Spokane residents have mixed thoughts on state parental rights initiative

SPOKANE, Wash. — A Washington ballot initiative aimed at expanding parental access to student information is drawing mixed reactions in Spokane.

Initiative 001 would require schools to provide parents with certain health and counseling information about their children upon request, in addition to academic records they can already access. The proposal would also shorten the timeline for schools to provide requested records from 45 days to 10 days.

Brooke Weidauer, a Spokane mother of five with three children still in school, said she supports the change. She wants to be able to access her kids’ health and counseling records so she could help them work through any potential issues.

“It is like our honor and privilege to protect and raise our children, and if we don’t know what’s happening in schools, how can we do that effectively?” Weidauer said. “We need to work with total transparency with these schools so that we can be a team.”

Spokane County’s chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit organization advocating for parental rights, shared similar thoughts on the initiative.

“It means parents can see what their kids are being taught, know when their child needs help, and are told when something serious happens,” the group sad in a statement. “That is not controversial. It is common sense, and it is what the overwhelming majority of Washington families expect.

The initiative includes exceptions that limit what schools can share when a parent is suspected of abuse. But Erin Carden, director of advocacy and education for Lutheran Community Services Northwest, said she worries those safeguards do not go far enough.

“It puts some of our most vulnerable students at risk for further abuse or has a chilling effect to keep them from reaching out to trusted adults for help,” Carden said.

Carden thinks the initiative has good intentions, but she also thinks the language is too vague.

“We’d all like to think that parents don’t abuse their children, and most parents don’t,” Carden said. “But we work with enough people a year to show that it does happen.”

Weidauer said she agrees that students experiencing abuse must be protected, but that the law should require schools to be more transparent than they currently are.

“I know that not every child comes from a stable household, but creating this blanket policy creates more problems,” Weidauer said.