Q&A: What to Do When Transgender Indoctrination Invades Your Child’s School
It’s hard to miss all the news headlines lately about parents battling in their local schools to at least be notified or have the right to give permission before their kindergartners are given lessons about things like a boy dressing like a girl. Or when their middle school or high school age kids are given counseling at school about life-altering decisions to change their gender identity—that will impact them for years to come and possibly lead to damaging medical procedures. It seems like it would be no-brainer, right?, to include parents. But instead we saw many schools doing the opposite—trying to hide these things from parents or refusing to let parents know about it in advance. Why? Because they were following holdover policies from the Northam administration that put a wedge between parents and their kids, especially when it comes to how transgender issues are handled at school.
That’s why we’ve come alongside parents at school board meetings across the state through our Protect Every Kid initiative. And that gets to the good news: Gov. Youngkin and his administration responded to your voices. They revamped this previous policy in a way that now restores some of the most crucial rights of parents.
You can get more detailed information on our Protect Every Kid website, but in the meantime, please review this comparison chart of the “Top 7 Improvements” to the previous policies.
Below is a Q&A, to help you respond to questions about how and why parents should take action in their local community.
Jump to your question:
1) How do the revised policies help parents?
2) What are the most important things parents can do?
3) What’s wrong with the old version of the policies (many schools still have in place)?
4) How do the old policies promote gender confusion in schools?
5) How does undermining parental rights puts more kids at risk?
6) Won’t children will be at risk without promotion of ‘gender-affirming’ care?
7) What about protecting kids from abusive parents?
8) How does the old policy language creates an unsafe learning environment?
9) How does the old policy threaten religious freedom?
Question 1: How do the revised policies released by Gov. Youngkin’s administration help parents?
First, instead of instructing educators how to basically deceive parents—the revised guidance now makes it clear that schools should not encourage or instruct teachers to conceal vital information from parents about their own children—especially if they are experimenting with their sexual identity at school. We have seen the real, documented harm that results when the government cuts parents out of the process. Just check out the real-life stories from teens like Sage and Chloe Chole on our website at familyfoundation.org/protecteverykid. Another key improvement is that these revised policies allow more respect for local control of schools. When it comes to areas like locker rooms or overnight sleeping quarters for field trips—where students are vulnerable and sometimes in a state of undress—the revised policies empower schools with more flexibility to make their own decisions on how to best protect kids—instead of high pressuring them to adopt a one-size-fits-all policy allowing any male for any reason to enter these female spaces. For instance, schools must now at least have a letter on record from a parent before minors can use bathrooms that do not align with their biological sex. They must also allow opt-out options for other parents and students concerned about privacy and safety in school bathrooms. These are just a few examples of how these policies protect kids and put the power back in the hands of parents. You can get more detailed information on our Protect Every Kid website.
Question 2: What's the most important thing parents can do right now?
The most important thing you can do now is ensure that your local school district isn’t retaining the old policies that keep parents in the dark on what’s happening in their child’s school on gender-identity and sexuality issues. Email your school board members and ask them to align their policies with the revised “2023 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools.” Sign up to speak—either in person or via video—at your school board meetings. Ask board members to take a vote as soon as possible to align with the parent-friendly, revised policies, which are now the official guidance from the education department. Last but not least, join your voices with others by downloading the Protect Every Kid “speak up” tools, such as “what-to-say points” when testifying at the school board meeting; downloadable sticker designs and flyers.
Question 3: What's wrong with the previous policies--many which are still being used by local school districts--and were promoted as a way to avoid discrimination and harrassment against transgender students?
I agree with you that every single child—including and especially those wrestling with their gender identity—should be protected from harm and harassment. There is no question of that. And Virginia has a good anti-bullying law. But the old policies goes way beyond prevention and cross the line into mandatory promotion of politicized, sexualized ideology.
Question 4: How exactly do the previous policies promote gender confusion in schools?
The old model policy encourages schools to implement across-the-board promotion of the concept that gender is “viewed as a gender spectrum” and can be “something in between or outside the male/female binary.” It declares that sex is arbitrarily “assigned” to babies at birth, rather than an innate part of God’s design and gift to human beings. If you think about a little girl or boy who still thinks the opposite sex has cooties, that is a very confusing, potentially damaging message for young kids to process.
Not to mention that the scientifically false statement that people are just arbitrarily “assigned” a gender when they’re born—sort of like affixing a branding label to them at the store—totally divorces gender instruction from any reality whatsoever in basic DNA science and biology. It’s also important to note that the old policy wants this radical thinking reflected in every operational part of the school—even advocating for schools to incorporate “educational content that is transgender affirming into the general education curriculum, such as history, literature and science.”
Question 5: How does undermining parental rights actually put more kids at risk?
