Nearly 500 people signed up to speak to the Redlands school board Tuesday night, June 24, before it voted on policies to ban most flags and make it easier to remove explicit books.
The meeting appears to be headed late into the night as the Redlands Unified School District board looked to potentially bar all but the American and U.S. military flags and adjust its library policy to streamline the process of taking books with sexually explicit material off shelves.
A parent notification policy on the agenda was pushed to the next board meeting on Tuesday, July 8.
The library and flag policies were listed as “consent items,” a portion of the agenda that is decided upon in one vote and without board discussion. Opponents of the flag rules allege it’s a veiled attempt to keep pride flags off campuses.
Before the meeting, state Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-Colton, and Assemblymember Robert Garcia, D-Rancho Cucamonga, sent a joint letter to the board calling on trustees to drop policies it said are harmful to students and would marginalize the LGBTQ+ community.
“Very urgent and costly issues of student safety persist at RUSD schools, and I urge the board to abandon its ongoing publicity and political stunts and immediately pivot its attention toward solutions that will prioritize protection of our community’s children,” Reyes said in a news release.
“Every student deserves to feel safe, seen, and supported at school,” Garcia said in the release. “These proposed policies threaten that feeling by enabling censorship, forced outings, and exclusion, especially for our most vulnerable youth.”
The board allotted 45 seconds for each speaker. Board members Melissa Ayala-Quintero and Patty Holohan argued for more time.
“I understand that this is inconvenient for us, but they are our constituents and they deserve to have the right to speak,” Ayala-Quintero.
She said that, by cutting or limiting their time, the board was showing it did not value their input.
Board member Candy Olson said speakers could get their point across in 30 seconds and that they would say nothing the board has not already heard.
As people spoke, they alternated between holding orange papers that said, in bold: “Put Your Phone Away Candy” and books they alleged could be on the chopping block should the policy pass.
Though all three policies were discussed at a board workshop in March, the flag policy was introduced in January.
That policy would remove from campuses all flags other than the United States, California and military flags. The proposed policy states that the board’s goal “is to maintain a patriotic, safe, appropriate and welcoming environment.”
The proposal also states that district events must align with district goals without “without emphasizing or endorsing particular political, social or religious beliefs.”
Under the proposed library policy, if a book is “perceived” as sexually explicit by a member of the public, it would be removed within three days and be subject to a school board hearing set within 45 days.
The majority of speakers opposed the policies, calling them a censorship of the LGBTQ+ community and message that those students don’t belong.
Paige Mann, a librarian, said she believes there is a standard when deciding what is in a library and that personal beliefs should not come into play.
If the board was going to designate pride flags as a sex symbol, then by that logic, wedding bans, wedding photos and children should be banned as they also represent sex, Mann said.
Nancy O’Connor, a retired teacher and Redlands resident, said she was once proud to tell people she was from Redlands. The city used to be considered an educational and artistic hub that celebrated diversity, she said.
“People on the board are looking to turn the clock back … keep in mind that liberty dies where books are banned,” O’Connor said.
Redlands resident Sarah Russ said the board was at risk of “losing liberty.”
“These policies don’t protect students, they limit them,” Russ said. “… A democracy that fears books or flags is a democracy that has forgotten its origins.”
A small portion of the crowd supported the policies and said they aimed to protect children.
Lawrence Hebron, a former school board candidate, said the library policy was not about banning books but about focusing on what was appropriate for students. He compared it to introducing an infant to food, saying one would not give steak to a 1-year-old.
“What you feed their mind is equally important,” Hebron said.
Redlands resident Peter Hall said those in the audience against the proposal were not there to protect the First Amendment as they said.
“Don’t tell me you’re fighting for freedom of speech,” Hall said. “You are fighting for your monopolization of free speech.”
He said schools should be neutral places.
“You people are in the minority and yet you demand to dictate public policy for the rest of us,” he said.
The Chino Valley Unified School District passed a similar policy in November 2023 to make it easier to take books with sexually explicit material off shelves.
All three policies are reminiscent of those approved at other districts in Southern California. They have landed other districts in court.
The Temecula school board passed a similar flag policy in 2023, but rescinded it in December after a California Public Employment Relations Board ruling found that implementing the policy violated the state Educational Employment Relations Act.
The Chino Valley school board OK’d its flag policy in 2023.
Redlands’ proposed parent notification policy, similar to Chino Valley’s revised policy, would require schools to inform parents if their student moves to change their official or unofficial record. Some have criticized such policies as veiled attempts to target LGBTQ+ students.
A parent notification policy was part of a Redlands board workshop in March. Under the newly revised language, a parent can “opt-in” to receive notifications if their child changes any part of their school record, including a change in pronouns.
Chino Valley schools moved to rewrite its parent notification policy in March 2024 after a court ruling found that two parts of the policy were unconstitutional.
Its original policy — which required schools to inform parents if a child moved to change their pronouns, preferred name or look into gender-affirming sports or facilities — landed the district in court.
In the Redlands proposal, parents would receive a form at the beginning of the school year. District employees would be required to notify parents within three days of a staff member being told that a student requests to change their record.
Staff would then have to notify the principal, who would meet with the student to discuss the change. The student would be told that a parent would be notified of the change.
