‘A perfect microcosm’: one town’s lawsuit and the rightwing battle for California schools

Chico is one of several statewide districts that saw student privacy and parental rights' take center stage in 2023

Kelly Staley first learned about the lawsuit from a reporter. A parent was suing her, the superintendent of the Chico unified school district, over an alleged parental secrecy" policy, the reporter said, claiming a school counselor had encouraged her fifth-grader to adopt a new gender and that the school had withheld that information.

Staley, who has overseen this northern California school district for nearly two decades, was caught off-guard. The district has never had any such policy, she said, but adhered to the student privacy guidance set by the state department of education that prevents schools from outing students to their parents without permission.