A Wisconsin school district already under fire for its handling of transgender issues also requires student permission to discuss the issue with their parents, internal documents show.
Eau Claire Area School District‘s guidance for dealing with students professing to be transgender was last updated in November 2021 and instructs teachers and staff to deal with inquisitive parents and members of the media in the same way.
The school district has previously come under fire for training it held in February that told staff parents did not have a right to know about their child’s gender identity.
The “Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” includes directions on developing a “student gender support plan.” Such a plan would include a student’s new name and pronouns, preferred restroom or locker room, and a “student transition plan” that could be either “social, medical, [or] surgical.”
WISCONSIN SCHOOL DISTRICT DEFENDS TRAINING STAFF TO HIDE STUDENT SEXUAL IDENTITY FROM PARENTS
The guidance instructs staff to obtain the student’s permission before “discussing a student’s gender nonconformity or transgender status with the student’s parent/guardian” and also provides instructions for school staff for handling questions “from the media or community,” including parents.
“When questions are received from the media or community about issues related to gender identity, including District policy procedures/guidelines, school staff shall direct parents and the media to the Executive Director of Student Services,” the guidance says.
The guidance was shared with the Washington Examiner by an America First Legal senior adviser and the executive director of Fight for Schools, Ian Prior, who said the document was taken from the district’s intranet site and was provided to him by a district employee.
“As a parent, and every parent should be concerned that, you know, you have teachers, counselors, school administrators, discussing things with children, and keeping parents out of that discussion,” Prior told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “The fact of the matter is that the parents, not the teachers, not government-funded schools, are the best individuals to deal with their children’s health, well being, and education.”
The greatest danger of the policy, Prior said, is that it keeps parents in the dark about their children’s mental health, thereby handicapping parents from serving their child’s best interests.
“For the parents not to be informed of potential mental health issues, that could lead to very serious things,” Prior said. “That is an absolute abrogation of parents’ fundamental rights.”
At least three lawsuits, two in Florida and one in California, have been filed against school districts at which school officials orchestrated a student’s transition to another gender identity different than their biological sex without parental notice. In one of the cases, the parents of a middle school girl were not notified until after their daughter attempted to commit suicide for the second time on school grounds.
Despite the potentially dire consequences of failing to notify parents, Prior cautioned against painting all teachers and staff as necessarily complicit in following training and policies laid out by the school district, noting that a lot of teachers do not support or agree with the training and guidance they are often required to undergo or tasked with enforcing.
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“Unfortunately, everybody assumes that every teacher believes this. But that’s not the case,” Prior said. “I would encourage teachers, especially the ones that feel extremely uncomfortable with these teacher training and these edicts coming down from the school system, to speak out and to notify parents to make sure that the child is protected at all costs.”
