What Do We Do about Renegade Teachers and Schools?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns renegade teachers and schools teaching undesirable topics to children. Teachers and administrators in numerous schools are bypassing the rights of parents, and parents are fighting back.

            Nicole Russell posted an article at The Daily Signal outlining the situation of parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She stated, “There are school policies and state and federal laws that outline parameters for transparency between parents, students, and schools.” These parameters are there for the protection of everyone and particularly for the child. “They are rooted in the idea that parental authority is paramount, even in schools.” Yet, some teachers and some schools do not understand the concept. 

In Pennsylvania recently, three parents filed a federal lawsuit alleging that their children’s first grade teacher violated their rights, not to mention school policy and state law, by teaching their children about “gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning….

Carmilla Tatel, Stacy Dunn, and Gretchen Melton are all mothers speaking out against the Mount Lebanon School District. In their lawsuit, which names multiple school administrators and first grade teacher Megan Williams, the mothers are seeking a court order to either stop the gender-related instruction at Jefferson Elementary School in Pittsburgh or provide parents the ability to opt their children out of it.

The mothers allege Williams failed to honor their parental rights with her “direct classroom instruction” on gender dysphoria and that the district didn’t list “gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning” as part of the curriculum online, violating its own policy. In essence, it sounds like the school was taking advantage of kids who were confused about their gender – experiencing dysphoria – and was encouraging them to adopt the qualities of the opposite sex, like changing their names and using a different bathroom.

            The parents did not file the lawsuit for the sake of politics or because they are anti-transgender. Their case is not about censorship or banning books. The case is about the “Plaintiffs’ parental rights and each of their respective decisions not to want their six- or seven-year-old child to receive first-grade classroom instruction on gender dysphoria or transgender transitioning from their first-grade teacher.” The Pennsylvania moms are not the only parents filing lawsuits against schools.

            In a case in Monterey County, California, a mother filed a similar lawsuit. In 2019, her sixth-grade daughter was recruited by teachers at her school to join an “Equality Club.” There she was introduced to transgender and bisexual.

Two seventh grade teachers created the club for students “who they believed might be receptive to ideas such as homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, gender nonconformity, etc.”

Teacher and school administrators encouraged Jessica Konen’s daughter to change her name to a boy’s name and then “specifically instructed her not to tell her mother about her new identity because her mother couldn’t be ‘trusted.’” Together, school staff convinced the middle school-aged girl she was bisexual and later, transgender.

Without Konen’s knowledge, teachers and administrators created a “Gender Support Plan” and told faculty to call her daughter by her new male name and to let her use the unisex teachers’ restroom. It was only after months had passed that Konen was made aware of what her daughter had been experiencing and what the school had been doing without her knowledge or consent.

In this specific case, Konen maintains she would have gladly supported her daughter’s gender struggles – if only the school had been transparent. Ironically, during the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout remote learning, Konen’s daughter, now released from the influence of school staff, no longer agrees she is bisexual or transgender.

            Across the nation in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, a parent is suing a school district and its individual administrators a curriculum that includes “anti-racism” and discriminates against students with white skin. Certain parts of the curriculum were put in place after the death of George Floyd in 2020. The lawsuit is about the parts that “allegedly teach ‘racial political ideology’ and create a ‘hostile educational environment’ for white students. 

            When parents send their children to school, they expect the teachers and administrators to teach reading, writing, math, science, geography, social studies, and other such topics. They do not want their grade school age children taught anything about sex, and they certainly do not want their children to be taught to hate the color of their skin.

            I say, good for these parents who are suing the teachers and schools. If enough parents fight back against the evil ideologies, schools will get back to teaching educational topics and forget for their social engineering.