“We are neither for or against gun rights,” Three Rivers School District Superintendent Dave Valenzuela said.
A school fundraiser for Hidden Valley High School caused a heated debate after its booster club posted a picture of an AR-15 rifle it’s raffling for its fifth annual dinner and auction.
“The district never had any knowledge of that,” Valenzuela said. “They didn’t ask us for permission and typically they don’t.”
But Valenzuela says that’s going to change. Now outside organizations that want to support any of the Three Rivers Schools must have their advertisements approved by the district.
“To the public it looks like the school district is putting this information out so there was a lot of disbelief from the public as to why the school district would be doing that when in fact we weren’t,” he said.
The post also created controversy for supporting Second Amendment rights.
“We are not going to be promoting any kind of advertising or publicity around firearms,” Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela says hunting riffles have been raffled off to help support schools in the past.
“They make a lot of money but in those cases the advertisement celebrated the club or organization that was being supported and not the gun itself,” he said.
While the auction isn’t on school grounds Valenzuela says promoting guns has no place in his schools.
“Weapons and schools don’t mix and that’s not the message that Three Rivers is going to send,” he said.
We’ve reached out to the booster club but have not heard back. Right now we are unsure if the rifle is still being raffled off in next Saturday’s auction.
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