Parents Sue Massachusetts School Committee Over Policy That Hides Students’ Gender “Affirmation”
“claim the district’s policy affirming transgender students’ identities violates the US and Massachusetts constitutions”
Four parents are suing the school committee and some administrators in Ludlow, Massachusetts over a policy that hides gender choices kids make at school from their parents.
The current policy forbids the school from discussing this with parents without the child’s consent. This is a middle school.
Keeping secrets from parents about anything that concerns their kids in school is outrageous. It’s just amazing that the people who work in these schools can’t see that.
Jeremy C. Fox reports at the Boston Globe:
Four parents sue Ludlow Public Schools for policy that affirms transgender children
Four parents have filed a lawsuit against the Ludlow School Committee and several school officials claiming they have violated their rights by choosing not to tell parents when children seek to establish a new gender identity at school, court records show.
Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, parents of two children in Ludlow schools, and Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron, who also have two children in the district, claim the district’s policy affirming transgender students’ identities violates the US and Massachusetts constitutions, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in US District Court in Springfield.
The lawsuit does not identify the policy.
But the Sunday Globe Magazine reported in September that the Ludlow schools allow students to choose their own pronouns and names, and that school staff cannot discuss a child’s gender identity with a parent, without the child’s consent.
But in their lawsuit, the parents say the district has not adopted a formal written policy on the practice, in violation of a state requirement, according to the 58-page filing.
Foote and Silvestri’s objections to the policy began when their child’s sixth-grade class at the Paul R. Baird Middle School made a video in which students were asked to state their gender identity and preferred pronouns, according to the filings.
You can read the full complaint here.
2. Defendants’ protocol and practice of concealing from parents information related to their children’s gender identity and efforts to affirm a discordant student gender identity at school violates parents’ fundamental rights under the United States and Massachusetts constitutions and violates children’s reciprocal rights to the care and custody of their parents, familial privacy, and integrity.
Why are sixth grade students making a video at school about their gender identity and preferred pronouns? Public schools should be teaching kids math, reading, science, and history. They are not a lab for experimentation with social justice and gender identity. These parents have every right to be outraged.
The Daily Mail has more details:
The narrative of the 58-page lawsuit focuses mostly Foote and Silvestri’s biological female child, identified only as B.F.
The suit says that B.F., then an 11-year-old sixth grader, was given an assignment with others in her class in September 2019 to make a video describing their gender identity and preferred pronouns.
‘The videos of their children were created without the parents’ knowledge or consent and it remains unknown how these videos were used or who was allowed to view them,’ the suit states.
Months later, B.F. met virtually with a teacher in December 2020 to discuss mental health struggles, including insecurity, low self-esteem, poor self-image, and a perceived lack of popularity.
B.F. also told the teacher that she believed she was attracted to other girls, and had been watching YouTube videos saying that she was born that way. The child added that she was not sure how to talk to her parents about getting help, the suit says.
Oh, YouTube videos told her she was born that way? How fascinating.
If you question transgender activists or policies about anything, you risk being banned on social media sites. If however you are affirming transgender ideas, you can pretty much say anything you want.
This ongoing conflict between parents and schools is going to come to breaking point and schools might not like how it ends.
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Comments
Is this the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Or is it the former Soviet Union and East Germany?
The government monopoly bureaucratic school system has been America’s best example of totalitarian socialism for over 100 years.
We all need to be reminding our children weekly that if anyone tells then to not tell their parents, that it is very important that they immediately let them know.
“in Ludlow, Massachusetts over a policy that hides gender choices kids make at school from their parents”
Everything about the left involves deception or force. Usually both.
If the truth-in-lending laws pertinent to loans were imposed on leftist politicians running for office, very few Ds would be elected. From the very outset, that is, running their campaigns, they deceive.
When I was a child, I quickly learned that anyone who said, “don’t tell your parents about this”, was an evil person.
I’ve read that in the old Soviet Union, parents had to figure out exactly when to talk with their young children about not snitching about events at home.
It appears that modern education has combined both evils: teachers teach children to conceal what happens in school from their parents, and inform teachers what happens at home.
Yep. This debate isn’t complicated. One side wants to hide their activities with children from the Parents. That’s not acceptable in any manner. Any possible justification stems from a biased belief that the Parents wouldn’t support or love their child based on informing them; which is an assumption of facts not in evidence. No activity with any child that is deliberately concealed should be trusted. Not for a teacher, administrator, priest, coach or anyone else.
No silver lining so maybe 500 thumbs up.
Well….not so fast. The silver lining is that even after these weirdos got their ass handed to them in VA on the issue of CRT/equity and attempting to subordinate Parental control of ed content, these d/prog clowns, ed establishment whackos and their media allies are stupidly lining up to place their head on the chopping block.
