Meet Jessica French for the Shasta County Board of Education 

Jessica French is one of five candidates competing for two four-year seats in SCOE’s Area 2. She’s running against Dolores Lucero, Don Aust, and Amy Cavalleri as well as Jackie LaBarbera, and Richard Gallardo who both declined to interview with Shasta Scout. Candidate responses to seven questions have been curated and paraphrased for this format.

Scout: Describe your background and what motivated you to run for the SCOE Board. 

I’m the mother of two children that currently attend public school and I have been working with high school students that come from other countries to attend school here for the last 16 years. Within that role, I’ve worked with our local public school system, including administrators of all of the local high schools, parents that are in the school districts that host my students, as well as the students themselves. So I’m very familiar with all of our local schools and the challenges they face. I’ve also been the vice president and communications director of a local PTA and have been asked to sit on the board for my kids’ school as a parent representative.

One of my children has special needs. He’s in special education, so I’ve spent pretty much his entire public education advocating for him. I also have been a legal guardian to many different children over the years, and I have had to navigate the school system as part of responding to their emotional or behavioral issues. 

I am very familiar with most of SCOE’s programs because I’ve actually had children that I was responsible for that were part of these programs. I’m a big advocate for programming for children that need it, especially programs that combat all of the stuff that kids that struggle are going through, including poverty, not having stable homes, and needing therapy.

I want to support improving public education. I want to support teachers. I feel that there’s a group of people that have been villainizing public education and teachers, and some of those people are currently running for the school board. I’m running because I don’t want people that are anti-public education and anti-teacher to be in control of our public education system in any kind of way.

Scout: What is the Shasta County Office of Education responsible for? 

The Shasta County Office of Education is responsible for individual programming. They also deal with at-risk youth. So one of their big programs is the education of kids who are in juvenile hall through what is called the Excel Academy. 

One of the SCOE programs that I’m familiar with is their early childhood services. They provide funding for families that need daycare and preschool for their kids when they’re little. SCOE also provides services for foster care kids and helps identify the needs families have to ensure their child is successful at school. 

I know there’s a lot of talk from other candidates about schools not needing to participate in things like mental health. If certain needs aren’t met for children, they’re not going to actually learn. If needs for mental health and stability aren’t being met at home, then schools need to help provide those kinds of things. Bridges to School Success is a SCOE program that manages some of those mental health programs. They incorporate Triple P (Positive Parenting Program), which I’m also a trained provider of. 

They also deal with the SARB (School Attendance Review Boards) process, which makes sure that students are getting to school. But mostly SCOE works to support all of the public schools, and makes sure that schools are spending their money appropriately. 

SCOE supports schools with services, but they’re not in charge of schools. 

Scout: What oversight does SCOE have over individual school districts?

SCOE doesn’t have very much oversight of school districts. Every school district has their own superintendent, their own school board, and their own principals at their own schools. Sometimes the superintendent and principal are the same if the school is small enough, but school districts have their own jurisdiction. SCOE only provides financial oversight and programming that schools can opt into. 

Scout: How does the Board’s responsibilities differ from individual school boards? 

SCOE provides a lot of services that they can support schools with, but they’re not in charge of schools. Other than their own programming and ensuring schools are fiscally responsible, SCOE doesn’t have direct oversight.

Scout: Have you received donations of over $1,000 and if so from what groups or organizations? 

No, I have not. I have not sought endorsement from anyone. 

Shasta Scout reviewed French’s candidate contributions via the Shasta County Elections Office. She has not received more than $1000 from any individual donor. Total monetary contributions total around $1,500.

Scout: Discuss your thoughts on public education in Shasta County. 

I’m a big advocate for public education. Teachers have been heroes in my life. Over the years, my family has gone through a lot of struggles, especially since the 2018 Carr Fire. It feels like there’s been one traumatic event after another, and I’ve always had really close relationships with my kids’ teachers. They’ve been like extended family to us as partners in raising my children. 

The reality is, families have to work. We also need public education. We pay for it with our taxes. So I’m a big advocate for parents being involved in their children’s education as much as they can be. 

Scout: What are your thoughts on “Parents’ Rights?”

I believe in parents’ rights. We have a ton of parental rights. I sign pages and pages of what my rights are every time I enroll my kids in school, or when they watch a movie in school, or when  they play a sport, or when they want to see a counselor, or if they go to the nurse. I currently have the right to approve for my child to do all those things. So I think that there is this false narrative being spread that our rights as parents are under attack.  

The SAFETY Act was a response. We had already had a policy in place in our school systems if a child were to come to a teacher to say they feel they’re a different gender, or want to be called by a different name. The protocol that was in place was to create a team of people to support the student, and involve parents, “when appropriate.”

Apparently it’s those words “when appropriate” that are what some people were against, because they believe that parents should always be notified. As a result, some Districts tried to change their policy so that parents were always notified in every circumstance. But the problem to me is that there are some circumstances where involving parents might endanger a child. Maybe a child doesn’t want their foster parents they’ve been living with for two days to know this information. Maybe a child lives with a grandpa who is from an old-school mindset where he may be violent to the child. My point is, there could be instances where it’s not appropriate for the safety of the kid to notify parents, and so I agree with the original policy that left that space for schools to decide if it wasn’t appropriate.

I’m pro-SAFETY Act. But it’s important to say that I don’t think schools, teachers, administrators, or bus drivers should be involved with responding to a child’s identity needs unless they’re asked to. I also think that children have the right to privacy in some instances. For example, both my children have been in counseling. We’ve been through a lot of traumatic things. There are things my children haven’t wanted to talk to me about at certain stages, because we’ve been going through a lot. They don’t want to burden me with their own struggles. I’ve been very thankful that my children had counselors to go to and talk to about these things, and to help them learn how to come to me and discuss things that were important to them. 

I also think we have the responsibility to create an environment for children where they feel they can trust their parents with something as serious as their identity. If the child is not wanting to loop in their parents, that’s concerning to me. I feel that the parents should accept more responsibility for their role in why their kids don’t want to talk to them. 

I’ve asked a lot of questions to teachers, parents, and students. How often have you seen a transgender student on campus where they’re hiding this from their parents? Every time the answer is never. I still haven’t come across one single example of this situation where the child is transitioning to a different gender at school and the parents don’t know. I think that’s the basis of my frustration with this whole façade of parental rights. I feel like they’re creating a problem where one doesn’t exist, and we have so many other problems to deal with in our school systems. We have below 50% reading ability in our children. We have poverty, a mental health crisis, fentanyl overdoses, a vaping epidemic. We have all kinds of stuff that our attention should be on instead of this fake problem. I want to be a support to those real problems. 

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