Some school districts are hiding vital information from parents about their children.
A group of parents and teachers are suing the Harrisonburg City Public School Board in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Per a new 2021-2022 school district policy, following a mandate by the Virginia Department of Education , the school district implemented the “Gender Transition Action Plans.” This states that upon a student’s request, staff must refer to the student with their preferred pronouns . The policy also prohibits teachers and staff from sharing information with parents about their child’s request and suggests students’ families will only be involved where it is deemed “appropriate.”
A new lawsuit alleges that this policy “compels teachers to violate their religious convictions about gender and honesty. … And it violates parents’ rights by interfering with their ability to direct the upbringing and education of their children contrary to state constitutional and statutory protections.”
Attorneys of the teachers and parents from the Alliance Defending Freedom filed the lawsuit only after they sent a January letter informing the board that its policy was unconstitutional. The lawsuit alleges that the school district is “implementing policy and practice … on the treatment of transgender students that forces teachers on pain of discipline to use any pronouns or names requested by a student, while actively hiding information about that request from the child’s parents.”
Parents in Wisconsin have also been fighting the Madison Metropolitan School District over its secretive transgender policy — similar to the one in Harrisonburg.
A few years ago, the district adopted a policy that promoted gender fluidity and undermined parental rights. The school required teachers to fill out a “Gender Support Plan” form for any child who expressed struggles regarding gender. The school intentionally created a loophole to defy the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to know what’s happening to their children in school. Parents don’t have the right to read a teacher’s “personal” notes about a student, so the Gender Support Plan tells teachers to file the plan there so that parents can’t find out about it and teachers, at least nominally, aren’t breaking the law.
Only parents did find out about the secretive policy and sued. That case was just heard before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Schools are required to be open with parents about everything that happens on their grounds, whether that’s a broken finger on the playground or a child sent to the principal’s office for disciplinary action. That these school districts in Virginia and Wisconsin would work around federal law and normal school policies demonstrates how little they value parental rights. In fact, these school officials are acting as if their institutions are superior to parents. This is sorely misguided.
As these lawsuits show, parents must fight back — and they must win.
* Article from: The Washington Examiner
