Kathianne
07-20-2023, 11:53 PM
It wasn't easy near 40 years ago, but now? No thanks:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/07/20/your-children-belong-to-the-schools-where-their-trans-status-will-be-kept-secret-from-parents/
Your children belong to the schools, where their trans status will be kept secret from parentsPosted on July 20, 2023
Children used to be taught that it was a danger sign if anyone asked them to keep something a secret, especially if that “something” was related to sex. And children were taught that they shouldn’t keep secrets, either.
Now that’s so 20th Century – at least in many states. To take some examples:
There’s New York [emphasis mine]:
The New York State Education Department released guidance Monday to advise schools on how to create “affirming” environments for transgender children, suggesting that teachers keep students’ gender transitions a secret from their parents.
School systems should not use the student’s transgender name with their parents, unless the child advises otherwise according to the New York guidance. The student is the only one who knows if it is “safe” to come out to their parents and the first thing educators should ask a transgender student is how they can help them through their transitioning process, the guidance states.
“Some TGE [transgender and gender expansive] students have not talked to their families about their gender identity because of safety concerns or lack of acceptance and may begin their transition at school without parent/guardian knowledge,” the guidance states. “Only the student knows whether it is safe to share their identity with caregivers, and schools should be mindful that some TGE students do not want or cannot have their parents/guardians know about their transgender status.”
Extraordinary abrogation of parental rights concerning a minor child, with the school in collusion with the child to keep the secret. And yet typical, and not just in blue states:
At least 168 districts governing 5,904 schools nationwide have rules on the books that prevent faculty and staff from disclosing to parents a student’s gender status without that student’s permission, according to a list compiled by the conservative group Parents Defending Education and shared with The Post.
The 3,268,752 students affected by such policies go to class in all kinds of districts — large and small, affluent and poor, urban and rural, red and blue — stretching from North Carolina to Alaska.
The non-comprehensive list includes two of the largest school districts in the country, Chicago Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District — along with other city jurisdictions like DC Public Schools, Baltimore City Public Schools, San Francisco Unified School District, Portland Public Schools, and Seattle Public Schools.
Districts from deep-blue university towns — Berkeley and Palo Alto, Calif.; New Haven, Conn.; Iowa City, Iowa; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Hanover, NH; Durham, NC; and Madison, Wis. — appear on the list, as do 11 districts in deep-red Idaho, 16 in purple Pennsylvania and seven in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected in 2021 in part on a platform of giving parents a bigger say in their children’s education.
I doubt that most parents are even aware of these general policies, either. The whole thing is somewhat of a stealth operation, although it’s been getting more publicity over time.
Here’s an article about the situation in Idaho.
And here’s a recent one that is quite comprehensive:
Districts are using legal theories pushed by activist groups like the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Among the most important are that children have a federally guaranteed right to privacy from their parents in school, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes children’s right to transition without the consent or knowledge of their parents, and that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects transgender students from the “harassment” of school districts “outing” them to non-compliant parents. The Title IX theory, the most chilling, is supported by the radically progressive notion that parents represent a danger to the welfare of transgender children until they prove otherwise by providing “affirmation.”
School districts that buy into these theories are not merely embracing the idea that hiding children’s gender transitions from their parents is legal, but that divulging the information without the child’s consent is illegal and possibly perilous to the student’s safety. In Dover, Pennsylvania, for example, a mother of a middle school student castigated a local school board after discovering that school staff had been addressing her 12-year-old daughter with male pronouns for a year. School officials even sent the child to a hospital for an evaluation without informing the parents. When the mother confronted the school board, she was told that there was a law against informing her.
Once again, we see the work of activist groups that for a while have flown under the radar while they helped changed policies all over the country. In some states, legislative bodies have enacted or are attempting to enact laws that make such secrecy illegal, although (and I can’t find the link at the moment) some school districts are defying the laws and continuing to secretly transition students.
If parents are actually abusive about this or any issue, there have been longstanding mechanisms in place in all states to deal with that. In these trans student situations, however, the secrecy policies have no requirement to prove or even to allege that parental abuse has occurred. A child’s request – a child’s failure to explicitly give permission for any reason – is enough to cause the secret-keeping. The child and the school are in collusion to keep a secret – a very big secret indeed, with major repercussions – from the parent.
It’s astounding that this is happening, but it’s really just part of a continuum of moves by which the left is increasingly taking on the task of child-rearing and indoctrination. The number of teachers and administrators who are fine with these policies, or go along with them out of fear, is extraordinary. And the number of Democrat state legislators who think it’s a great idea is enormous.
