Some of the largest school districts in the United States are actively implementing policies that will keep any students’ “gender transitions” secret from their own parents, as part of an effort to promote the ideology of transgenderism.
According to the Daily Caller, several of the districts in question include Chicago Public Schools, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and New York Public Schools. These and many other schools have been actively working to shut the parents out of their students’ lives, with teachers and other school employees taking over a parenting role in the event that any such student is hit with the affliction that makes them believe they are somehow of the opposite gender.
The Chicago Public Schools district, which currently has over 340,000 students, has implemented “guidelines regarding the support of transgender and gender nonconforming students,” which includes a “student administrative support team” that is designated to provide support for such students; the guidelines specifically state that parents are not to be notified of any such “transition” for their children.
In Los Angeles, the school district of over 565,000 students officially has a policy in place called “Gender Identity and Students – Ensuring Equity and Nondiscrimination.” The policy tells teachers that they are forbidden from revealing a student’s “gender identity” to their parents, since the student may be keeping it a secret from them in case the parents are “not supportive of the student.”
And in New York, the New York City Department of Education, which is directly in charge of NYPS and its over one million students, has released protocols instructing teachers to not inform the parents of a child’s transition, since some students do not want their parents to know. If a student wishes to change their name and pronouns at school, they are not required to seek permission from their parents or a court.
“Parents, not teachers or school administrators, are first and foremost responsible for the health and wellbeing of their children,” said Alex Nester, an investigative fellow for the watchdog group Parents Defending Education. “School officials have no right to step into the place of parents in directing a child’s upbringing. And in doing so, they are sowing division between families and villainizing parents.”
“As the mom of a teenage daughter, she wasn’t allowed to go to the mall and get her ears pierced without her dad or I signing the consent form,” said Laura Zorc, a former school board member in Florida, and executive director of the parental rights group Building Education for Students Together. “Since I have the right to decide what goes in my daughter’s ear, it should be clear to all that parents have the right to direct the education and the upbringing of their children.”
Since early 2021, education has become a focal point in the culture war, as many public schools are among the primary culprits in forcing children to learn far-left talking points on such issues as race and sexuality. A grassroots movement began that same year in which parents began protesting at school board meetings and giving sometimes viral speeches in opposition to such indoctrination, with a focus on schools’ required reading and curriculum that forced such subjects onto the students. The movement ultimately led to a red wave in the off-year elections in 2021, where Republicans completely swept the statewide races in Virginia and flipped the state House of Delegates; Republicans also came within three points of flipping the governorship of New Jersey in the same cycle.