A report from Parents Defending Education found that at least 1,040 school districts in the United States have policies requiring educators to keep students’ gender identities from parents.
The districts include over 18,000 schools, the majority of which are in California.
“I am grateful to Parents Defending Education for their attempt to quantify this problem,” Meg Kilgannon of the Family Research Council told The Washington Stand.
“It is important to support with evidence what many parents know by instinct or experience: Our educational system that is supposed to work with parents will often work around parents instead.”
She noted that “Parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school if their child makes a gender identity declaration to a teacher or counselor at school.”
In some areas, parental rights groups looking to put a stop to the policies have been blocked.
For example, a New Jersey state judge blocked several school districts from enforcing a policy requiring school staff and faculty from informing parents of student’s gender identities.
The judge wrote that if the policies are implemented, they “will have a disparate impact on transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary youth.”
Reporting from The Daily Signal:
The controversy over “Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies” comes as debate continues on why an increasing number of children are identifying as transgender or nonbinary. One study from earlier this year, for example, classified the increase as part of “a socially contagious syndrome,” stating that it’s likely that “common cultural beliefs, values, and preoccupations cause some adolescents (especially female adolescents) to attribute their social problems, feelings, and mental health issues to gender dysphoria. That is, youth[s] … falsely believe that they are transgender.” Some theorize that standard peer pressure, coupled with the social popularity of transgenderism, largely is responsible for the increase in children identifying as transgender. However, others—such as Mama Grizzly founder Stacy Langton—argue that it’s largely rooted in the sexual grooming of children by teachers.
