Speakers called out the Riverside school board Thursday, Aug. 21, for not taking a stand for or against transgender athletes and accused the district of allowing a trans student to be bullied online.
The comments came nearly a week after a district social media post announced the forfeit of a girls volleyball game between Poly High School and Jurupa Valley High School. The post drew criticism by some who say the district allowed for the targeting and bullying of a transgender athlete on the Jurupa Valley High team.
The Riverside Unified School District’s Aug. 15 Instagram post did not say why the team forfeited that day’s match, but speculation on social media, Poly students who protested this week and parents of Poly players who spoke to Fox News allege the team did so in protest of AB Hernandez, a transgender athlete from Jurupa who has been criticized in the past.
In a Wednesday, Aug. 20, statement, Riverside schools spokesperson Liz Pinney-Muglia did not explain why Poly forfeited the game. She said later she could not comment on individual students or athletes.
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Riverside mother Maria Carrillo, wearing a Save Girls’ Sports T-shirt, is seen Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, after speaking to the Riverside Unified School District board. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
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Riverside mother Maria Carrillo, wearing a Save Girls’ Sports T-shirt, is seen Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, after speaking to the Riverside Unified School District board. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
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On Thursday, Riverside school board President Brent Lee said that the board could not ignore what was happening but said trustees and the district had to follow state law and the state Education Code.
“Every young person entrusted to our schools deserves dignity and respect and the opportunity to learn and participate fully in the life of their school,” Lee said.
He said the district was committed to this idea and that it must follow AB 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act. The 2014 law allows transgender and gender-nonconforming students to use sex-segregated facilities and participate in school programs.
“We don’t get to pick and choose which laws we like or don’t like,” Lee said.
Twenty speakers who stood on either side of the issue called on the board to take a stance during the meeting at the Riverside Adult School.
Abigail Jones, an alum of Riverside’s Martin Luther King High School and a former track athlete, said that in her 12 years in the district she had never seen the announcement of a canceled game.
She said that, when someone boycotted her as a transgender athlete, the rest of the team still showed up to play. Canceling the game was unfair to the athletes and the community, Jones said.
“There is no middle ground,” Jones said. “To try to take a neutral stance is to allow the injustice and harassment to continue.”
Jones was the subject of controversy last year after a student filed a lawsuit that accused Jones of taking her place on a cross country team and alleged that the district violated her free speech.
Jones called the post another example of the district creating a platform for anti-LGBTQ viewpoints. She alleged that last year the district allowed hundreds of students to violate the dress code by wearing T-shirts that said “XX ≠ XY” to harass her.
“Take down the post, protect all students,” Jones said.
Sandy Roy said the district doesn’t have accountability for what other people say because they have freedom of speech.
But that freedom applies to the board as well, Roy said, and constituents want to know where board members stand — particularly with an election around the corner.
Roy applauded the girls volleyball team for standing up against something in which it didn’t believe.
“We don’t want to play in a co-ed game, we want to play against girls,” Roy said the students were saying.
She called it a safety issue and said women were a protected class under Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prevents sex-based discrimination, harassment and violence in education institutions that receive federal money.
“That is the whole point of Title IX,” Roy said.
Hernandez is a senior who has competed on Jurupa Valley’s girls varsity volleyball and track and field teams since 2022-23. Hernandez was the subject of protests during last season’s track and field season. Hernandez placed first in the girls high jump and triple jump events at the California Interscholastic Federation State Championships in May and also finished second in the girls long jump.
The CIF introduced a pilot entry program before the state meet that allowed an additional student to compete in the events in which Hernandez entered. The program allowed a cisgender female competitor who was displaced by Hernandez to share placings in those events.
Nereyda Hernandez, Hernandez’s mother, was among those who spoke Thursday.
She said the state Education Code protects all students from discrimination and that denying her daughter equal participation was a violation of the law.
Hernandez said her daughter was not the issue, and that a coordinated effort outside the district was spreading fear and pitting parents against each other by using religion.
“This has nothing to do with fairness in sports and everything to do with erasing transgender children,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said Riverside school board member Amanda Vickers welcomed harassment to her child after an interview with Fox News in which Vickers said the forfeit was “significant for the sake of the safety of the female athletes.”
Lee said the district has started another year in a spotlight that does not focus on the district’s missions.
“We are the adults in the room,” Lee said. “… We have not done our job as adults.”
He said this is a nuanced issue and that students on either side have stepped up to lead the conversation, referring to the girls volleyball team’s forfeit of the match and a student-led protest at Poly on Wednesday, Aug. 20 that accused the district of creating a platform for anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
“I don’t know what the answer is, but the answer is not the status quo,” Lee said.
Board member Dr. Jesse Tweed, said that it was a polarizing topic and one that was not taken lightly. The district must follow the law and is not in a position to change it.
“I don’t want to burn the institution over something that we can’t stop or control,” Tweed said. “I want to come together where we can.”
The focus, he said, should be kept on students and he encouraged dialogue, even if it was hard to hear at times.
“I take a position of neutrality because I feel like I can serve best in that capacity,” Tweed said.
Vickers congratulated the girls team on its decision not to play and said that courage demands respect.
“They stood not out of hate, but out of conviction,” Vickers said.
She said that acknowledging a biological truth is not hate and that the girls decision was from a place of safety concerns.
“We must find a balanced path,” Vickers said. “One where advocating for the rights of one doesn’t trample on the rights of others.”
The board’s duty, she said, is to protect the rights of all students, not just some, and that true inclusion respects all voices.
In December 2024, some called for the resignation of then-Riverside Superintendent Renee Hill after the November lawsuit from the King student.
The incident prompted a movement called Save Girls’ Sports.
Several Inland Empire school boards have since passed resolutions calling on the CIF to bar transgender athletes from girls sports. They include the Chino Valley, Temecula Valley and Redlands boards of education. The resolution was brought up in Riverside Unified, but trustees turned it down.
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