More than 200 people attended an emotional Riverside school board meeting as the community clashed over the rights of transgender students and free speech on campus while many called for Superintendent Renee Hill to quit.
Demands for Hill’s resignation at the Thursday, Dec. 19, Riverside Unified School District board meeting stemmed from reaction to a Nov. 20 lawsuit alleging the district violated students’ first amendment rights and denied students fair and equal access to athletics. In the federal lawsuit, a student alleged she was replaced on her cross country team in favor of a transgender athlete.
The suit alleges that students at Riverside’s Martin Luther King High School opposed to the district’s actions wore T-shirts with the slogans “Save Girls’ Sports” and “It’s Common Sense. XX ≠ XY,” and were told by a school administrator that this was akin to wearing Nazi swastikas in front of Jewish students.
The incident also prompted bullying attacks against transgender students in the district, members of pro-LGBTQ groups said.
During the meeting at the Riverside Adult School, a crowd chanting “leave our kids alone” could be heard outside. The auditorium board room was sparsely filled as the majority of the crowd was outside or in overflow rooms before coming in to address the board.
Assemblymembers Bill Essayli, R-Corona, and Leticia Castillo, R-Corona, attended and both called for Hill’s resignation. They alleged the district did not handle the incident correctly and violated the free speech and other rights of female athletes.
Castillo criticized the King administrators’ alleged comment about the T-shirts.
“For that attack to come from the superintendent is the greatest violation of all, therefore I call for the immediate resignation of Superintendent Renee Hill,” said Castillo, a Republican elected in the Nov. 5 election.
Essayli alleged that this is not the first time the district has fumbled this type of issue.
“I would submit that what the school district is doing here is treating trans athletes with privileges that are not given to the girls,” Essayli said. “… One girl spoke out, they wore this T-shirt and they were compared to Nazis.”
Some members of the public sought Hill’s resignation and said they were concerned about administrators protecting young women in the district.
One of them, Daniel Silvas, said: “I urge the board to protect the girls, keep boys out of girls’ locker rooms, and keep boys out of girls’ sports. Stop politicking, start protecting.”
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Hill did not publicly address the issue and could not be reached for comment Friday, Dec. 20. But she was supported by Regina Patton Stell, president of the NCAAP Riverside Branch.
Stell said that, as a former educator, she understands how tough the job can be. She said she supports Hill and how the district managed the issue.
Parents and others also spoke in support of the district’s actions and said school officials had to protect a marginalized community.
“I am here to speak in support of each and everyone of you up here tonight,” district parent Selena Rogers said. “Sometimes things are hard and the best thing we can do is stand up for those who don’t have a voice.”
The lawsuit identities Ryan Starling, Daniel Slavin and Cynthia Slavin as plaintiffs and their daughters, identified as 15-year-old “K.S.” and 16-year-old “T.S.,” as ninth- and 11th-grade athletes on King’s cross-country team, with T.S. being a team captain.
The suit alleges T.S. was “ousted” from a spot competing at the October Mt. SAC Cross Country Invitational “to make room for a biological male transgender athlete who did not consistently attend practices and failed to satisfy many of the team’s varsity eligibility qualifications.”
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Starling spoke to board, alleging that the student in question only went to 13 of 74 practices while his daughter was told she had to be at every practice.
“They were given preferential practice and that is why we are here and the administration knew about it. I sent emails to all of you, 63 of them,” Starling said during the meeting.
In a Wednesday, Dec. 18 news release, The Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance, IE LGBTQ+ Center, OurSchools USA, and Riverside Stands Against Bullying said transgender students at King High were the targets of bullying on social media and on campus by teammates as well as what they called extremist groups.
“We are extremely concerned about these well-funded and highly-coordinated efforts to target and harass individual LGBTQ+ students as well as the school administrators who follow state law,” the release states.
Daisy Gardiner from OurSchools USA, a nonprofit group based in the Inland Empire that pushes for equality in education, read a statement from a parent of a transgender student targeted by the bullying at King High. The parent, who was not named, did not feel safe enough to attend the meeting, Gardiner said.
“These past couple of months have been heartbreaking for our family and have devastated other members of the LGBTQ community,” the parent wrote. “These kids matter, this is not about saving girls’ sports. This has become a bullying campaign aimed at the most marginalized community.”
Erica Ruiz told the board it was important to point out that “this doesn’t exist in a vacuum, over the past two years we have seen an increase in bigotry targeting trans youth.”
During the meeting, the board heard a presentation from Milton Foster, a partner at Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost, a Corona-based law firm specializing in education, who defended the district’s position and said the state requires schools to allow transgender students into sports aligned with their gender identity. Foster also said that, as established in a previous court case in Iowa, the district could limit speech if it was considered disruptive.
Foster said the district was following state law and the CIF bylaws that athletes in the state must be allowed to participate in sports teams that match their preferred gender identity.
“In sum, it indicates transgender students are required to be allowed to participate in sports of the their choosing and in accordance with their gender identity,” Foster said.
Ninety people signed up to speak during the meeting and, the board limited them to two minutes and public comments to one hour. The board made it through about 40 speakers before cutting off the comment session.
The majority of the crowd left, with one person using profanity and telling the board it was “lame.”
The board took no votes on the issue, and board members said little about the topic.
“We are bound to state laws and you can ask us to break those state laws and other school boards have tried to break those laws and they are in trouble,” Board member Noemi Hernandez Alexander said.
She said that the community could lobby state legislators to pass legislation that would then trickle down to local schools.
“In the scope that we can protect all girls to be able to compete fairly we will do our part,” she said. “None of this falls on deaf ears.”
Board member Dale Kinnear said he has to follow the law, that it was a great discussion but it was a debate on public policy.
“It is a forum in front of a governing board that has no authority,” Kinnear said.