According to a local parent organization, two students were expelled from a California high school last year for “misgendering” a teacher for five days.
In the Glendale Unified School District, just north of Los Angeles, Herbert Hoover High School is where the alleged “misgendering” incident took place.
According to an email purportedly written by former Principal Jennifer Earl on May 24, 2022, the school also required the students to participate in “restorative justice” training. GUSD Parents Voices, a nonprofit that claims to seek to “support children’s educational goals and development” in the Glendale school system, broke the news of the email for the first time this week.
Glendale high school students suspended for 5 days for "misgendering" teacher, and then undergo "restorative justice (RJ)" education. Any comment on this @GlendaleUSD ?#gusdparentsvoices pic.twitter.com/RcTCLRPJRL
— GUSD Parents Voices (@gusdparents) July 5, 2023
“I suspended two students for five days each today and will be conducting RJ with students and teacher for the following,” Earl wrote in her email, according to the screenshot from GUSD Parents Voices.
“The students (not enrolled in his class) entered [the teacher’s] classroom one at a time and called him [a gender]. The teacher responded it is [a different gender identity] After doing so, they ran away. In interviewing them, they admitted to being curious about a transgender person. I asked my teacher how he wanted to handle it, if he wanted me to just teach them about misgendering or would he like me to speak about being trans. He asked me to educate on transgender. It was well received from students and parents. RJ will happen after suspension,” Earl added.
According to a Glendale school system official, a pupil may be suspended if inappropriate pronoun use develops into harassment.
“A student has never been punished, much less suspended, for accidentally using the wrong pronoun to refer to a peer or staff member. However, a student could be suspended if the action escalated to harassment or bullying,” a district spokesperson told Fox News.
GUSD Parents Voices said the “RJ” in the principal’s email stands for “restorative justice,” which the school district details on its website. The Glendale school district published an online “practitioner’s guide” on “Restorative Practices.”
The district’s guide says restorative justice is “a way of looking at criminal justice that emphasizes repairing the harm done to people and relationships rather than only punishing offenders.”
“Within schools, restorative justice serves as an alternative approach to traditional methods of exclusionary discipline, which often focus on punishment. Instead, restorative justice is a process involving the primary stakeholders in determining how best to repair the harm done by an offense,” the guide states.
“When there is harm or conflict within the established community, restorative responses help to repair the damage. This is done through processes that bring harmed and harmers together to address root causes of the conflict, support accountability for those responsible, and promote healing for impacted individuals. As a result, community is once again restored bringing back a sense of belonging to all,” according to the guide.
When parents demonstrated against the sexual content of the curriculum at a school board meeting last month, the demonstration descended into violence, making headlines about the Glendale school system.
Parents who were upset over the sexual and LGBT themes of the curriculum fought with Antifa activists outside the Glendale school district’s administrative offices, leading to the arrest of three persons.
After months of protesting and speaking out at school board meetings, parents of children in the district, particularly those from the Armenian American and Hispanic communities, prepared the demonstration. The parents demanded greater openness and a cessation of some LGBT curricula and policies, which they claim are at the very least wholly inappropriate for children of that age.
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