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Parents in the Chula Vista Elementary School District are riled up about a recent school board meeting during which district staff revealed that they had quietly modified a district record-keeping system to prevent parents from learning their child’s preferred name at school.
A user on the neighborhood website NextDoor posted a link on Saturday to audio from the April 17 board meeting, during which board members discussed the district’s system for gathering personal and family information from students and parents at the start of the school year.
The record-keeping system, called PowerSchools, asks students to include their preferred name at school, whether a nickname or some other alternate name. At the meeting, board member Kate Bishop, a staunch defender of LGBTQ rights, voiced reservations about the preferred name question, worried that parents using the system would be able to see that their child was using a name at school that signaled a change in gender identity.
A district staff member reassured Bishop that the district had created a software “workaround” that blocked parents from viewing their child’s preferred name in the system. “Great, thank you,” said Bishop, who then joined other board members in voting unanimously to approve the contract.
The NextDoor post has garnered 119 comments so far, with users debating which matters more, parents’ right to know their children’s school nickname versus trans children’s need to be shielded from unsupportive parents’ reprisals.
At least one board member plans to address the issue at Wednesday’s board meeting, and parents may weigh in during public comments.
May I ask why elementary children are even given this question? They are, as stated, children. They are born with a name, the only one the school should be concerned about.
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My best friend Pete hates to be called Peter, his name from birth. My brother David prefers David, a fact I was unaware of until this year. I have called him Dave for 65 years. PowerSchools seems to be allowing kids to say who they want to be. That is nothing but good. After years getting to ‘out and proud’ Kate Bishop seems to be going backward, to ‘Don’t ask don’t tell’ and that is not good, it is paranoid.