The Redlands Unified School District Board of Trustees on Tuesday passed policies which restrict the flags that can be displayed in classrooms to the U.S. Flag, the California Flag and those of the U.S. military and provide for the removal of what are deemed to be sexually explicit books from school libraries, but deferred until later a consideration of a parental notification requirement with regard to students assuming a gender identification different from their biological state.
Many leftward on the political spectrum decried the policies as ones that were intended to remove gay pride flags from classrooms and ban books. They characterized the moves as the district’s latest lurch toward bigotry and intolerance following the election of board members Candy Olson and Jeanette Wilson in November. Others, however, lauded the move as one which counteracts the district’s longstanding superimposition of a political or philosophical ideology in what should be a neutral academic setting.
A crowd of approaching 600 residents, far more than could be accommodated in the board meeting room was present, including parents, students and faculty members, while 500 speaker cards to address the board were filled out – a number believed to be a record for not only the Redlands School Board but governmental executive/legislative bodies in San Bernardino County for a single public meeting. District Superintendent Juan Cabral, however, pointed out that one would-be speaker had filled out 72 cards, indicating he or she wanted to address the board on 72 topics. “I think one person was going to talk to every single item on the agenda,” Cabral said. “Another person asked for 25 cards.” The board came to a 3-to-2 decision that speakers, who in years past were given three minutes to speak and in more recent times a minute-and-a-half to speak, would be limited to 45 seconds each. Those speakers offered a wealth of opposing viewpoints relating to the topics being taken on by the school board.
A complicating issue was that the district had placed the policy issues relating to flags and books onto the consent calendar, which is by definition reserved for non-controversial matters. This was considered to be a questionable ploy by both those in favor and opposed to the policies, as was evident in that evening’s turn out.
There was no question about where board members Candy Olson and Jeanette Wilson, the board’s “conservative” faction who had sponsored the policy change proposals, stood with regard to the issues. Nor was there any secret that Patty Holohan and Melissa Ayala-Quintero, the board’s “progressive” or “liberal” members, were opposed to the changes. The question at play was how Board President Michele Rendler, who has sided with Olson and Wilson with regard to some controversial matters and who has on occasion sided with Holohan and Ayala-Quintero, would come down with regard to the proposals.
In remarks to the board, an individual calling himself Cooper said, “I am concerned that the proposed changes could open the door to censorship under the guise of process. While it is important to address concerns around library materials, this revision could be weaponized by special interest groups to ban books, particularly those representing diverse voices or exploring themes of identity and belonging that would send a chilling message to librarians and students alike.”
Jean Saglum said, “This policy change is attempting to circumvent librarians. Parents have the right to restrict books their child reads. They just complete a form. By voting yes on this policy change, you are willfully breaking California law, California Assembly Bill 1825, the Freedom to Read Act. This bill prevents librarians from banning materials based on topic, views, ideas, opinions, nationality, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability or sexual content unless it’s considered obscene under Supreme Court precedent.”
Siglum characterized those opposed to the flying of the gay pride flag in schools as “white privileged bigots. The personal display of any pride flag at schools in a classroom is protected under the California AB 1955 and Title IX,” she said.
With regard to “flag bans and book bans,” Cathy Dean said, “We already know history has taught us the only people that do that are dictators that are trying to shove things through that the general public doesn’t like. We saw it done with the Holocaust. They started with book bans. They started with flags and things like that, so only their flag could be flown. Doing this is incredibly lame. It’s incredibly unpopular. It’s going to cost us million and we don’t fuckin’ want it.”
Page Mann said, “Minors have First Amendment rights in schools, which include the right to receive information. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view. They should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
Nancy O’Connor praised Redlands as an “open-minded, artistic, cultural and educational hub. We are not Temecula. We are not Chino.” She attributed the effort to change the district’s book and flag polices to “people in the community and on the school board that are looking to turn the clock back. Liberty dies where books are banned.”
