Pay no attention to gender activists behind the curtain of public schools

As if Nevada parents didn’t already have their hands full, including helping their children navigate the waters of adolescent sexuality. Now, gender activists are increasingly using public schools to lead students down a path their parents may not know about.

And the Biden-Harris administration is making it worse.

Nevada is certainly not alone. Nearly 20,000 public schools across the country, attended by 11.5 million students, now have policies that cater to children’s current sense of “gender identity” but deliberately leave parents in the dark about the same.

The Elko County School District’s gender policy, like many others, defines “gender identity” as “a student’s inner sense of being male or female.” That feeling could be nothing more than a fleeting feeling prompted by a suggestion on social media, or a clinically significant diagnosis of gender dysphoria that requires medical intervention.

Not only does this policy fail to distinguish between these radically different situations, it effectively prohibits anything beyond taking a student’s self-perception at face value. And by excluding parents, schools are excluding the very people who are the best source of information about that student’s health and well-being.

There is little debate that schools in general should take the lead in curriculum or school administration. However, sex and gender identity fall into a different category. A federal judge in Pennsylvania put it this way: “Teaching every child how to determine their gender identity” goes “to the heart of parents’ decision-making in a matter of paramount importance to their relationships with their children.”

But Nevada’s public schools don’t seem to have gotten the memo. Instead, they impose their own opinions, theories and ideology on this volatile and controversial subject and enact a significant range of policies based on nothing more than a young person’s current feelings.

For example, Washoe County School District policy defines gender identity as “an individual’s understanding, outlook, feelings, and sense of being male, female, both, or neither.” While such things can change at any time and for any reason, school policy dictates that a child’s latest “view” will determine how a school responds.

That school’s policy also states that students “have the right to be addressed by the names and pronouns that correspond with their gender identity.” They can use all restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities for the same reason, as well as participate in physical education classes and intramural sports.

Needless to say, implementing school policies that cater to a student’s current “feeling” about his or her sexuality sets the student up to expect others to conform to his or her feelings. Parents may have a very different idea of ​​how to develop their child’s character, but this policy deliberately excludes parents.

For example, Washoe County policy prohibits school personnel from disclosing information related to a student’s gender identity “to others, including parents/guardians… (unless) the student has consented to such disclosure.”

However, these same schools handle much less important matters very differently. Washoe County School District has a 51-page manual dictating procedures for field and activity trips, which require both parental consent and a liability waiver. The district requires both parental and healthcare provider consent for all medications, including over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol.

As a result, Johnny needs his parents’ permission to go to the zoo, but his parents need his permission to know that he is undressing in the girls’ locker room.

The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Education just issued a sweeping rule that will push more public school districts in this direction. It reworks Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funds.

The administration’s rule redefines “sex” to include “gender identity” — something Congress certainly did not intend when it passed the law in 1972 — and redefines “harassment” so that staff and teachers could face disciplinary action if they engage in student ‘misgendering’. .

This massive federal mandate carries the implicit threat that billions of dollars in federal funds could be withdrawn if schools do not comply and enforce it.

Parents may not agree that their child’s newest feelings always deserve indulgence. They may have a well-considered idea about how to guide their children through the challenges of adolescence and establish their own identities. The bottom line is that this is the parents’ decision.

But by overriding parents and imposing the government’s preferred gender ideology, these policies violate parents’ constitutional right to direct their children’s education. The Supreme Court has called this “perhaps the oldest fundamental liberty interest” it has ever recognized.

It’s time for parents to fight back against policies in local schools, against state laws that allow these policies, and against federal regulations that advance this agenda at their expense.