A California school district is reportedly instructing teachers to conceal students’ gender identities from parents. Teachers are instructed to not share this information without permission from the student.
Documents shared with parental rights organization Parents Defending Education show that junior high teachers at the Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County, California were told that “revealing a student’s gender identity to parents without permission violates a student’s privacy rights.”
“Under the California and U.S. Constitutions, we have a protected right to privacy, which includes the right to keep your sexual orientation, gender identity or that you are transgender private,” one of the teacher training slides said. It added that even if a student is “out” as transgender at school and not at home, teachers can “reasonably expect that they’re [parent’s] not going to find out.”
Another slide lists a slew of “outdated” words, including “homosexual,” “transexual” and “queer.” It claims that some of these terms are “derogatory and offensive,” and that “TERF and Gender-Critical” people are people who seek to exclude “trans women,” which are biological men, from women’s spaces.
The presentation claims that the teachers are “lucky to live in California, where laws are among the most progressive in the country.”
“Telling teachers to hide vital information from parents about their child’s mental health and wellbeing is immoral and dangerous,” Alex Nester, an investigative fellow at Parents Defending Education, told Townhall.
“Parents, not teachers, are responsible for directing the care and upbringing of their children. This includes issues of sexuality and so-called ‘gender identity.’ It’s shocking—though unsurprising, given the state—that a school would explicitly instruct teachers to exclude parents from such personal conversations. It’s shameful that Chino Valley wasted time and resources peddling nonsensical gender ideology instead of focusing on academics and student success,” she added.
Last week, Townhall reported how a school district in San Francisco released guidelines for teachers to carry out secretive gender transitions for students unbeknownst to their parents.
Over the summer, a school district in Virginia made headlines for unveiling similar policies. As a result, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration released guidance that prohibits schools from concealing information about student’s gender identity from their parents. In addition, the guidance requires transgender students to use bathroom, locker rooms and participate in sports teams that align with their biological sex instead of their gender identity.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (SC) introduced legislation, the Parental Rights Over the Education and Care of Their (PROTECT) Kids Act, last month. If signed into law, the bill would withhold federal funding from any elementary or middle school that allows students to change their “preferred pronouns,” gender markers and sex-based accomodations, such as restrooms and locker rooms, and hides such information from parents.
“The law in the United States has long recognized the importance of parental rights. A parent’s right to oversee the care education of their child is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bill reads. “Parents have a fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right to raise and educate their children in the way they choose.”
“Public schools across the country are violating these fundamental parental and familial rights by deliberately hiding information about gender transitioning from their parents,” it continued.
“Schools exist to educate children — not indoctrinate them. And a quality education requires input from those who know children best: their parents,” Scott said in a press release. “Sadly, radical and secretive gender policies have shut parents out of the conversation and broken their trust. My bill will safeguard parental rights, improve the crucial relationship between parents and schools, and ensure that children can learn in an environment free from activist ideology.”
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