The left seems so confident that the secrets public schools keep will only be kept from those awful parents on the right. And so they don’t see a policy like that ever coming back to bite them. They expect to be in control forever, so it’s okay to take rights – or children – from conservatives. And in a state such as California, failure to affirm is increasingly defined as a form of child abuse; I’ve already written about that here as well as here.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/07/20/your-children-belong-to-the-schools-where-their-trans-status-will-be-kept-secret-from-parents/
Your children belong to the schools, where their trans status will be kept secret from parentsPosted on July 20, 2023
Children used to be taught that it was a danger sign if anyone asked them to keep something a secret, especially if that “something” was related to sex. And children were taught that they shouldn’t keep secrets, either.
Now that’s so 20th Century – at least in many states. To take some examples:
There’s New York [emphasis mine]:
The New York State Education Department released guidance Monday to advise schools on how to create “affirming” environments for transgender children, suggesting that teachers keep students’ gender transitions a secret from their parents.
School systems should not use the student’s transgender name with their parents, unless the child advises otherwise according to the New York guidance. The student is the only one who knows if it is “safe” to come out to their parents and the first thing educators should ask a transgender student is how they can help them through their transitioning process, the guidance states.
“Some TGE [transgender and gender expansive] students have not talked to their families about their gender identity because of safety concerns or lack of acceptance and may begin their transition at school without parent/guardian knowledge,” the guidance states. “Only the student knows whether it is safe to share their identity with caregivers, and schools should be mindful that some TGE students do not want or cannot have their parents/guardians know about their transgender status.”
Extraordinary abrogation of parental rights concerning a minor child, with the school in collusion with the child to keep the secret. And yet typical, and not just in blue states:
At least 168 districts governing 5,904 schools nationwide have rules on the books that prevent faculty and staff from disclosing to parents a student’s gender status without that student’s permission, according to a list compiled by the conservative group Parents Defending Education and shared with The Post.
The 3,268,752 students affected by such policies go to class in all kinds of districts — large and small, affluent and poor, urban and rural, red and blue — stretching from North Carolina to Alaska.
The non-comprehensive list includes two of the largest school districts in the country, Chicago Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District — along with other city jurisdictions like DC Public Schools, Baltimore City Public Schools, San Francisco Unified School District, Portland Public Schools, and Seattle Public Schools.
Districts from deep-blue university towns — Berkeley and Palo Alto, Calif.; New Haven, Conn.; Iowa City, Iowa; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Hanover, NH; Durham, NC; and Madison, Wis. — appear on the list, as do 11 districts in deep-red Idaho, 16 in purple Pennsylvania and seven in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected in 2021 in part on a platform of giving parents a bigger say in their children’s education.
I doubt that most parents are even aware of these general policies, either. The whole thing is somewhat of a stealth operation, although it’s been getting more publicity over time.
Here’s an article about the situation in Idaho.
And here’s a recent one that is quite comprehensive:
Districts are using legal theories pushed by activist groups like the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Among the most important are that children have a federally guaranteed right to privacy from their parents in school, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes children’s right to transition without the consent or knowledge of their parents, and that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects transgender students from the “harassment” of school districts “outing” them to non-compliant parents. The Title IX theory, the most chilling, is supported by the radically progressive notion that parents represent a danger to the welfare of transgender children until they prove otherwise by providing “affirmation.”
School districts that buy into these theories are not merely embracing the idea that hiding children’s gender transitions from their parents is legal, but that divulging the information without the child’s consent is illegal and possibly perilous to the student’s safety. In Dover, Pennsylvania, for example, a mother of a middle school student castigated a local school board after discovering that school staff had been addressing her 12-year-old daughter with male pronouns for a year. School officials even sent the child to a hospital for an evaluation without informing the parents. When the mother confronted the school board, she was told that there was a law against informing her.
Once again, we see the work of activist groups that for a while have flown under the radar while they helped changed policies all over the country. In some states, legislative bodies have enacted or are attempting to enact laws that make such secrecy illegal, although (and I can’t find the link at the moment) some school districts are defying the laws and continuing to secretly transition students.
If parents are actually abusive about this or any issue, there have been longstanding mechanisms in place in all states to deal with that. In these trans student situations, however, the secrecy policies have no requirement to prove or even to allege that parental abuse has occurred. A child’s request – a child’s failure to explicitly give permission for any reason – is enough to cause the secret-keeping. The child and the school are in collusion to keep a secret – a very big secret indeed, with major repercussions – from the parent.
It’s astounding that this is happening, but it’s really just part of a continuum of moves by which the left is increasingly taking on the task of child-rearing and indoctrination. The number of teachers and administrators who are fine with these policies, or go along with them out of fear, is extraordinary. And the number of Democrat state legislators who think it’s a great idea is enormous.
The left seems so confident that the secrets public schools keep will only be kept from those awful parents on the right. And so they don’t see a policy like that ever coming back to bite them. They expect to be in control forever, so it’s okay to take rights – or children – from conservatives. And in a state such as California, failure to affirm is increasingly defined as a form of child abuse; I’ve already written about that here as well as here.