The ECHO, March 2024

By Graysie Casey
Staff Writer
FEATURES
CHCCS school district in defense of LGBTQ+ students
On Jan. 18, 2024, the Chapel Hill-
Carrboro City School district defied state
law by leaving out two clauses concerning
LGBTQ+ youth and education in Senate
Bill 49, better known as the Parents’ Bill
of Rights.
Passed by the North Carolina senate
in August of 2023, the Parents’ Bill of
Rights lists a number of legal rights
parents have in regards to their children in
the school system. Public school districts
were required to implement the policies
by Jan. 1, 2024.
The first clause excluded, which received
the most pushback, requires teachers or
administrators to notify parents if a
student wishes to use a different set of
pronouns or go by a different name.
During a meeting in November, the
policy was met with concerns of being
discriminatory as well as confusing in
wording.
“The law requires that everything be
reported to parents, unless it's going to
endanger the life of the student. That’s
such a fuzzy kind of thing to say and to
interpret, so what the board felt was we
don’t need a law that ties the hands of
our staff,” said George Griffin, a board
chairman who has served since 2022.
Due to how the clause is written,
parents of a student who want to go by
a nickname would have to be notified as
well. While the clause does not explicitly
state that it applies to LGBTQ+ students,
the policies within it can directly affect
those who identify with the community.
“It's better for us to address student
concerns and issues with nuance,
empathy and sensitivity to what's
going on in a young person's life at that
moment in time,” said Andy Jenks,
Chief of Communications for CHCCS.
East junior August Nunn, who uses
a different name than what is listed in
PowerSchool, attested to the dangers
that parent notification can stir up for
LGBTQ+ students.
“I've always been very open with my
parents about the different names that I
go by. But for many students, this could
pose not only awkwardness, but actual
safety concerns. You don't know how
parents will react,” Nunn said.
In light of the decision, the school
board developed written protocol for
what educators should do in the event
that a student wishes to keep their
name and pronouns private from their
parents. The board calls this “written
guidance,” a plan that details the steps
taken in order to not only keep students
safe, but to also uphold the involvement
of parents.
“We want to work together with
families, our staff wants to collaborate
and the guidance that we're sharing
allows for a more effective means of
doing that,” Jenks said.
The second clause that the board
defied includes prohibiting the teaching
of gender identity and sexuality in
kindergarten through fourth grade.
According to Griffin, the board found
this part ironic, given that neither topic is
part of the district's curriculum in those
grade levels. The teaching of such topics
don’t start until students reach fifth grade.
CHCCS is the only school district
in North Carolina that refused to
pass these two portions. Currently,
there are no written consequences for
districts that don’t comply with the bill.
However, provisions in the law allow
any parent, even those without children
who are affected, to challenge the way
in which the board has responded by
filing a complaint.
“As of today, nobody has,” Griffin
said in February.
Griffin added that the community
reception of the bill has been more
positive than negative despite the
legality of the situation. In theory,
retribution could also arise from the
General Assembly. Despite the risk
involved, the board plans to stay true
to its values.
“That’s the big unknown. Is there a
consequence? But here's the thing. We
have a mission statement. We have a
set of core values in this district. We
value every individual student as a
unique individual student, and we
value families and engagement with
families. We’ve been trying to uphold
those values,” Griffin said.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro area is
known for being more liberal than its
counterparts, which would explain
not only the board’s decision, but the
Streetview of Lincoln Center from Google Earth.
community’s support of it as well. As
a LGBTQ+ student, Nunn expressed
how they feel privileged to live in an
area where their identity is accepted,
yet challenges the community to look
beyond the city’s “bubble.”
“I think that it's important not only
to look within our districts, but look at
the troubling trends we’re seeing across
the country. And think not only about
the ways that we can continue to find
spaces like our district, but how we can
do things to help support other school
districts to make important decisions
like this across the country, because
this senate bill doesn’t just stop in
Chapel Hill,” Nunn said.
Continued from page 1
Ever since the pay cuts first began
in mid-January, Clark has backed and
stood with her colleagues, helping to
make protest signs and speaking at
board meetings. Many teachers in the
district have joined the effort as well, as
shown in the photos, demonstrating in
Courtesy of Elena Paces-Wiles/The Pirates’ Hook
“We’re going through the motions”
front of Durham Public Schools Central
Services.
Some DPS students have also
attended protests and many have
grown passionate on the issue of
staff compensation. Riverside High
School senior Elena Paces-Wiles
published a photo gallery from one of
the demonstrations in her own school’s
newspaper, “The Pirates’ Hook.”
“Everyone was talking about it,”
Paces-Wiles said. “It was impacting us.
It was impacting our teachers. It was
impacting our classified workers. There
was no way we could not cover it.”
Attending the protest was an
enlightening experience for her, and
she was impressed by its environment
of collaboration and unity.
“There were a lot more people than
I thought there’d be and there were
lots of teachers….There were even
elementary school kids, which I thought
was interesting. The whole community
came in support of these classified
workers,” Paces-Wiles said.
East chemistry teacher Kelly Allen,
who emphasized the importance of
promises, financial or otherwise, being
kept in the context of a workplace,
draws attention to the monumental
impacts of the initial raise’s sudden
revocation:
“If that happened in this district,
what happened in Durham, there
would be a lot of very angry folks, and
I could potentially see a similar thing
happening here….” Allen said. “We’re
talking about people not being able to
pay their rent anymore or [not] having
enough money for food in addition to
their rent. That’s huge.”
East social studies teacher Deborah
Yamauchi, who has four children
attending Jordan High School, also
empathizes with classified staff and
believes their compensation has
long stood as something that can be
improved.
“I think I would respond in a similar
way if that happened in Chapel Hill….”
said Yamauchi, referring to the issues
with salary. “I think that classified staff
are very important.”
She believes the issue also goes
deeper than the district and should be
examined at the state level, because it’s
a matter of state budget decisions that
determine how much money school
districts are left to work with.
“This is downstream of that,”
Yamauchi said. “Durham wouldn’t be
in this situation if they hadn’t siphoned
off money from vouchers and charter
schools and, in general, budget cuts
from the school system.”
Because North Carolina is a “right
to work” state, it’s considered a
misdemeanor for public workers
to go on strike, making teacher
sickouts a point of legal contention.
Republican member of the N.C. House
of Representatives Jon Hardister, in
a WRAL article, refers to a sickout
as “a de facto strike.” The article
anticipates the possibility of more direct
restrictions on teachers’ abilities to take
personal days because of this sentiment
among Hardister and other Republican
lawmakers.
However, the issue of worker
compensation isn’t likely to dissipate
without a different response from the
district. Clark says she expects a mass
exodus of DPS workers if salaries don’t
change by the end of the year.
Finally, when asked what she found
most important when it came to rights
around her job, she responded with the
following:
“Equity. Compensation. Respect.
Value. And I feel none of that right
now…. We’re going through the
motions, but none of us want to be
here at this point, just because it hurts
so bad.”