At the Newberg School Board meeting Tuesday night (2/28), an excellent case was made to halt plans for the district-wide “parents’ rights committee,” a plan that had been announced less than a week ago, ostensibly by the school board itself. (We had some questions about that announcement, which we published here.)
The people making the case against the committee’s construction? The Newberg School Board.
The most compelling argument was made by Director Raquel Peregrino de Brito, who asked that the board consider a parents’ rights policy written in 2007 and revised by the school board in 2017. You can read about the KAB policy Peregrino de Brito references here. According to the director, having a new committee to consider parents’ rights will continue to “swirl conflict” in the district, and that it might be better to work with an existing policy, rather than create something new out of whole cloth.
We couldn’t agree more. But Director Peregrino de Brito’s comment was also puzzling, as she had, in a fall board meeting, used her public comment time to read a statement proclaiming November as parents’ rights in education month. It could be that the director herself realized a fundamental problem with a parents’ rights committee open to any parent who wants to join: namely, that some parents will advocate for the rights of children who the board has assiduously tried to marginalize the last two years.
Earlier in the same meeting, the Newberg School Board made an even more powerful case for the redundancy of a parents’ rights committee, when Elise Yarnell and Dr. Jeri Turgesen presented on the Newberg schools’ wellness center. The presentation reflected the powerful and transformative work the center is doing to combat our community’s teen mental health crisis, and significantly, the center’s representatives showed how integral parent input is to the center’s ongoing work.
At one point, Director Brian Shannon asked whether the health center notified parents about their children’s visit to the center, after wondering about the center offering gender transition services (the answer is no, they do not). Dr. Turgesen not only reaffirmed the law (that children under 14 seeking care need parental approval), but also that in every case, save for when a child might be endangered, the parents are part of a student’s wrap-around care.
“My absolute goal, and the goal of the clinic, is to involve family members at every encounter,” she said. “If they have imminent risk or safety concerns for why families can’t be involved, we will work with that. But our goal is to absolutely have family involvement.”
The presentation clearly undermines any argument about parents’ lack of rights in schools, showing that in students’ most vulnerable moments—when they are having a mental health crisis, for example—parents are intimately involved in care. They are invited into students’ progress toward healing, just as they are invited to partner with teachers to help students’ educational progress.
As the meeting drew to a close, Superintendent Steven Philips reiterated that parents’ rights are an important part of the educational process. This is true—and he’s already heading a district where parents have ample rights. Convening a new committee to craft a parents’ right policy seems superfluous and divisive. By the meeting’s end, even he seemed less sure about the need for the committee, his own board making a compelling case that such a committee was unnecessary.
Newberg Neighbors for a Better Community 