Students in California’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District were forced to room with transgender students on an overnight field trip.
Emails from 2021 and 2022 obtained by the Center for American Liberty and shared with The Daily Signal suggest that parents could not be involved in their child’s rooming assignments.
One email shows the school district’s administration director, Sarah Coley, writing, “You would say to the students/parents, ‘If you have questions about the assignment, please feel free to discuss with me.'”
“Then, if a parent says ‘hey, I don’t want my student with [who],’ you could provide an ear to listen and consider whether the student is a good fit, but the eventual response would be, ‘If you / your student is not comfortable with the rooming assignments and process of staying with other students in a room, then they can elect not to participate in this optional trip.’”
The email surrounds the question, “Do we have an obligation or are we even permitted to inform other students/parents if the student selects the accommodations that are within their preferred gender expression?”
Coley added in the email, “Parents and students do not get to pick, and saying I don’t want to stay with ‘Susie’ because ‘Susie isn’t a real girl,’ is no different than saying, ‘I don’t want to stay with Sara because Sara is [white/older/non-religious, etc.]’”
In another email to school district staff, Coley said children “as early as age two are expressing a different gender identity.”
“To ensure that transgender students have equal access to the programs and activities provided by the school, all members of the school community must use a transgender student’s chosen name and pronouns,” she added.
If a member of the district intentionally uses the transgender student’s incorrect name or pronouns, it will be “treated as harassment,” Coley noted.
A similar incident occurred last year in Colorado when parents claimed their 11-year-old daughter was forced to share a bed with a biological male, a transgender student.
After the male student revealed that he identified as a girl, the couple’s daughter went into the bathroom to call her mother and inform her of the situation.
Chaperones for the trip allowed the student to move to another bed, although she was still in the same room as the transgender student.
The chaperones then “decided to lie to D.W.’s roommates, and instruct D.W. to do the same, telling D.W. to say she needed to switch beds to be closer to the air conditioner,” a letter from Alliance Defending Freedom to Jefferson County Public Schools reads.
