LAUSD Parents Threaten To Boycott Elementary School's Pride Assembly

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA — A group of parents at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywoodare organizing a boycott of the school's upcoming Pride Assembly, echoing a national backlash against Pride events among conservative parent groups.

The Los Angeles Unified School District issued a statement offering to engage with the parents.

"As part of our engagement with school communities, our schools regularly discuss the diversity of the families that we serve and the importance of inclusion," district officials wrote. "This remains an active discussion with our school communities and we remain committed to continuing to engage with families about this important topic."

In an Instagram post by 'Saticoy Elementary Parents,' organizers called on parents to keep their children home from school on June 2 to boycott the assembly.

“Keep your kids home and innocent,” the post reads. “Videos will be shown to the students including one where it says, ‘some kids have 2 mommies, some have 2 daddies’. This has caused outrage among parents, many of them emailing/calling LAUSD higher-ups to complain about this day and protesting by not taking their children to school that day.”

The message stunned some in the community.

“It was bone-chilling when I first read it,” Roberto Salcedo, a teacher at nearby Monlux Elementary, who received one of the flyers, told KTLA. “If you really read it for what it is, it’s to incite hatred against people who are different. The message I want parents to realize is that we are all different and we all need to respect our differences.”

However, one the boycott organizers said the effort is not about hate.

"We respect everyone, but some things are appropriate for children (of) that age, and some things are not," Saticoy parent George Dzhabroyan told KTLA. "Hopefully the message gets across and people understand that parents should be the primary contact of what their children should be exposed to and shouldn't be exposed to."

The planned Pride assembly on June 2 will include a reading of a book called "The Great Big Book of Families," which highlights diversity, a representative of the Los Angeles Unified School District said. Parents can request that their children not attend the program, according to the district.

The backlash against pride events, businesses and books that celebrate same-sex families is part of a national trend centered in conservative movements. But the debate has hit close to home of late.

Over the last week, the Los Angeles Dodgers have been embroiled in controversy for inviting a group of self- described "queer and trans nuns" to take part in the team's Pride Night. Under pressure from conservative Catholic groups, the club rescinded the invitation only to reverse course again amid backlash from the community. The decision to backtrack prompted a rebuke form the Los Angeles Archdiocese Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, Target announced plans to pull Pride merchandise that prompted confrontations and instances of violence from anti-gay customers.

"Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior,” the company said.

And last week, the Wald Disney Co. canceled plans to move more than 2,000 jobs from Southern California to Florida amid a highly public clash with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The decision follows a year of attacks from Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature, with Disney filing a First Amendment lawsuit against him and other officials last month, contending politicians there were using the power of the government to seek retribution against Disney. The entertainment giant was critical of a Florida law restricting instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.