One of the last officials acts of the conservative members of the Newberg-Dundee school board in late June 2023 was to pass a Parents Bill of Rights .
The move came despite board Chair Dave Brown’s defeat in that month’s elections, Brian Shannon’s notice he would not seek reelection and remaining conservative members Trevor DeHart and Renee Powell being subjugated to the minority on the board in a few weeks.
As adopted, the PBR explicitly gave parents the right to opt their child out of lessons they found “objectionable,” a move that social conservatives in school districts across the country have promoted as giving parents greater control over what students are taught in public schools, particularly with regard to race, gender and sexuality.
More often than not, the policies come without input or approval from the professional educators in the districts and are in violation of state and federal statutes.
The Newberg policy stated that parents have a right to be informed of changes to their student’s physical and mental health and “direct the moral, religious and ethical upbringing of their child, and to remove them from any lesson or training they find objectionable.” The bill also required schools to inform parents about classroom curriculum and library book offerings.
One of the first official acts of the moderate members that took over as the majority force on the board — James Wolfer, Nancy Woodward, Deb Bridges, Jeremy Hayden and Sol Allen — was to call for the policy to be reexamined .
At a July 2023 board meeting, Wolfer suggested the board repeal the policy, stating the way it was pushed through at the final meeting of the sitting board with no public comment was anathema to his and his colleague’s election platforms of integrity and transparency in the district.
“It was crafted by an outgoing director (Shannon), the same director that authored the previous unconstitutional policy that got us in so much hot water in the first place,” Wolfer said, referring to a ban on political signs passed by the board in 2021 and struck down by the courts two years later. “It was passed with many of those issues that were rejected in the election but was pushed through anyway during a work session.”
After a 90-minute discussion the board voted 4-2-1 (Powell and DeHart were the nay votes; Hayden abstained) to repeal the policy.
“I do believe parental involvement and parental rights are paramount, and we do have several policies in place that protect those,” Wolfer said at the meeting. “However, this policy was passed with, in my opinion, clear political motivations as a vanity project by an outgoing, controversial and polarizing figure (Shannon) three days before his term ended.”
However, the new board’s members said they were determined to hold a community discussion about parental rights and hear from the public at a future meeting. The first step in that process came at the board’s April 9 meeting, where the three members of the board’s policy subcommittee — Allen, DeHart and Wolfer — reported to the full board about their discussions.
DeHart said after lengthy discussions on its contents and factoring in what the former board was trying to accomplish, the committee determined that it didn’t belong in policy form, but also “saw the value in a parents bill of rights.”
“It really coalesces, consolidates rights that parents already have,” he said. “It’s a document that really reflects what we value as a school district and some of the ideas that … we had."
He added that the district’s website was an apt location for the document and could serve as an extension of the district’s mission, vision and recognizing the rights that parents already have — but he sought to place it somewhere else than in a policy.
“It’s things that we’re committed to as a district,” DeHart said. “We recognize the parent/guardian/child relationship and the rights inherent with that, and that extends to the schools when they drop off their kids and trust the school district with their education. They don't lose rights, right?”
Allen, who said he regrets the way the PBR was rescinded when the new board took over, opined that parents rights are something the board really does care about and wondered if it would be good to drill down deeper on actions the district takes when certain issues arise. He suggested scheduling a future meeting where the agenda is light to discuss some of the citizenry’s ideas heard by the committee.
“I feel like we don’t get that kind of input on a regular basis,” Allen said. “So, I'd hate to let that go to waste because the notes that I saw had a lot of really good ideas that I didn't feel were addressed …”
Fellow committee member Wolfer said he favored a commitment by the district rather than a policy, because it’s a hot button issue and they don’t want to go down that road again. He added that one thing they determined as a committee was the difficulty parents can have determining what policies the district already has in place. He welcomed DeHart’s suggestion that the district website be made more user friendly in that regard.
“Here are your rights as parents in the specific policies so parents have a real quick reference, rather than having to dig through because even as board members it can get really confusing,” he said.
He suggested the board schedule a work session to look at some of the district’s policies, decide how to carry those forward and make them more public. Bridges suggested a board retreat to tackle the issue, since it’s a “statement” rather than a policy that can become politically charged.
Wolfer concurred: “We can really give it the time and effort that this community obviously deserves and wants. It’s been made known over and over again that this is a topic that all sides are passionate about, so I think we want to do it justice.”
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