Voters are deciding this fall whether parents should have greater access to public school documents such as medical and mental health records.
If passed, Ballot Initiative IL26-001, or I-001, would reinstate the 2024 version of Washington state’s Parents’ Bill of Rights and remove changes made by state lawmakers last year. This would expand the list of documents and materials parents can request from schools to include health and counseling files.
The opposition spans officials such as Gov. Bob Ferguson, the Seattle Times editorial board and advocacy groups, including the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault. Critics fear that reinstating the original version of the Parents’ Bill of Rights would discourage at-risk students from seeking help at school and roll back protections for victims of abuse.
The conservative political action committee Let’s Go Washington is leading the campaign for I-001. According to Hallie Herzberg, a spokesperson for the group, the effort is meant to improve communication between parents and schools.
“It essentially gives parents the right to know what’s going on with their students in schools.” She said that includes a range of documents such as “assessments that kids are being told to take about sexual preferences, or gender ideology, or family issues in the home.”
The initiative is part of a slate of ballot measures Let’s Go Washington is pursuing this election, including a ban on transgender girls playing girls sports at school and repealing the state’s “millionaires tax.” According to the Washington state Office of the Attorney General’s summary, the I-001 proposal reiterates a number of rights parents and legal guardians already have under state and federal law.
It would expand what the Parents’ Bill of Rights defines as “public school records” to include medical information, school counselor documents and other student files. The ballot measure would decrease the amount of time administrators have to provide documents to parents to 10 days, down from the 45 days required by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.
Herzberg claimed educators and school staff can withhold information, such as if a student begins using a new name or new pronouns. She said parents should not be kept out of the loop when it comes to their children.
“We do believe that parents should have the most information available to be able to care for their child because they’re the ones going to see them through every other moment when they’re not in school,” Herzberg said.
Many opponents of I-001 have united under the banner No Hate in WA State. They worry it could put educators in a position where they might out LGBTQ+ students. Democratic state Rep. Monica Stonier believes the initiative will cause a chilling effect, discouraging students from seeking out counseling services at school.
“Whether it changes anything legally or not is not my concern,” she said. “It’s the fact that it’s going to gum up the works of getting care to kids in their school settings.”
Washington’s Parents’ Bill of Rights was originally created by an initiative to the Legislature that was passed in 2024. However, it was delayed by a lawsuit put forward by a number of organizations including the ACLU of Washington that was later dismissed. In 2025, state lawmakers revised large swaths of the law, such as removing references to health and counseling records from the list of documents available to parents.
Stonier helped draft the current version of the law. She worries that if I-001 successfully reinstates the original version of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, it will have an overwhelmingly negative impact on LGBTQ+ students, kids struggling with mental health issues and children experiencing abuse.
“As soon as there's a threat that anything you say to a school counselor or a trusted adult in a school system will immediately be transmitted to somebody who could potentially be harming you, that’s going to shut down that line of communication from those children to the one trusted adult who may save their lives,” she said.
Critics of the ballot measure also say it is poorly written, which they believe could result in the erosion of some protections for vulnerable children. According to a review of I-001 by Pacifica Law Group, the ballot measure would roll back protections for abuse victims and could delay parents from being notified if a crime is believed to have been committed against their child at school.
Kai Smith, an attorney for the law group that assessed the initiative, said the ballot measure could make it possible for parents accused of committing a crime against their child to access sensitive information, such as social work documents.
“This limits protections for children who might be being abused. It reduces the types of records that would be protected,” he said.
Smith pointed out that the ballot initiative may also change the language relating to notification requirements if a crime is alleged to have been committed against a student. Currently, the state requires schools to notify parents immediately if it is believed that a crime has been committed against, or by, a student on campus or at a school event. The initiative would change that requirement to when a crime is “deemed” to have been committed. Smith said this change could cause confusion at schools.
“Under current law, parents are already entitled to immediate notice if there’s a crime that’s been committed, or suspected of being committed against their child, on school grounds or at a school-related function,” he said, adding that “this measure risks delaying that notice because there is now no immediate notification requirement, it’s based on when a crime is ‘deemed’ to have been committed.”
Let’s Go Washington disputes many of the claims made against the Parents’ Bill of Rights initiative. An attorney for the group wrote that the ballot measure would most likely not make it easier for parents investigated or prosecuted for crimes against their child to access certain sensitive documents.
They also released a separate memo stating that the ballot measure expands protections and notification requirements. According to Herzberg, the group’s spokesperson, critics are mischaracterizing the measure's changes to the Parents’ Bill of Rights.
“They’re trying to make them into something they’re not to distract from the point that they want to keep secrets from parents because they think parents are the problem,” she said.
If passed, Initiative 001 would officially become state law and the Legislature would not be able to change it for two years without a supermajority vote in both chambers.