Lawrence Hebron said restricting sexually explicit material “has often been described as banning books, imposing on intellectual freedom and cutting off open-mindedness. It has nothing to do with any of those things. None of these books are going to be excluded from our society and our community, and parents can get them whenever they want. They can discuss them however they want. The real issue here is appropriateness. Every parent knows that you don’t feed T-bone steak, nacho chips and beer to a one-month-old child. It’s unhealthy. It’s inappropriate. But what you feed their mind is equally important, and study after study has shown this type of material is harmful.”
Peter Hall said that those of a liberal or progressive bent were representing themselves as being against censorship but that “Everyone who is complaining about the book ban, a bunch of you, had no problem with Amazon pulling a bunch of books from their store. In fact, you forced Amazon to pull a bunch of books. You also had no problem, during the COVID years, of practically requiring everyone who wanted to talk about the vaccine mandates and social distancing and stuff, you wanted them to have a doctorate in immunology just to discuss those topics, and you had people who were actually medical experts fired from their positions for just disagreeing with the established narrative. So, don’t tell me that you’re fighting for freedom of speech. You’re fighting for your monopolization of speech.”
As pertains to banning the gay pride flag from the district, Hall said, “Schools should remain neutral about this. If you really need to see the gay flag to feel included, then the issue is not with us. It’s with you. There are only about 7,000 people who are classified as LGBTQ living in this city and about 420 something of them are trans. You people are in the minority and yet you demand to dictate public policy for the rest of us. I say that has to stop. I say the school board should vote no on this ordinance and if you want to litigate, then litigate.”
Hall took issue with the “behavior that I witnessed at the last school board meeting. One student called the school board ‘a bunch of mothereffers.’ Another student blamed the school board for her suicide attempt after the pride flag was banned. All I’ve seen tonight from many of the speakers is raging narcissism, emotional manipulation egregious exaggerations and outright lies.”
Samir Bardova lamented that for the purposes of the book challenging policy, vulgarity and sexual content was being “left completely undefined. This means that even books meant to educate students on sexual assault prevention and its prevalence in the world can also be banned.”
Milo Easley said the district was “enacting anti-queer policies in our district.”
Erica Ruiz said “The book banning policy would allow… any weirdo who lives in Redlands to put in a complaint. The updated concepts and roles policies is simply a continued attempt to censor LGBTQ content from schools under the vague notion of obscene and age-inappropriate materials.”
She said, “LGBTQ content is disproportionately flagged under these subjective standards.”
Julia Stoddard of San Bernardino asked the board, “Why am I here on a Tuesday night to tell you guys not to be Nazis? There’s fascism knocking on my back door and you are bringing it up to my door step. I don’t want to see this in my county, in my town. Queer bodies are real. We are here. We are Queer. You cannot keep censoring us.”
Greg Brittain read a passage from a book checked out from one of the district’s libraries, one which gave an expletive-filled description of a sexual seduction to make the point that texts containing explicit material are available to any students who are either inclined to read them or come across them by chance.
“That is the kind of stuff we’re talking about,” Brittain said. “It is a betrayal of the trust of every parent, of every common-sense, common-decency parent in the district when you expose the children to that kind of material. That is what we’re talking about. Not having a special interest flag is not discrimination. It is not going to make people commit suicide. This is ridiculous liberal logic and an attempt to guilt you into doing what they want. Any more so than not having a BLM flag is discrimination against Black people or not having a La Raza flag is discrimination against Latino people. We want you to teach math history and so on and so on and to facilitate that, we want politically neutral and culturally neutral classrooms and do what we are paying you to do.”
Biranna Bremer labeled what Brittain had to say as “bigotry. I want you to know how incredibly offensive the book ban is. It is an abomination that you would try to put the wool over our eyes, so we don’t see what exactly this is about. You have heard countless comments about how this is targeting LBGTQ+ kids. That is true but it is also procedurally defective because it allows anyone to lodge a complaint against a book based off their perception of whether it is pornographic or their perception it is erotica, and then that book is within three days taken off the shelf before a merits hearing and then, within 45 days, you people get to then decide whether or not that book is valid.”
