While that’s not a big surprise, they made some false claims about I-001, so we wanted to be sure you have the facts you need to help your friends and neighbors understand why voting YES on I-001 is so important.
Below, we’ve identified the top false statements from their article. Read through them, then send this email to 10 friends to make sure they have the information they need to talk to voters.
Claim: Most of these parental protections already exist, so I-001 is unnecessary.
Response: Because of the legislature passing HB-1296 in 2025 and stripping rights from parents that were created by I-2081 in 2024, this statement is entirely false.
Here are some of the main changes I-001 would make to existing law:
• Current law gives schools up to 45 days to provide education and personal records; I-001 requires records within 10 business days.
• I-001 expressly defines school records to include medical/health records, mental-health counseling records, vocational counseling, discipline, attendance, and other student-specific files maintained by the school.
• I-001 requires notification when schools arrange medical treatment requiring follow-up care outside school hours.
• It requires immediate notification when a child is taken or removed from campus without parental permission, including to a youth shelter or host home.
If the rights were already fully protected, the Legislature would not have needed HB 1296 to rewrite the parental-rights law voters enacted through I-2081.
Claim: “The real driver behind this effort” is access to mental-health records.
Response: Giving parents access to information about their students and ensuring they aren’t the last to know about what’s going on in the classroom is the real driver.
Mental-health records are one of eight specifically enumerated categories of school records in I-001. The initiative contains significant provisions that have nothing to do with mental health, including medical notification, law-enforcement notification, removal from campus, sexual-content opt-outs, curriculum access and academic-performance notification.
Keeping kids safe and reinstating parents, not government employees, as the primary stakeholder in their child’s care is the “real driver” behind I-001.
Claim: A child discussing “gender confusion” with a school counselor could have that information disclosed to the parent.
Response: I-001 says parents may inspect records of mental-health counseling maintained by the public school. It does not say that every conversation between a student and counselor must immediately be reported to parents. Counselors and parents will be allowed to work together to come up with the best plan forward for a student, not counselors working on their own and making decisions for a parent.
The initiative also contains an explicit abuse/neglect safeguard:
A school is not required to release medical, health or mental-health counseling records during an investigation of child abuse or neglect when the parent is the target, unless the parent obtains a court order.
Students still have access to mental health resources in schools andcounselors remain mandatory reporters that must look out for the best interests of students by allowing parents to be part of the conversation.
Claim: Supporters imply schools can “spirit children off to medical facilities to change genders — without letting parents know.”
Response: While this isn’t the case for everyone, it is the case for many families in Washington State. See an example from an anonymous family who fled the state and a family who still hasn’t heard from or seen their daughter since November.
While this isn’t always the case for every family, I-001 does significantly improve protections for families by:
ensuring prior notification when medical services are being offered to their child, except emergency treatment;
guaranteeing notification when medical services or medications could affect insurance payments/copays;
providing notification when the school directly or indirectly arranges medical treatment requiring follow-up care beyond school hours.
Parents are being left out of the conversation when it comes to care for their children and you don’t have to take our word for it, you can listen directly to the families who have been impacted. I-001 provides protections for parents and students and takes government employees out of the equation.
Claim: I-001 “actually weakens” crime notification.
Response: Current law requires immediate parental notification when a school receives a report that a crime is alleged to have been committed against a child on school property during the school day or during a school-sponsored activity. It also addresses circumstances in which a child is detained based on probable cause for criminal activity at school.
I-001 removes those geographic and time limitations. It requires immediate notification when a criminal action is deemed to have been committed against the child or by the child. HB-1296, current law, limits the right to crimes occurring on campus, during school hours, or during a school-sponsored activity, which means that existing law is narrower than I-001.
I-001 broadens protections for students because it doesn’t restrict the incident occurring to a location, or time and requires immediate notification to parents.
Claim: Students may avoid counseling because parents could obtain their records.
Response: Mental health counselors will not be required to turn over transcripts of their conversations with students. When a public institution creates and maintains mental-health counseling records concerning a minor, I-001 places the parent, not the school, in the position of having access to those records, subject to its abuse/neglect safeguard.
The Editorial Board assumes the conclusion: that confidentiality from parents should take precedence because disclosure might discourage some students from seeking counseling.
The competing concern is that excluding parents from knowledge of a minor child’s significant mental-health issues can itself carry risks, particularly when parents are responsible for obtaining treatment, monitoring behavior and caring for that child outside school.
Here’s the bottom line: The Seattle Times believes parents shouldn’t have the right to more information about their child.
Teachers, parents, doctors, counselors, student-right advocates, and hundreds of thousands of Washington State signers couldn’t disagree more.
If you believe that parents have the right to know about what’s going on with their students in schools, VOTE YES ON I-001 THIS NOVEMBER.
– Darren L.
LGW Executive Director