A California parent, who is registered as a sex offender, is suing his child’s school district, asking that he be allowed to come to the school for his child’s events and to drop his child off, the San Diego Reader reports.
The lawsuit, filed on November 18 in Superior Court, claims that administrators in the Grossmont Union High School District are violating a state law that gives parents and guardians the right to come to the school so they can attend parent-teacher conferences, performances, and other functions.
In other words, he says the district’s policies prohibiting registered sex offenders from entering campuses are too restrictive.
According to the complaint, assistant superintendent Theresa Kemper told the father, who simply wanted access to transport his son to and from the high school and attend conferences and other school-related events, that registered sex offenders weren’t allowed on school grounds except on legitimate business or in the case of a family emergency.
She told him, he says, to use a shopping center next to the school for drop-off purposes.
“Since [no] provision of law requires public notice when a parent accesses the grounds of his or her child’s school, it is unclear whether the principal was simply misstating the law or identifying another policy unique to the district,” the lawsuit states.
The law giving parents the right to enter school grounds, he says, makes no special provisions for cases where a parent or guardian is a registered sex offender. That means a court will have to determine which law takes precedence—the law giving parents the right to access school grounds for certain events or school-related activities or the law prohibiting sex offenders from entering school grounds.
The school district had no comment on the claims or on the litigation.