By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Statewide parent advocacy group, Power2Parent, will be holding a special community meeting in Logandale on Sunday, May 6. The meeting will be held from 6-7 pm at the Old Logandale School. All are invited to attend.
Power2Parent (P2P) officials have said that the local meeting is meant to give Moapa Valley parents, and other stakeholders, an opportunity to see what the organization does and become better acquainted with some of the people behind it.
“To be honest, Moapa Valley has earned a reputation in various circles lately for showing up and standing up for our kids in public meetings dealing with education,” said local mom Erin Francom, who also serves on the board for P2P. “Power2Parent has taken notice of the numbers of our people showing up to fight for these causes. They’ve seen a lot of common ground there. So they’ve decided to come out and give a chance for people to meet them and learn more about what they are doing.”
Francom admitted that a community meeting being scheduled on a Sunday evening was a bit unusual. But when P2P had gotten together with local leaders to determine a date, it quickly became clear that the time would be seriously limited.
“With the end of the school year coming up so close, there are activities and games and events all over the place,” Francom said. “That night was literally the only time left to schedule it. We know it is a Sunday and people usually would be spending time at home with their families. But we finally decided: What better time to talk about preserving family values than then?”
P2P Vice President Deborah Earl of Las Vegas was also somewhat apologetic about the unorthodox meeting time. But the only alternative was to delay it until the beginning of the next school year, she said. And the group felt that there was too much of importance coming up on the immediate horizon for such a long delay.
Most immediate is a May 11 meeting of the Nevada State Board of Education (SBOE) over state-wide regulations on transgender issues in schools. Earlier this spring, the SBOE held an all-day marathon meeting in Las Vegas. Parents showed up in large numbers to express concern about the proposed regulations.
A set of revised regulations have been proposed to be put to a vote at the May 11 meeting. But, despite all of the input of parents at the previous meeting, the revisions have seen very little change, Earl said.
“We think that they just nibbled around the edges, with little word changes here and there, to try and make it more palatable for parents,” Earl said. “But there are no real changes to it. All of our concerns are still there.”
Earl said that P2P is encouraging parents to show up at the May 11 meeting and, once again, voice their opposition to the proposed regulations.
If the regulations are approved, the next step is at the Legislative Commission for final adoption. There, parents will again need to be involved in contacting state legislators and holding them accountable, Earl said.
“We are encouraging people to get in touch with their legislators in the State Senate and Assembly,” Earl said. “Tell them how you feel about this and that you don’t feel like you are being heard. Ask them what they are going to do about it. This needs to become a real campaign issue for these legislators in the upcoming elections.”
Earl said that P2P would like to see the Legislative Commission set the regulations aside for a time in response to parents’ concerns. “We’d like them to send it back to the Legislature for the next session,” Earl said. “There are just a lot of vague things in there that need to be clarified.”
In addition to all of that, it is a good chance that the transgender policy issue will return again on the local level to the CCSD Board of Trustees this summer. After a series of meetings on the subject where parents clearly expressed opposition, the CCSD board voted in March to instruct district staff to develop language for a new gender diversity policy for the district. At the end of that meeting, Trustee Carolyn Edwards, who terms out at the end of this year, expressed a resolve to complete work on that policy language during this summer.
“Under no circumstnces will I agree to any kind of stall over the summer because people are on vacation,” Edwards said at the time. “I won’t be swayed by that argument.”
Earl said that parents will have to be prepared to be engaged in that process as well, should the need arise.
Francom concluded by reiterating that Sunday’s local meeting will be to continue gathering support and involving parents in these causes. She said it was important for people to know how important each individual is in the process.
“A lot of people think, ‘Well, it’s only me. I’m just one person. I’m not going to make a difference!’” Francom said. “But it is just that one person at a time that does make the difference. If we have 300 people who show up as just one person then that is a group that will make a difference. We have shown that already and we need to continue to do that.”
P2P was founded back in 2014 at a time when the CCSD was attempting to introduce a comprehensive new sex education curriculum to the region’s schools. At that time, parents throughout the district showed up en masse to multiple meetings to register their disapproval. The effort ended up stopping the process in its tracks. CCSD officials were forced to take a step back from implementation. Out of that experience, the P2P organization was formed.
Since then P2P has stated its mission is to “inform, organize and mobilize community members for the protection of fundamental parental rights.”
