LONGVIEW — A Woodland School Board member argued that schools should not provide medical care for students as part of a presentation asking other board members to ask state lawmakers to vote against bills that would change the parents’ bill of rights bill.
Board member Trish Huddleston presented an example letter at the board’s Feb. 27 meeting. She said the letter was intended as an individual opinion, not an official statement by the board, but encouraged the other members to send copies or use it as a starting point to write their own letters.
The Washington parents’ bill of rights initiative passed into law in 2024. It expanded the definition of educational records to include medical and mental health records.
House Bill 1296 would remove student medical records from the list of educational records parents can request, prevent discrimination based on gender identity and clarify some other student and parent rights.
It would also remove a requirement that schools provide parents with prior notification of nonemergency medical services, including those that could cause a financial impact or require follow-up care outside school hours.
Huddleston said she can’t comprehend why a school would provide medical care that requires follow-up, and added that schools should not be providing medical services to students.
According to the parental bill of rights, follow-up care could include monitoring a student for pain or providing medications, medical devices such as crutches or emotional support.
But Huddleston had other ideas on what follow-up care would include.
“I don’t think it’s the role of the school to be doing medical appointments and referring them to abortion clinics and gender facilities and all these things,” Huddleston said.
She wrote in a Monday email that nurses should be able to provide necessary medication for students with parental consent, but that this does not include hormones or puberty blockers.
Sonja Bookter, president of the nonprofit School Nurse Organization of Washington, said school nurses do not have the legal authority to provide referrals because they are not prescribing providers, and that she has not seen evidence of any cases like the ones Huddleston described.
Bookter said school nurses are responsible for basic first aid and triage, and help students manage chronic conditions such as diabetes or allergies following the orders of licensed health care providers, with parental consent. They also coordinate immunizations and mandated vision and hearing screenings.
Some districts in Washington offer medical care outside of school nurses. For instance, according to the King County website, Seattle Public Schools has a partnership with several local health providers to offer free services including asthma care, immunizations, family planning and mental health counseling in schools.
Woodland Superintendent Asha Riley said Monday the medical care discussed at the meeting does not mean the board and district are against school nurses.
She said the board supports increasing the district’s nursing staff; the district has three nurses and is in the process of hiring a fourth.
What’s in the letter?
Huddleston’s letter addressed Senate Bills 5180 and 5181 and House Bill 1296,, though the SB5180 did not make a recent deadline.
The letter also addressed House Bill 5179, which imposes penalties for school districts with policies that are not in compliance with state law on civil rights, discrimination and harassment, and Senate Bill 5123, which expands the list of groups protected against discrimination in schools.
Huddleston said the proposed changes don’t align with Woodland’s community values.
“I can’t be more disappointed,” she said at the meeting.
The letter did not address specific issues with the bills, but stated that they amounted to “unnecessary interference” that would reduce families’ trust and could cause districts to lose federal funding by forcing them to violate the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Board member Tom Guthrie wrote in a March 7 email that he planed to revise the letter to better reflect his own disagreements with the bills. Other board members did not respond to requests for comment.
Guthrie praised the letters during the board meeting, saying that they would be a more effective form of advocacy than passing board resolutions, which do not have much legal weight and don’t tend to draw attention outside of the district.
Financial penalties
House Bill 1296 would also give the state the option to withhold funds or terminate programs at school districts that are willfully noncompliant with state law on issues including gender inclusivity policies.
Similarly, House Bill 5179 would allow the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to impose penalties on districts that do not comply with state law on discrimination, civil rights, harassment, bullying and curriculum requirements. This can include withholding up to 20 percent of a district’s state funding as a last resort for districts deemed to be willfully noncompliant.
Woodland updated its gender inclusivity policy in May to state that staff should not withhold information about students’ gender identity from their parents. This deviates from the model procedure provided by the Washington State School Directors’ Association, which states that staff should defer to students on whether they want that information shared because it could be dangerous to students with non-supportive parents.
A 2021 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that transgender teens have higher odds of experiencing physical, psychological or sexual abuse than teens who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
