Anonymous Flyer Assails Oceanside School Board on Health Issue

An anonymously distributed flyer accusing the Oceanside Unified school board of giving students access to “baby killing services” has outraged parents and school officials who fought to allow schools to excuse students for confidential medical appointments without their parents’ knowledge.

The flyer attacked the three school board members who supported the policy in the board meeting last week, as well as a local attorney and an El Camino High School student who sat as a non-voting member of the board representing students from her school.

“I was appalled. It’s unbelievable that somebody could sink this low,” said board member Bibs Orr, who voted for the policy.

The flyer was distributed to local businesses over the weekend and made its way to at least one of the high schools, students and school district officials said.

The letter-sized poster was in the form of a mock advertisement for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and pregnancy services.

The poster read “ALL CHILDREN FROM OCEANSIDE JUNIOR & SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS ARE WELCOME (AGE 12 & UP). Thanks to OSB policy 5113 you may now have your fetus killed during school hours and school administrators will help keep your secret from your parents!”

The poster also said that “this policy is endorsed by” Oceanside school board members, and goes on to list the three board members who approved the policy and their telephone numbers.

It also listed attorney Janet Lacy, student Jackie Oxley, the League of Women Voters and the “American Civil Liberties Commitee.”

The policy had been heatedly debated by school officials last week in a public session attended by about 250 parents, teachers and students. Most of the more than three dozen speakers, mostly parents, spoke out against the policy.

“We have no idea of the origin and just about no idea of how broad the distribution is,” said Dan Armstrong, administrative assistant for the school district. “My own opinion is that this sort of thing is an insult to all of the people who participated in the discussion of the issue.”

The school board voted 3 to 2 last week to continue a policy of allowing students to leave school for confidential medical appointments without notifying parents.

Supporters of the policy had said it allows children in dysfunctional and abusive families to seek suicide counseling and medical attention for problems such as alcoholism and drug dependency.

Opponents of the policy had argued that parents hold responsibility for the welfare of their children, and that this policy gives the schools an active role in students deceiving their parents.

Even opponents of the policy, who had stressed that the issue was not abortion, said the flyer was out of line.

“That’s not my style at all. As a matter of fact, I think it’s kind of gross,” said Cheryl Masson, a parent who had led the charge against the policy.

But board member Dean Szabo, who voted against the policy, said the existence of the flyer meant that the board’s decision had left the community divided.

“The fact that that flyer turned up at all, that means that the community is still hashing out the issue, and I don’t think that that’s unhealthy at all,” Szabo said.

But Janet Bledsoe Lacy, a local attorney and supporter of the policy, called the unsigned flyer a “cowardly act by a disturbed individual who lacks the courage to make a statement publicly that therefore must be made by stealth.”

And while opponents of the policy never mentioned abortion in last week’s school board meeting, Lacy said this poster demonstrated that, for at least one person, abortion was the key issue.

“For the parties or person who distributed the flyer, this was their true agenda item. Their agenda was a pro-life agenda which had to do with wanting to stop abortion, which was not at all the design or purpose of the education code,” Lacy said.

Lacy and others particularly lambasted the distributors of the flyer for including the name of the El Camino High School student representative to the board, who made a speech in support of the policy last week.

“That flyer came out of a sick mind. And picking on a kid, I just don’t understand that,” said board member Robert Nichols, who supported the policy.

But the 17-year-old senior, Jackie Oxley, took the flyer in stride.

“That’s the price of standing up for what you believe in, and is the price of freedom in America,” Oxley said. “I view it as a kind of harassment. Those kinds of things can really harm you, but I’m not going to buckle under because of it. I’ve got way too much personal integrity for that.”