There is a growing effort by teachers, school administrators, and mental health support personnel to quietly help gender dysphoric kids to “transition” without telling their parents. In June 2023, the Daily Mail Online reported about a virtual workshop where “dozens” of teachers “traded tips on helping trans students change gender at school without their parents’ knowledge, while criticizing a raft of new Republican laws on sex and identity.” The sponsoring organization, the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), is funded by the Department of Education.

The Daily Mail wrote that it had “gained access to [the] online session,” which lasted four hours, and reported that some teachers discussed using “subversive” tactics. These teachers claimed their own personal “code of ethics” superseded any laws. They further discussed how to “hide” transgender students’ new names and identities from their parents, and how, along with help from the appropriate school departments, to prevent certain online information screens from being visible to parents.

According to the pro-LGBT activist organization Human Rights Campaign “more than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record.” The organization overlooks the fact that this is music to concerned parents’ ears, and that, given the outrageous tactics of participants in the MAP-sanctioned workshop, for example, many of these same parents are pushing their state legislators to stop the indoctrination.

The Daily Mail’s report included an alarming example of the workshop’s content from Ohio-based trans educator Shea Martin, author of a “socialist, feminist, and anti-racist blog called Radical Teacher.” Martin spoke about “teachers addressing ‘sexuality’ with elementary students,” who are aged between 5 and 10. “When talking about men, women, playground crushes, love, and marriage with youngsters,” Martin said, “teachers should be wary of treating ‘reinforced heterosexuality as the norm.’”

The Mail further noted that not once during the workshop “did any teacher say parents might know what's best for their own kids, nor question whether affirmation-on-demand was the only way to help a trans-identified student.”

Parents Defending Education compiles list

The influential national organization Parents Defending Education (PDE) is compiling a list of school districts in each state that “have Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies” which openly advocate “that district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.”

PDE lists each school district on the "Investigations" page of its website, and invites parents who learn of a district policy that is not included on the list to submit the information online so the district can be added. Currently, 1,040 school districts are listed in 38 states, impacting a total of nearly 11 million students.

This type of investigative reporting by a grassroots pro-parent organization is key to resisting the harmful transgender agenda that seeks to automatically transition questioning or troubled youth without parental notification or consent.

State attorneys general oppose parents

The efforts of the MAP workshop attendees and personnel in school districts across the country to thwart parents appear to be allied with those of 16 state attorneys general, who last month “filed an amicus brief opposing parents’ rights and supporting policies where schools hide information about children’s sexual identity confusion from their parents.”

Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen reported that attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, The District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington jointly filed the brief in opposition to parents.

The brief supports school officials in Ludlow, Massachusetts, who allegedly concealed the gender-identity struggles of two 11-year-old students and were subsequently sued by their parents. The lawsuit was filed in April 2022 in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Springfield Division, by plaintiffs Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, and named the Ludlow School Committee and Lisa Nemeth, interim superintendent of Ludlow Public Schools, as defendants. Later, Foote and Silvestri were jointed by fellow parents Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron, whose children had not been harmed but who were fearful for their future welfare.

The parents charged that school officials “ignored clear warnings to the school by participating in conversations with their children about mental health issues,” for which the parents had already engaged outside help. Unfortunately, U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni dismissed their case last December, but the parents appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The lawsuit contends that the school violated the parents’ constitutional rights in a number of ways. First, they “exceeded the bounds of legitimate pedagogical concerns and usurped the role of the Plaintiffs....” Secondly, “the Defendants’ protocol and practice of concealing from parents information related to their children’s gender identity and efforts to affirm a discordant student gender identity at school violates parents’ fundamental rights under the United States and Massachusetts constitutions and violates children’s reciprocal rights to the care and custody of their parents, familial privacy, and integrity.”

The defendants countered by citing the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Guidance, which suggests that schools “should accept a student’s assertion of the gender-related identity when there is ‘consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity....’” It goes on to assert that “if the gender-related identity is sincerely held as a person’s core identity,” then the only reason a school can reject it is if “school personnel have a credible basis for believing that the student's gender-related identity is being asserted for some improper purpose.” But parents might reasonably question whether “school personnel” are either capable of interpreting or have the authority to interpret the purpose of a minor child’s gender dysphoric behavior.

The Daily Citizen observed that the 16 attorneys general obviously think that meeting secretly with minor children “to engage in counseling and advocacy related to mental health and discordant gender identity without parental notice and consent” is okay. They further imply that “deceiving parents by using one set of names and pronouns when communicating with them and another at school,” and “nurturing distrust for parents through secret meetings in which parents’ decisions and ability to provide for their children are questioned by school personnel,” is also perfectly fine.

According to the article, the AGs’ brief claimed that the plaintiffs “broadly frame their argument around the notion that they — and not schools — bear sole responsibility for making decisions regarding a child’s well-being.” Well, okay, yes, most parents would agree with that statement.

Manhattan Institute brief supports parents

Manhattan Institute Fellow Leor Sapir, Ph.D. submitted an amicus brief in support of the parents’ position and urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to overturn the lower court’s decision. The MI brief opens by stating:

• The fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of one’s children is among the most important liberties protected by the Constitution, one that the Supreme Court has upheld repeatedly. Amici believe that public-school teachers and staff, as state employees, are legally required to respect parents’ directions regarding their children’s health, including those related to gender and social transitioning.

It further points out that decades of research “has consistently shown that most children with gender dysphoria (GD) and most clinically referred children with gender-variant behavior come to terms with their natal sex (‘desist’) by adulthood.” It describes the dangers of transitioning children as “an active intervention.”

Parents may wish to avail themselves of the important information in this thoroughly cited and well written brief. Its conclusion states: “When school staff make decisions about social transition in secret, they usurp the authority of parents and violate their well-established constitutional rights. Most importantly, they put the mental and physical health of minors at risk.”

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