KID ‘SEX’ SECRETS
Biden boost for schools to hide gender bending
More than 3.2 million US public school students are covered by guidance that blocks parents from knowing whether their child identifies as a different gender in the classroom — which could become federal policy if President Biden’s Title IX bids are approved in May.
At least 168 districts governing 5,904 schools nationwide have rules on the books that prevent faculty and staff from disclosing to parents a student’s gender status without that student’s permission, according to a list compiled by the conservative group Parents Defending Education and shared with The Post.
The 3,268,752 students affected by such policies go to class in all kinds of districts — large and small, affluent and poor, urban and rural, red and blue — stretching from North Carolina to Alaska.
The non-comprehensive list includes two of the largest school districts in the country, Chicago Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District — along with other city jurisdictions like DC Public Schools, Baltimore City Public Schools and San Francisco Unified School District.
Both red and blue
Districts from deep-blue university towns — Berkeley and Palo Alto, Calif.; New Haven, Conn.; Iowa City, Iowa; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Hanover, NH; Durham, NC; and Madison, Wis. — appear on the list, as do 11 districts in deep-red Idaho, 16 in purple Pennsylvania and seven in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin was elected in 2021 in part on a platform of giving parents a bigger say in their children’s education.
Three New York school districts appear on the list — Buffalo City; Brighton, outside Rochester; and Lake George in the Adirondacks. Nine districts on the list are located in New Jersey — including Fairview, Garfield and Tenafly in Bergen County, Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told The Post the list “only begins to scratch the surface of what is taking place behind closed doors in America’s schools.”
“This investigation shows that parental exclusion policies are a problem from coast-to-coast — and that living in a red state doesn’t mean that families are automatically shielded from this issue,” Neily said. “Without a doubt, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of others with similar policies on the books.”
“These policies are everywhere, and not always written down,” agreed Luke Berg of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. “I don’t have a list anywhere near as comprehensive as PDE, but given what I’ve heard from parents, I would assume it is even more widespread than the 6,000 they have documented.”
Despite the legal controversy, the Biden administration proposed new Title IX regulations in July 2022 that would allow school district employees across the US to withhold gender information from parents, setting up a potential battle between the federal government and red states.
The policies have already prompted legal action in some districts — with opponents spanning the full political spectrum. Last November, a transgender clinical psychologist filed an amicus brief on behalf of a conservative law group suing the school district in Montgomery County, Md., which covers some of the toniest suburbs of the nation’s capital.
The psychologist, Dr. Erica Anderson, said that socially transitioning at school as a child “is a major and potentially life-altering decision that requires parental involvement, for many reasons.”
“I don’t want to be erased as a transgender person, and I don’t want anyone’s prerogatives or identity to be taken away from them,” she told The New York Times in January, “but on this one, I’m aligned with people who are willing to advocate for parents.”