The truth is, cutting parents out of the education process and purposely hiding information from them opens the door to sexual predators and psychological manipulation. Too many school board members are only recognizing a one-sided narrative. They need to consider the equally important perspective of teens and families who've experienced real harm caused by policies that cut parents out of the process. (Watch Chloe Cole’s and Michele Blair’s stories on YouTube.) It’s time to stop treating parents like intruders at their own children’s school and disrespecting their constitutional, parental rights.
Question 6: What about the children who will be at risk if they aren't provided gender-affirming care in school?
We agree that the protection and safety of every child is important. But giving a child “gender-affirming care” that pushes them on a path to irreversible medical treatment is the opposite of protecting him or her. Studies show that most children with gender dysphoria will grow out of it after puberty. Children often struggle through puberty with their body image, which could be a trigger for gender dysphoria—but this issue resolves itself almost 9 times out of 10. In a 2021 study, 88% of boys experiencing gender dysphoria outgrew it by the time they were adults. Clearly, children are too young to make life-altering decisions like transitioning and should not be encouraged to do so by the adults and peers around them.
Here is a list of resources that show most children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it:
2008 study - Psychosexual Outcome of Gender-Dysphoric Children
2014 study - Ethical issues raised by the treatment of gender-variant prepubescent children
2016 article - What’s Missing From the Conversation About Transgender Kids
2021 study - A Follow-Up Study of Boys with Gender Identity Disorder
Considering that scientific studies and medical experts make clear the majority of children outgrow gender confusion by the time they reach puberty—it’s, at best, irresponsible to push involuntary promotion of gender confusion in a public education setting—and, at worst, actually damaging to kids who are still developing.
Question 7: I keep hearing people say the old policy threatens parental rights--but isn't it just trying to protect students from abusive parents?
Let’s be clear: We all agree that parents should unconditionally love, nurture and protect their children regardless of the circumstances—and abuse is always wrong for any reason. The disturbing reality, though, is that the old policy opens the door to defining Christian, Bible-believing parents—or others of faith—who aren’t deemed to fully embrace or comply with transgender politics as “abusers.” For instance, it states that in situations “when their families are not affirming,” the school should “be prepared to support the safety and welfare of transgender students” and then encourages schools to report abuse concerns to Child Protective Services immediately. This begs the question, exactly how will “affirming” be defined and who will define it?
Plus, the old policy encourages schools to outright deceive parents: It says schools should “respect” students if they don’t want their parents to know about their new transgender identity. The suggested plan for implementing this “respect”— and the policy specifically spells this out—is that, in cases where parents are not embracing or facilitating their child adopting a new gender identity (like using a new name, pronoun, etc.), then teachers can use the child’s new identity at school, but in the presence of the parent use the original legal name, and so forth.
Encouraging kids to lead a double life and hiding vital information from parents that could make a life-saving difference in kids’ lives is clearly not wise or safe. (There are already disturbing controversies like this happening in Wisconsin and Utah.)
Question 8: The old model policy says its purpose is "to ensure a positive, safe" environment "for all students." So how would leaving this in place be unsafe?
Apparently, state education officials are not including kids’ bodily safety and privacy into their definition of “safe for all.” Because according to the old policy, schools must allow boys identifying as girls, for instance, to use the girls’ bathrooms or change in female locker rooms—and this can all be done without ever notifying parents. Sadly, no one ever talks about the harm done to very young girls, for example, who feel powerless to expect physical privacy in the present of biological males—not to mention young men who don’t want to change in front of biological girls.
Question 9: I hear about threats to religious freedom, but what does this have to do with faith or First Amendment issues?
From a biblical perspective, Christians want the freedom and respect to pass along their deeply held religious belief to their children that humans were created by God in His image—male and female—and that the male and female genders are a gift from God to be celebrated and nurtured.
Problem is, a policy that fosters pervasive promotion of a one-sided, politicized transgender agenda throughout the school actually creates a hostile environment for families, faculty and students with deeply held, faith-based convictions. For instance, when the policy encourages schools to infuse transgender teaching throughout different subjects—what are the protections for students with biblical beliefs who find this ideology mandated in their curriculum with a grade at stake?
The previous policy also mandates that all school employees use transgender names and pronouns or face punishment for discrimination. How does that play out in real life? We already have an example of a beloved Virginia teacher who was fired after declining to use politically correct pronouns. (He chose to use first names only as a compassionate compromise that avoided violating his religious convictions.) The bottom line is, while paying lip service to “safety” and “respect,” this dated policy obviously disrespects religious and socially conservative families and educators, as well as students who simply want physical privacy.
Make Your Voice Heard Today
This truly is one of those historic moments where we can’t afford to be silent about what’s happening with our kids in schools. Speak up in school board meetings and let board members know why they should align with the revised model policies. Have conversations with other parents and talk about these important questions listed above. Equip your child for when they may encounter transgender issues at school or with friends.