Steven Becker said “Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Olson have launched an unAmerican assault on freedom of thought and critical thinking. We will not bow down to ideological tyrants.”
Sarah Russ said that as a result of the board’s action, the community was on the brink 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.”
Valarie Tabor said the district’s banning of gay pride flags would be in vain and that it would “not go unchallenged. We will just replace it with rainbows or safety pins or lanyards or a thousand other things. You can’t legislate support for our LBGTQ students, staff and community. Like pulling up dandelions, more symbols will sprout in their place. I anticipate everyone is welcome here, you’re safe with me and you all memes, posters in rainbow fonts becoming all the rage in Redlands classrooms. I look forward to you running around like fools, trying to eliminate these symbols, while denying being homophobic and transphobic. You’re all jokes. Enjoy the circus.”
Isabella, a junior in the district, said the effort to ban books was “outrageous.”
A parent identified only as Jay proposed what he called “a compromise” which called for the board, which he characterized as “narrow-minded leaders,” not serving as the arbiters of what books are to be removed from the school libraries. He said the district should create a “naughty list [of books] reviewed and tagged as not appropriate by qualified” professionals. He said it should be left up to parents to decide what books can be read by their children.
The sentiment among those addressing the board with regard to the ban on any flags other than the U.S., California and the U.S. military from the district’s schools and facilities, and the removal of sexually explicit books from general circulation at the school libraries ran roughly 11-to-one against, as the seeming overwhelming majority of those present did not want the policy adopted. A good number of those opposing the policy were critical and even hostile toward both Olson and Wilson, as the proponents of the policy, as well as Board President Michelle Rendler, whom many believed was leaning in favor of the policy. A fair number of those against the policy, however, seemed to understand that Rendler represented the swing vote and that if she could be persuaded, she might become the crucial third vote against the policy. As the meeting progressed and the momentum of those present was heavily against the changes in policy, the outcome appeared to be in doubt and that it was possible Rendler might, despite the biting and highly personal comments vectored her way by a good number of those opposed to the policy, vote with Holohan and Ayala-Quintero against adopting the policy.
At the four hour, 13 minute and 59 second mark into the five hour, six minute and 31 second meeting, Anita Rhodes addressed the council. A substantial number of those against the policy had submitted speaker cards on multiple agenda items as a ploy to lengthen their speaking time from 45 seconds to 90 seconds or 2 minutes and 15 seconds to three minutes or even three minutes and 45 seconds and beyond. Rhodes, having taken a leaf out of the policy opponents’ book, adopted that tactic. By the time she finished speaking, the momentum against the policy had been broken.
“It is obvious this room leans one way, but that doesn’t intimidate me at all and I hope it doesn’t intimidate you,” Rhodes said, ignoring the board’s two progressive members – Patty Holohan and Melissa Ayala-Quintero – while vectoring her appeal to Olson, Wilson and Rendler, in particular the latter. “I appreciate that you guys take the disrespect that you do, but just like librarians and all the others here today, nobody makes the moral and value judgments for our children but us. Your constituents elected you to do that. They’re trusting you, Candy. They’re trusting you, Jeannette.”
Rhodes addressed, briefly, the dilemma of the district’s students who fall outside the heterosexual mainstream, expressing a qualified degree of compassion for their crisis of identity and confidence, but then upbraided them for drawing attention to their sexuality and perpetuating their psychological crisis by making an issue of something that might otherwise be bypassed.
