Let’s Go Washington submits signatures for I‑2081, a parental notification scheme

The right wing group work­ing to qual­i­fy mul­ti­ple ini­tia­tives to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture turned in sig­na­tures for anoth­er one of their mea­sures today in Tumwa­ter at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex.

Ini­tia­tive 2081 — which, like all of Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton’s mea­sures, is spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Repub­li­can State Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh and fund­ed with mon­ey from right wing mil­lion­aire Bri­an Hey­wood — is an attempt to bring the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s nation­al cul­ture wars push to the Novem­ber 2024 Wash­ing­ton State bal­lot. Osten­si­bly, the ini­tia­tive is about ensur­ing par­ents have the right to know what’s hap­pen­ing to their kids in pub­lic schools.

But the Office of the Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion says much of the ini­tia­tive is try­ing to re-state what’s already in Wash­ing­ton law — mean­ing, it won’t give par­ents much in the way of rights that they don’t already have.

The offi­cial bal­lot title and sum­ma­ry for I‑2081 are as follows:

Bal­lot Title
Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure No. 2081 con­cerns parental rights relat­ing to their children’s pub­lic school education.

This mea­sure would pro­vide cer­tain rights to par­ents and guardians of pub­lic-school chil­dren, includ­ing rights to review instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als, inspect records, receive cer­tain noti­fi­ca­tions, and opt out of cer­tain activ­i­ties, like sex­u­al-health education.

Should this mea­sure be enact­ed into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]

Bal­lot Mea­sure Summary
This mea­sure would allow par­ents and guardians of pub­lic-school chil­dren to review instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als and inspect stu­dent records, includ­ing health and dis­ci­pli­nary records, upon request. It would require pub­lic schools to pro­vide par­ents and guardians with cer­tain noti­fi­ca­tions, includ­ing about med­ical ser­vices giv­en and when stu­dents are tak­en off cam­pus; access to cal­en­dars and cer­tain poli­cies; and writ­ten notice and oppor­tu­ni­ties to opt stu­dents out of com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al-health edu­ca­tion and answer­ing cer­tain sur­veys or assignments.

Some pro­vi­sions in the ini­tia­tive could have the poten­tial to nix Human Rights Com­mis­sion guide­lines about stu­dent pri­va­cy — par­tic­u­lar­ly in sen­si­tive sce­nar­ios, which is rea­son alone in our view to reject this ini­tia­tive. Sup­pose, for a exam­ple, that a stu­dent receives med­ical care that they do not want their par­ents to know about. Pub­lic schools should not be oblig­at­ed by law to be insert­ed into the mid­dle of dis­putes between young peo­ple and their par­ents about med­ical care.

The ini­tia­tive does at least rec­og­nize that when abuse is being inves­ti­gat­ed, par­ents should­n’t have unfet­tered access to their chil­dren’s records.

From sub­sec­tion 3:

Notwith­stand­ing any­thing to the con­trary, a pub­lic school shall not be required to release any records or infor­ma­tion regard­ing a stu­den­t’s med­ical or health records or men­tal health coun­sel­ing records to a par­ent dur­ing the pen­den­cy of an inves­ti­ga­tion of child abuse or neglect con­duct­ed by any law enforce­ment agency or the depart­ment of chil­dren, youth, and fam­i­lies where the par­ent is the tar­get of the inves­ti­ga­tion, unless the par­ent has obtained a court order.

This clause is too lim­it­ed, how­ev­er, to pro­vide suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tions for youth.

Giv­en that exist­ing state law strikes a bet­ter bal­ance than I‑2081, Wash­ing­ton would be bet­ter off with­out Ini­tia­tive 2081. This is an instance where the old adage if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies. Many of the pro­po­nents of I‑2081 are focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the sce­nario of par­ents being able to opt their chil­dren out of com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion — but they already have that right under exist­ing law, a law the right wing forced a statewide pub­lic vote on three years ago, which Wash­ing­to­ni­ans vot­ed hand­i­ly to uphold.

