REVEALED: The Sun Belt cities where teachers don’t tell parents their OWN KIDS are changing sex at school
Seven major New Mexico school districts responsible for thousands of children have policies in place to help them change sexual identities in the classroom without their parents finding out, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Parents Defending Education (PDE), a conservative campaign group, has uncovered details of the stealth transgender policy through public records requests.
The unearthed documents show how teachers are instructed to help trans students change their names, pronouns, clothing and sexual identities at school, without their parents’ knowledge.
Trans activists say such guidelines are essential because some children need protection from old-fashioned mothers and fathers who won’t accept their desire to change gender.
But for many parents, they are dangerous and can deprive them of the opportunity to help their children as they struggle with puberty.
Whether teachers should help students transition without their parents’ knowledge is hotly debated
New Mexico’s seven school districts are responsible for educating thousands of children
PDE’s outreach director Erika Sanzi blasted the schools for “indefensible and likely illegal” policies.
“Every time a school participates in or facilitates a student’s transition, it is engaging in a psychosocial intervention that requires parental notification and consent,” Sanzi said.
“Federal law guarantees parents the right to inspect every record maintained by the district, and that includes gender support plans.”
The New Mexico schools and Department of Education did not return emails from DailyMail.com.
They are Los Alamos Public Schools, Rio Rancho Public Schools, Las Cruces Public Schools, Gallup-McKinley County Schools, Moriarty-Edgewood School District, Santa Fe Public Schools and Gadsden Independent School District.
PDE will add them to his national database of schools with a secret trans policy.
It lists 18,658 schools across 1,062 districts educating as many as 10.9 million students.
New Mexico takes a relatively progressive approach to trans youth.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, LGBTQ youth are protected from discrimination and bullying. Democratic Gov. Michelle Grisham signed a law last year to protect gender reassignment procedures in the state.
Santa Fe Public Schools, which includes about 28 institutions, has perhaps the most secretive trans policy among New Mexico schools.
The district’s document urges teachers to “MAINTAIN CONFIDENTIALITY – THIS IS CRITICAL.”
Rio Rancho Public Schools students are among those affected by secretive trans policies
New Mexico Students Discover New Sex Identities Through the ‘Gender Unicorn’
Campaign group outreach director Erika Sanzi slammed administrators for ‘indefensible and likely illegal’ policies
“DO NOT share the student’s transgender status with anyone else,” says the internal supervisor.
“This is VERY confidential information.”
Parents do not need to be informed about a trans child unless a “student wishes to change their name and/or gender marker” in the school’s database, the policy says.
Likewise, the eight institutions of the Moriarty-Edgewood School District in Torrance County guide teachers on how to interact with trans and non-binary students.
Teachers need to find out whether students ‘feel safe’ and whether their ‘parents are aware’ of their gender transition.
They are guided in setting up group meetings about sex change.
If parents are ‘not aware’ of the change, only a confidential counselor is involved, the papers show.
The released documents contain material used to teach children about new-wave gender ideology.
They characterize the ‘Gender Unicorn’, which abandons traditional views on biological sex and presents ‘gender identity’ as fluid.
In the same way, the ‘Genderbread Person’ teaches young people about intersex and ‘genderqueers’.
“Gender and sexuality are part of a spectrum,” the document says.
“We all have characteristics that defy heteronormativity.”
An educational cartoon video from AMAZE shows a child teaching her older uncle that gender now exists on a spectrum
For many parents, this is a quick and challenging departure from the long-held understanding that people are biologically male or female.
Such concerns were not limited to New Mexico.
A group of parents protested a gender support policy in Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Area School District this week.
They asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to rule on trans policies that affect their children.
A lawsuit, from a group called Parents Protecting Our Children, says the district’s gender support plan violates their constitutional rights by keeping them in the dark about gender changes at school.
The ‘Genderbread Person’ teaches young people about intersex and ‘genderqueers’
Third-grade students participate in the American national anthem at Highland Elementary School in Las Cruces, New Mexico
This graph shows insurance claims for puberty blockers in the US by year. This shows that claims have doubled since 2017
They want the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s dismissal of their 2022 case in March after judges there ruled that the parents and children had not been directly harmed by the policy.
Nicholas Barry, a lawyer for America First Legal, the conservative campaign group that filed the papers, said the top court “must intervene and protect parental rights.”
“The idea that a parent is not hurt when a government official has the authority through a written policy to socially transition a child to a different gender, and hide it from the parents, is simply disconnected from reality,” said Barry.
Schools are under pressure to serve trans students in a fractious political climate, where gender and gender have become a frontline in the culture wars between progressives and conservatives.
School administrators have said they want to involve parents, but they must follow a patchwork of federal and state guidelines designed to protect student privacy, combat discrimination and welcome all.
Such cases are becoming more common as teachers grapple with the small but growing number of children who want to change gender at school, and with the particularly troublesome children who do not want their parents to know.
Against this backdrop, parents, children, teachers and therapists must make hard decisions about rising rates of transgenderism, mental health issues, peer pressure and whether affirmation on demand is always the best answer.
The number of transgender children between the ages of 13 and 17 has doubled to about 1.4 percent, an analysis of government health surveys shows.
Insurance data shows a similar increase among teens seeking puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.
Advocates of “gender-affirming care,” as it is known, attribute its rise to greater awareness of gender dysphoria and support among physicians.
Other experts, conservatives and parents warn of an ideologically driven ‘social contagion’.
Disagreements over informing parents occur alongside debates over whether trans teens can use school toilets and participate in sports that align with their gender identity.
Again, the rules vary by state and often end up in court.
DailyMail.com spoke to several parents of trans-identifying children. Many worry that their children have been influenced into transitioning by classmates, TikTok influencers, or teachers and school counselors who have to beat a drum.
Some don’t believe their children are really transgender and try to delay irreversible steps like puberty blockers or surgery. Many said their child instead had mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and autism.