News/Commentary

‘Blackmail’: Calif. school board president blasts AG she says tried to make her back down on parental rights

August 9, 2023 | | Print Article

A California school board president has slammed state Attorney General Rob Bonta for trying to “blackmail” her into backing down from her support for parental rights.

At issue is a Chino Valley Unified School District policy, decided in June, forcing schools to give parents a head’s up if their children start to display “gender identity” issues. In response to this policy, Bonta launched a civil rights investigation into the district last week.

“Students should never fear going to school for simply being who they are. Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy threatens the safety and well-being of LGBTQ+ students vulnerable to harassment and potential abuse from peers and family members unaccepting of their gender identity,” the AG said in a statement.

“Today’s announcement stresses our commitment to challenging school policies that target and seek to discriminate against California’s most vulnerable communities. California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights,” he added.

Like other leftists, Bonta believes that when children show up to school one day and start identifying as gay, transgender, etc., teachers should keep this a secret from their parents.

Chino Valley Unified School District school board president Sonja Shaw staunchly disagrees.

“Involving the parents should have never been a national issue. It should be a common sense thing that we involve the parents,” she told Fox News.

She added that she views Bonta’s actions as veritable “blackmail.”

“It’s definitely to try to blackmail and to scare us and to scare other districts because they know other districts are scheduled to adopt — hopefully — this policy all throughout California. And no one wants to go into any kind of review because what it does is it ties up your staff,” she said.

She explained that the civil rights investigation into the district will burden everybody with new work that is “frivolous,” has “no standing” and that “no one wants to do.” It’ll also waste money.

“He’s also spending our children’s money here locally because we have to get legal involved, and that’s embarrassing for him. Why is he taking money from our children’s education to tie it up into something that absolutely shouldn’t even be an issue?” she said.

Especially when almost all the support has been directed her way, not his.

“We got tons of support from all over the nation, believe it or not. And throughout California. … But there was also the noise and the negativity, and the threats started to roll in. So we passed it on Thursday. On Friday I was already receiving death threats,” she said.

“It was a mixed review, but I could say the support totally outweighed the negativity that came in — the name-calling, things like that,” she added.

Shaw previously went viral last month when state schools superintendent Tony Thurmond showed up to a school board hearing to lecture her and parents alike about how the new policy would “put our students at risk.”

“When he hit the one-minute time limit for speakers, things got tense: Shaw cut off Thurmond’s mic and lectured him,” according to CalMatters.

“We’re here because of people like you. You’re in Sacramento proposing things that pervert children … You’re not going to blackmail us,” she said.

When Thurmond reportedly tried to respond, Shaw had security guards remove him from the room as the audience cheered.

Watch:

The altercation and what happened afterward — the board passed the controversial policy — elicited a death threat via phone.

“The next morning, our district got a phone call. A lot of things were said, but one thing was very clear — this person was going to kill me, and they said they were going to dismember my body parts, my limbs more specifically,” Shaw later revealed on a podcast, according to Fox News.

“Thank God we have an amazing police department who jumped on it right away,” she added.

She continued by saying that hours later, she checked her email account and found it loaded with threats as well.

“[Things like] ‘you’re going to die’ with other inappropriate words, ‘your children are going to die,’ and ‘your animals are going to die…,'” she recalled, adding that the terrorist group Antifa had also “declare[d] war” on her.

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Vivek Saxena
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