From the OSPI’s CSHE (com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion) page:

Parent/Guardian Noti­fi­ca­tion and Materials
Let­ters, Noti­fi­ca­tions, Waivers and FAQs
Par­ents and guardians must be noti­fied at least one month in advance of planned instruc­tion, must be able to review all CSHE instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als, and must be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt their child out of CSHE instruction.

This infor­ma­tion is being omit­ted from mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing I‑2081.

The Wash­ing­ton State Catholic Con­fer­ence’s I‑2081 page, for exam­ple, which our team reviewed, neglects to explic­it­ly state that par­ents already have this right, imply­ing instead that I‑2081 would cre­ate it. The only lan­guage that nods to exist­ing law is the word “reit­er­ates” in this sen­tence: “It also reit­er­ates or estab­lish­es numer­ous par­ents’ rights with­in the pub­lic school system.”

NPI’s observers in Tumwa­ter saw a heavy “Moms for Lib­er­ty” pres­ence at the turn-in. “Moms for Lib­er­ty” is an extreme right wing group that cam­paigns for book bans and against efforts to make schools more inclu­sive and cur­ricu­lum more ben­e­fi­cial to stu­dents. The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter had this to say about the group in its Year in Hate and Extrem­ism report for 2022:

Schools, espe­cial­ly, have been on the receiv­ing end of ramped-up and coor­di­nat­ed hard-right attacks, fre­quent­ly through the guise of “par­ents’ rights” groups. These groups were, in part, spurred by the right-wing back­lash to COVID-19 pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures in schools. But they have grown into an anti-stu­dent inclu­sion move­ment that tar­gets any inclu­sive cur­ricu­lum that con­tains dis­cus­sions of race, dis­crim­i­na­tion and LGBTQ identities.

At the fore­front of this mobi­liza­tion is Moms for Lib­er­ty, a Flori­da-based group with vast con­nec­tions to the GOP that this year the SPLC des­ig­nat­ed as an extrem­ist group. They can be spot­ted at school board meet­ings across the coun­try wear­ing shirts and car­ry­ing signs that declare, “We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.” The group hijacks meet­ings, pre­vent­ing offi­cials and par­ents from con­duct­ing their nor­mal proceedings.

“I can be sit­ting in a meet­ing mind­ing my own busi­ness, and they turn around and scream at me that I am a com­mie and teach­ers want to see all kids fail,” a teacher’s union pres­i­dent in Bre­vard Coun­ty, Flori­da, explained to a Wash­ing­ton Post reporter.

The oth­er five mea­sures Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton is work­ing on for 2024 are:

• Ini­tia­tive 2117 — repeals the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act, which is rais­ing funds to fight cli­mate damage
• Ini­tia­tive 2109 — repeals bil­lions in edu­ca­tion fund­ing by elim­i­nat­ing the cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy
• Ini­tia­tive 2113 — rolls back restric­tions on police pur­suits that are mak­ing our com­mu­ni­ties safer
• Ini­tia­tive 2124 — sab­o­tages the WA Cares plan to help Wash­ing­to­ni­ans afford long-term care
• Ini­tia­tive 2111 — bars the state and local gov­ern­ments from levy­ing tax­es based on abil­i­ty to pay

Sig­na­tures for Ini­tia­tive 2117 were sub­mit­ted on Tues­day, Novem­ber 21st; our recap of that turn-in can be read here. The next mea­sure Hey­wood and Walsh plan to sub­mit sig­na­tures for is report­ed­ly Ini­tia­tive 2113, which would roll back restric­tions on police pur­suits that are mak­ing our com­mu­ni­ties safer.

NPI’s Stop Greed web­site pro­vides infor­ma­tion about all six ini­tia­tives and the harm they would cre­ate and is a very use­ful resource to book­mark.

NPI urges a no vote on all of the afore­men­tioned ini­tia­tives, includ­ing I‑2081, and will be work­ing to ensure that they get the vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion they deserve.