Tony Brown’s Aug. 29 letter, “A Track Record in Education,” presents Julee Brooks’ professional accomplishments. Voters should also examine her positions on parental rights, transparency and gender identity.
I have attended William S. Hart Union High School District board meetings for more than four years. I have never personally seen Brooks at a meeting or heard her make a public comment. I can only speak to what I have observed.
Brooks says the 2023 parental-notification debate helped inspire her candidacy.
I am the parent who brought that discussion forward.
People sometimes assume my position comes from being a right-wing Republican or from religion. It doesn’t. I am lifelong liberal Democrat, supported gay marriage and have always had gay people in my life.
Assembly Bill 1266 did not give schools a blanket mandate to conceal information from parents. AB 1955 did not require every teacher to conceal a student’s gender identity from every parent.
I was among parents represented in an amicus brief in Mirabelli v. Bonta, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and was involved as a parent in the Huntington Beach litigation challenging AB 1955. In March, the Supreme Court vacated the 9th Circuit’s stay of the Mirabelli injunction as to the parent plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court said a century ago in Pierce v. Society of Sisters: “The child is not the mere creature of the state.”
Yet Brooks characterizes parental notification as “forced outing.” Her public messaging emphasizes gender identity, pride flags, LGBTQ students and transgender students using Section 504 plans.
What I don’t hear is the same emphasis on parental rights when parents disagree with a school-facilitated social transition.
Social transition is not a neutral act, and secrecy is not student support. Teachers should not be put in the position of maintaining one identity for a child at school while communicating something different to parents.
Nor am I arguing that parents who support their child’s social transition should be prevented from doing so.
I’m asking for parental consent and transparency.
One parent should not be elevated above the other. No one should tell parents how to raise their children simply because they disagree. Disagreement should not automatically make a parent abusive or “unsafe.”
Mr. Brown presented Brooks’ professional résumé. I encourage residents to examine her public positions and ask:
Where do parents fit when they disagree with a school-facilitated social transition of their own child?
Does disagreement make that parent “unsafe,” or does that parent still deserve to be informed, involved and heard?
Lydia McLaughlin
Santa Clarita