“With respect to flags: Flags are an advertisement,” Rhodes said. “The children are concerned about being bullied, being made fun of. They’re afraid.” She proffered those of an alternative lifestyle with some advice, telling them, “Stop advertising your sex life. I’ve said this so many times. You can have camaraderie without advertising to the world your sex life. There was a time we taught our children to keep things like that private and personal. Flags also confirm allegiance. So, to say the flags are not about their sex life: They are gay pride flags! They are LGBQT flags! The last I knew, that was the homosexual identity in all of its manifestations. So that’s a straight-out lie and it’s meant to deceive you,” Rhodes said, her comment intended particularly for Rendler.
Rhodes continued, refocusing her attention to the entirety of the board. “With respect to the books: We are not asking for books to be banned,” she said. “Allow parents to make a decision about what they want their children to have exposure to. You guys [i.e., the policy opponents] are demanding, the constituents here are demanding their children have access to sexually explicit books, but they don’t want to respect their neighbors, who don’t want their children to have that. This group of people [the policy opponents] are so demanding and so intolerant, so disrespectful of other people’s right to exist, it is unbelievable. And they think that we should just bow to them? That’s not going to happen. I’ve said this before: We’re not going to cave to you. We’re going to be respected and recognized, whether you like it or not. Quiet as it is kept, there are more of us than there are of you, but we’re not as belligerent and demanding as you are. I want to commend the board members. I want you to remember, these people may not like it because they cannot have their way with our children. They’ve got marriage. They’ve got the right to adopt children. They’ve got acceptance as being normal. Now, they want access to our children. The answer is, ‘No.’ I may be the only voice here strong enough to say it, but I mean that.”
She then counseled, Olson, Wilson and especially Rendler: “Don’t worry about getting reelected. Your constituents are not here. Their constituents are. So, don’t even be intimidated. Don’t even concern yourselves with it.”
Both Olson and Wilson, during their previous six months on the board, had learned the futility of engaging in any sort of elaborate verbal explanation of their rationales for their votes during meetings, as these had triggered vitriolic responses from the members of the gallery opposed to their agenda, resulting in their getting into a back-and-forth with their opponents, in which they surrendered their poise in the process. More particularly, they were conscious that the histrionics of a handful of the policy opponents, replete with overstatements, pointed personal attacks and occasional vulgarity and profanity, had done substantial damage to their own cause, even if it were just rhetorical, which was weighing upon Rendler, who was personally offended by the manner in which the decorum of the meetings she had been conducting had been damaged by the circus-like and undignified atmosphere. Wilson and Olson allowed that reality to speak for itself and did not engage themselves in a prolonged or in-depth justification for their proposals.
Holohan called the proposal “a slap in the face to our librarians who work hard all the time.” She implied that withdrawing the presence of the gay pride flags would threaten the district’s currently “safe and inclusive” atmosphere.
Holohan said she didn’t understand how the proposed policies upheld board values to create a safe and inclusive environment.
“This goes against what we are trying to do here,” she said. She predicted the district would be challenged legally over the policy.
Ayala-Quintero said she found it personally repugnant and embarrassing to have to be present on the board dais with the likes of Olson, Wilson and Rendler, whom she said were prejudiced against and both cruel and unfair toward homosexuals.
While the policy’s opponents maintain that they are exclusionary and closed minded, the flag policy states that its goal was “to maintain a patriotic, safe, appropriate and welcoming environment” and to achieve educational goals “without emphasizing or endorsing particular political, social or religious beliefs.”
The book policy provides for a challenged book to be temporarily removed and a hearing scheduled to determine whether a book is actually sexually explicit before it is permanently deemed so and banned, such that it could be returned to the library shelves after the 45-day deadline for the hearing if such a finding is not made.
The Redlands School District in many ways is following in the wake of the Chino Valley Unified School District, which in 2023 passed a similar policies, one of which allows for the removal of sexually explicit materials from its libraries, another restricting the flags that can be flown on campus and a parental notification mandate, one that originally specified gender reidentification but later was changed to pertain to students altering their official records, thereby overcoming a legal challenge.