Top NC lawmakers summon Chapel Hill school officials to testify about objections to 'Parents' Bills of Rights' law

North Carolina legislators are summoning Chapel Hill school officials to Raleigh to explain their objections to a set of laws that ban discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools from kindergarten to fourth grade, among other things.

The law, which sponsors call the Parents’ Bill of Rights, was enacted in 2023. In addition to banning some classroom discussions, the law also bans teachers and staff from keeping a student's secrets from parents. Democrats opposed it, saying it would endanger danger for children who come from households that may not be accepting of LGBTQ people.

Social media accounts recently posted footage of the school board’s chairman, George Griffin, referring to the parts of the law as discriminatory and saying his district shouldn’t follow it.

Members of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee on Thursday sent letters to Griffin and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Superintendent Rodney Trice asking them to testify at a Dec. 3 meeting. The move comes after state Rep. Brenden Jones, a co-chairman of the board and the GOP’s majority leader in the House, said his office was investigating the district for disregarding state law.

“This body is deeply troubled to learn that Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has intentionally breached the North Carolina Constitution and state laws to indoctrinate children as young as six years old with inappropriate materials involving sex and gender,” the letters to Trice and Griffin say.

Griffin and Trice didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. In the social media video, Griffin said the school board views parts of the law as “blatantly discriminatory.”

He continued: “After some prolonged discussion, the board voted to just tell the General Assembly: ‘No thanks, we’re not doing this.’ … If we’re being asked to do something that’s discriminatory, we need to just say no.”

Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools spokesman Andy Jenks said the district is complying with the law. Jenks told WRAL in an Oct. 24 statement that Griffin made the comments during a recent forum for candidates running for the school board.

Jenks said in the statement that Griffin “was referring to local deliberations that occurred at the time of the law’s initial implementation, which required school districts to adopt specific policy language.”

Jenks added: “At the time, we took steps to go beyond the minimum requirements of the statute, and instead of just adopting the blanket policy language, we developed detailed, nuanced guidance for school staff in order to foster collaboration with families and protect the social-emotional wellbeing of our students.”