NEW CALIFORNIA STATE legal guidelines will shield the privateness of LGBTQ+ college students, be certain that the historical past of Native People is precisely taught and make it tougher to discriminate in opposition to individuals of shade based mostly on their hairstyles.
These and different new items of laws will likely be in impact when college students return to campuses after winter break.
Colleges can’t require parental notification
The Assist Educational Futures and Educators for In the present day’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, additionally protects faculty employees from retaliation in the event that they refuse to inform mother and father of a kid’s gender choice. The laws, which works into impact on Jan. 1, additionally supplies further assets and assist for LGBTQ+ college students at junior excessive and excessive colleges.
The laws was created in response to the greater than a dozen California faculty boards that proposed or handed parental notification insurance policies in simply over a yr. The insurance policies require faculty employees to tell mother and father if a baby asks to make use of a reputation or pronoun totally different from the one assigned at start, or in the event that they have interaction in actions and use amenities designed for the alternative intercourse.
“Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety and dignity of transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California,” mentioned Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, creator of the invoice, in a media launch. “While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family.”
Opponents of the invoice, together with Assemblymember Invoice Essayli, R-Riverside, indicated that the difficulty will likely be settled in court docket.
Correct Native American historical past
Constructing a Spanish mission — out of Popsicle sticks or sugar cubes — was as soon as a typical project for fourth-grade college students in California. The state curriculum framework adopted in 2016 says this “offensive” project doesn’t assist college students perceive this period, significantly the experiences of Indigenous Californians topic to pressured labor and lethal illnesses from Spanish colonizers.
However supporters of a brand new regulation that went into impact on Jan. 1 say that there are nonetheless grave issues that the historical past of California Native People — together with enslavement, hunger, sickness and violence — continues to be deceptive or utterly absent from the curriculum.
AB 1821, authored by Assemblymember James Ramos, D-San Bernardino, goals to deal with this. When California subsequent updates its history-social science curriculum — on or after Jan. 1 — it asks that the Instruction High quality Fee seek the advice of with California tribes to develop a curriculum together with the remedy and views of Native People throughout the Spanish colonization and the Gold Rush eras.
“The mission era of Spanish occupation was one of the most devastating and sensitive periods in the history of California’s native peoples and the lasting impact of that period is lost in the current curriculum,” based on a press release from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, one of many supporters of the laws.
Instructing about desegregation in California
One other regulation that additionally goes into impact this yr additionally requires the state to replace its history-social science curriculum. AB 1805 requires that the landmark case Mendez v. Westminster College District of Orange County be integrated into the historical past social-science curriculum up to date on or after Jan. 1.
The case, introduced in 1945, challenged 4 districts in Orange County that segregated college students. The plaintiffs within the case had been Mexican-American mother and father whose youngsters had been refused admission to native public colleges. The case led to California changing into the primary state to ban public faculty segregation — and it set a precedent for Brown v. Board of Schooling, which banned racial segregation in public colleges.
The Mendez case is referenced within the history-social science curriculum that was final adopted in 2016 for fourth- and Eleventh-grade college students, in addition to the Ethnic Research Mannequin Curriculum, for example of inter-ethnic bridge-building.
The Westminster College District wrote a press release in assist of the regulation to make sure that the case is “properly recognized and rightfully incorporated into the state’s education curriculum.”
Defending in opposition to hair discrimination
Meeting Invoice 1815 makes it tougher to discriminate in opposition to individuals of shade, together with college students, based mostly on their coiffure. Though such a discrimination is already prohibited by the CROWN Act, it has not prolonged to beginner and membership sports activities.
The brand new laws additionally clarifies language within the California Code, eliminating the requirement {that a} trait be “historically” related to a race, versus culturally, to be able to be protected.
“(This bill) addresses an often-overlooked form of racial discrimination that affects our youth — bias based on hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks, and twists,” acknowledged a letter of assist from the ACLU. “By extending anti-discrimination protections within amateur sports organizations, this bill acknowledges and seeks to dismantle the deep-rooted prejudices that impact children and adolescents of color in their sports activities and beyond.”
Safety for youngster content material creators
The brand new legal guidelines develop state legal guidelines that had been meant to guard youngster performers. Senate Invoice 764 and Meeting Invoice 1880 require that a minimum of 15% of the cash earned by youngsters who create, submit or share on-line content material, together with vloggers, podcasters, social media influencers and streamers, be put in a belief they will entry after they attain maturity.
This story initially appeared in EdSource.
