannon Gerson, a Mountainview mom who attended the meeting and spoke virtually, said those in support of keeping the traditional events were misinformed.
“The district has been more than accommodating leading up to this point,” Gerson said. “I would like to preface that the PTA took these events off of our calendar, not the district. As PTA members, we are here to make experiences better for all children and all families. We proudly partner with the district and the school site, but we cannot accomplish these core PTA values if we are actively advocating to exclude children from events while being blatantly inconsiderate to different family dynamics and defy district-wide expectations.”
Brielle Pratchard, a sixth-grader at Mountainview, said that while she would no longer be able to enjoy these events anymore as she is moving on to junior high, she would like to see her younger sister and others be able to have the same experiences she did with her father at the father-daughter dance.
“There are memories with him that still stand today, like our Alice in Wonderland daughter dance,” Pratchard said. “We each got a little hat, face painting and more. That was my first father-daughter dance I had in kindergarten. That’s how long ago it was, and yet I still remember it.”
Governing board members also gave their thoughts on the matter during an hourlong discussion after Hawkins gave an overview of how the district got to this point. She said she had been having conversations with students and families prior to the pandemic about some students feeling excluded from events that had specific titles, talks that she felt became more important as the pandemic began to wind down.
During that time, Hawkins said, it became clear to her that there was a need to include families in the Saugus district, and changing the names of the events to be more inclusive was the first step in doing so.
Hawkins referenced Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 1230, which detail how parent leadership organizations work in concert with the district, and how that is required for the events to be sponsored by the school. She added that the policy includes not engaging in discriminatory activities, though she did say that there is technically no policy that outright prohibits events from being held, as the school board does not govern the parent leadership organizations.
“That’s the only policy I know of that impacts the relationship between a parent leadership organization and the school district,” Hawkins said. “It’s not a unique policy to Saugus. It is a common policy that school districts have when they have any kind of leadership organization.”
Each board member then gave their thoughts, with Anna Griese being the only one to outright support the gender-specific events.
“I think by not allowing to have these types of events,” Griese said, “you essentially negate the essence of family, whether you’re a mom, dad or grandparent or aunt, a foster parent, whomever, and I think by dictating or saying it’s not the values of the district it almost allows for people to say we’re just not going to have it anymore. And that’s what happens.
“I recognize that not all families look the same,” Griese continued. “And I recognize that the entire Saugus community understands that, and these events are inclusive, regardless of what people are saying outside. These are inclusive based on my personal experience. There has never been a time where someone is like, ‘I’m gonna bring my dad,’ and someone is saying, ‘Nope, you can’t do that because it literally says, ‘mother-son’ on the invite.’ That just doesn’t happen.”
Board member Katherine Cooper said she has gotten emails from people on both sides of the issue, and despite families being told that everyone is invited, she isn’t sure that every student or family will understand that that is the case.
She said she likes the idea of putting out a district-wide poll, as was brought up earlier in the meeting, to determine what the majority of families think.
“You guys are really lucky,” Cooper said, speaking to some of the children in attendance, “because you have strong parents who are together. And so you have a gift that that not a lot of kids have and so I hope that you appreciate it. But I also hope you feel for the kids that don’t have that.”
Board member Patti Garibay, who said she was a PTA president for a little more than a year, said PTAs do a phenomenal job of catering to everyone, and if people want to make an event special despite the event not having that special title, they are more than welcome to do so.
“If you want to do a dance, great,” Garibay said. “That’s fine, call it a whatever dance and somebody can bring their special adult or whatever.”
Board member Chris Trunkey referenced the recent climate survey that was discussed at a recent meeting in which inclusiveness and connectedness to the school communities were listed as issues.
“I think it’s something that we have tried to integrate into our school communities for a number of years now,” Trunkey said, “and I think that we need to do a better job of including all of our students and all of our families in everything that we do, and that includes what PTA does.”
Board President Matt Watson said he isn’t sure if the district or the school board are the bodies that should be governing these events.
“I think this ultimately might be about process and partnership with our parent organizations,” Watson said. “I think the issue can be solved actually rather easily through strong relationships. It sounds to me like perhaps the PTAs, the PTOs, the PFOs, all the Ps, should ultimately be making these decisions. This is their calendar. I do think there’s a win-win here and that a strong partnership between families and schools wouldn’t have a hard time finding that win-win.”
Griese agreed with Watson on that point, that PTAs exist for a reason and if a PTA wants to have a certain event, it shouldn’t need to be approved by the district or the governing board.
“I think the question we should be asking is, ‘How can we do this? How can we do that?’ And I think we need to approach it with that question on both sides of this concern,” Watson said. “How can we hold true to our traditions and values that have been, clearly, extremely important to generations of kids at our schools? And how can we do that without unintentionally hurting anybody? And I think that conversation is an important conversation to have.”
“What I would like to do is send it back to the PTA and ask them to design their calendars and work with their administrators on events that will benefit their school communities,” he continued. “And if it continues to be a major issue, then we may need to take unfortunate action like writing a policy or issuing a directive to staff.”