This time over allowing weirdos to groom at worst and indoctrinate at best our children while demanding that their sins remain hidden from the sight of Parents and the community. There is no wellspring of support for this. This dangerous behavior will be equally denounced by every voting block other than the tiny minority of the super woke.
Okay, I will cut back my day drinking to half and add another 100 thumbs up.
“When I was a child, I quickly learned that anyone who said, ‘don’t tell your parents about this’, was an evil person.”
That is a complete and concise summation of the entire issue.
If I could I would give 1,000 thumbs up.
Read the story of Pavlik Morozov, byname of Pavel Trofimovich Morozov, (born Nov. 14, 1918, Gerasimovka, Russia—died Sept. 3, 1932, Gerasimovka),
Russian communist youth who was glorified as a martyr by the Soviet regime.
The son of poor peasants, Morozov was the leader of the Young Pioneers’ group at his village school and was a fanatical supporter of the Soviet government’s collectivization drive in the countryside. In 1930, at age 12, he gained notoriety for denouncing his father,
more at,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pavlik-Morozov
But ’twas ever thus…
The school sows confusion in the minds of young, impressionable children, and then the child and parents reap confusion. Gee, whoda thunk?
I would like to point out that this is yet another example of how everything is not transcending liberal vs conservative, Dem vs Rep, or other artificial divisive politics we continue dwell in. This was PARENTS in MASSACHUSETTS suing the school board. Just like it was PARENTS in CALIFORNIA staging a protest at Disneyland this week.
Conservatives and the lesbian/gay groups are joining forces to fight transexualism.
Red pilling is spreading. Let’s hope that it will spread among the board rooms of our corporations thanks to Musk bidding for Twitter.
It’s not about red states vs blue states anymore. The fight is being waged at the street level, the most basic human level. The battle line is spreading and multiple forces are engaging in the battle. We mustn’t confine ourselves in our own personal political mazes. Politicians are behind the curve while trying to steer things to their advantage. It’s time to clear the decks.
Correction;
“I would like to point out that this is yet another example of how everything IS transcending…”
Conservatives, and transgender spectrum limited to homosexuals confronting trans/neo, quasi, pseudo, etc.? Trans-socials, too?
Phil, I am homosexual, or to use that horrible slang term, “gay”. I have never understood the link that is pushed with trans-sexual, paedophilia, bestiality, and other things thrown in with the “LGBTQEIEIO” set of initials.
It just makes no sense. L G and maybe B, yes. Not the rest, and I want nothing to do with any of them.
It’s a rule of the universe.
Everything is a slippery slope, especially when it moves the Overton Window.
Any power you give to authority that can be abused, will be abused.
In this case, I’m speaking of the “recognized but unelected” authorities responsible for defining the rules of intersectionality.
The article states “They are not a lab for experimentation with social justice”
There’s a strong and valid argument that schools absolutely should be teaching social justice, as a core element of good citizenship.
Of course, social justice includes accepting that people will hold views with which you disagree, and that straight white people are equally deserving of justice, and that historical slavery is not an excuse for modern criminality.
That said, I do agree entirely that schools should not be allowed to indoctrinate pupils or support them in gender identify confusion.
Individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value are deprecated with diversity [dogma] under the Pro-Choice “ethical” religion that includes social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere.
Gender, that is sex-correlated physical and mental (e.g. sexual orientation), can be simulated, or, in the case of trans/homosexuals, a nominally stable effect of medical, psychiatric, or natural (e.g. expression) corruption.
Schools should focus on basic education, and leave social prerogatives for other venues: church, corporation, clinic, internet, etc. I’m almost joking.
They are destroying children’s mental health for the sake of grooming and Marxism to join Intersectionaly
Wow! A lawsuit! That should fix it!
Whatever the outcome, the children of these parents will be under the tender mercies of their government school for the duration while their parents seek to make sure they’re getting their money’s worth.
School choice is better.
Home schooling is best.
Get the kids out now.
Do we not have basic child abuse laws anymore?
Or did the state exxempt themselves from those laws like they do almost all the others?
political congruence (“=”) #NoJudgment #NoLabels
So in discussing this with child today, learned a new word- troon, a male who dresses like a female but makes no effort to pass. I’ve seen a few of those, but now I have a word for them….
Maybe it’s a Scottish word.
Otherwise, mark 2024 on your calendar, which will be about the time it becomes officially declared a “term of oppression,” and the left will force you to say “lingerie-attracted people” or whatever.
(Oh, he’s just a lumberjack — he’s OK.)