Parents Have a Right to Know

Schools have a duty not to indoctrinate children into changing their gender and have an obligation to tell parents when they do.

by: Sloan Rachmuth, Education First Alliance (red emphasis by webmaster)

Yesterday, the Senate Education Committee passed the "Parents Bill of Rights." Today the Senate Healthcare Committee will hear it. Bill co-sponsor Mike Lee from New Hanover County said he was glad to set the tone for the legislative session with a bill that fosters communication and prioritizes parents' right to know what's going on in their children's lives at school - particularly when it comes to changes in identity.

The issue of school transparency and safety is personal to Senator Lee and his constituents.

Last April, the New Hanover School district’s secret “gender Support plan” was the subject of a Glenn Beck one-hour special.

• “New Hannover County schools are allowing teachers to hide circumstances where children change their gender at school, according to documents obtained by Education First Alliance.
• The district, which includes Wilmington and Carolina Beach, developed a "gender support plan" back in 2020 which asks teachers to establish a "shared understanding" about how to support a child's "authentic gender" at school.
• On a scale of 1-10, teachers rank how supportive they think the parents of a child who wants to change their gender are. Then a plan is asked for dealing with unsupportive parents during the "gender change" process. In addition, the form asks teachers to identify an adult at the school who would provide support to the gender-bending student.”

These "Gender Support Plans" are also being used by Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Orange, and Cumberland counties to assist children in changing genders.

Since assuming office, Superintendent Catherine Truitt has made changes to the state’s school record system (PowerSchool) that will allow children to change their names themselves on official records without providing a birth certificate. Truitt recently directed the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to make the field containing students' biological sex adjustable to hide the data from teachers, principals, and other school officials if needed.

By passing Senate bill 49, schools will be required to notify parents when a child requests to go by a different name or pronoun. Making a "social transition" to a different gender is the first and necessary step to making irreversible changes through medical intervention, according to experts.

Take a look at the “Transition Roadmap” published by the University of California San Francisco website:

North Carolina is not the only state where schools help children transition socially in secret. Parents have brought lawsuits against school districts in California, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. The family of a girl who attempted suicide in Florida says her school mental health worker brainwashed her into thinking she was male:

The father claims his child had never shown any signs of “gender confusion” or questioned their biological sex. He added that the child’s suicide attempts were the result of the discussions with the school counselor, which he believes added to the 12-year-old’s “gender confusion.”

“The school counselor went so far as to encourage and call our daughter by a fictitious male name, and male pronouns in front of other students, causing a pattern of bullying against our daughter,” the father said. “And again, all this, behind our backs.”

The Florida father claims his daughter attempted suicide by 'hanging herself in one of the bathrooms' at her Clay County elementary school.

Dr. Erica Anderson, a well-known psychologist who counsels children over gender identity issues and is herself transgender, agrees that parental consent is crucial. In a Maryland lawsuit, she wrote an amicus brief on behalf of parents accusing their district of violating their parental rights.

In her statement, Dr. Anderson wrote that socially changing genders, “is a major and potentially life-altering decision that requires parental involvement, for many reasons.”

This research adds to the well-established wisdom that children are better off if they are not allowed to make major life decisions without their parents’ involvement and permission. In general, parents are better positioned than anyone else, including the children themselves, to understand the needs of their children when making important decisions. State policies that undermine this relationship between parents and children are dangerous and should be repealed. Similarly, those who work with children in professional capacities, including health, education, and counseling, should be careful about substituting their own judgment for that of the parents.

The research presented here supports the view that children fare significantly better when their parents have the authority to know about, and help to make, major decisions for their own children.

It's not just conservative outlets like Heritage that are highlighting the issue. According to the New York Times, liberal parents have registered as independents or voted for Republicans for the first time due to this issue.

Although they haven’t sued, some of these liberal parents have retained lawyers from the largest conservative legal organization to fight for their parental rights in their children’s schools.