Officials in hundreds of school districts across the country are encouraged to keep the gender preference of their students private, according to data from grassroots organization Parents Defending Education.
Over ten million students are affected by school policies that “openly state that district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents,” according to a running list of school districts with such policies maintained by the organization. Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, said in a statement to The Sentinel that parental rights and the wellbeing of children are usurped by the gender identity policies.
"Gender policies that include the deliberate deception of parents have become pervasive throughout the country,” she said. “Not only is this a betrayal of trust but it also puts children at risk: social transition is not a neutral act and schools have no business encouraging or facilitating it at all, let alone behind the backs of parents.”
A map on the Parents Defending Education website shows that forty-nine of the fifty states have at least one district with official transgender or “gender nonconforming” policies.
Somerset Hills School District in New Jersey, for instance, has a policy stating that students who self-identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming must be called by their preferred gender identity, and that “parental consent is not required.” The policy has been in place for four years.
“There is no affirmative duty for any school district staff member to notify a student’s parent of the student’s gender identity or expression,” the policy states. “In the event a parent objects to the minor student’s name change request, the Superintendent or designee should consult the Board Attorney regarding the minor student’s civil rights and protections.”
Documents were also leaked showing that teachers and school staff at Round Rock Independent School District in Texas were instructed to keep gender identities a secret from parents. One of the slides informs staff of “what not to do” when a student tells them they are transgender. “Do not contact their parents and out them to their families,” the slide says.
Most children who start to experience gender dysphoria have been influenced by social pressure, according to a study released earlier this year. The analysis says that the increasing number of children with gender dysphoria are the result of a “socially contagious syndrome” known as rapid onset gender dysphoria. The study also revealed that the social contagion disproportionally affects adolescent females, and that over half of adolescent girls had friends who also came out as nonbinary or transgender in the same period of time.
Nearly half of the children in the survey had preexisting mental health issues. The study noted that “youth with mental health issues may be especially likely to lack judgment necessary to make these important, and in the case of medical transition permanent, decisions.”
Parents Defending Education has also been collecting data on racism within public schools as well, chronicling the outbreak of critical race theory and leftist ideologies within curriculum and practice. A recent report on Seattle Public Schools showed that teachers and staff were required in 2020 to acknowledge the “stolen black and brown labor” in the United States, as well as recognize the indigenous tribes who once settled the land that is now Washington state.
“We respectfully acknowledge that our meeting is taking place on occupied Coast Salish land, and that we live and work on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people,” read one document shared with Parents Defending Education.
Progressive institutions indeed continue to push leftist ideologies in government schools despite the advent of the parental rights movement. A self-proclaimed “Marxist lesbian” was selected as president of the American Library Association, an organization under fire for allowing explicit pornography in school libraries, earlier this year.
