Education

Wisconsin School District Announces It Will Keep Parents In The Dark About Kids Declaring Themselves Transgender

A school district in Wisconsin has issued a memo telling employees to not inform parents about their children coming out as transgender.

“[S]taff members are no longer required to seek parental consent prior to honoring student requests to be called by their preferred name and/or pronouns,” an Oct. 19 memo sent to all employees written by Matthew Kaemmerer, the director of pupil services for the Oshkosh Area School District, said.

Parents were informed of the new policy in an Oct. 22 email, in which Kaemmerer wrote that the new policy was put in place to “acknowledge and support each student’s unique needs” after acknowledging “varying perspectives related to gender identity.”

“So, if my son starts identifying as a girl at school but hides it from me, I will never know about it,” one outraged Oshkosh parent told the Federalist, which broke the news of the change on Thursday.

“Deliberately concealing this information from parents, when those same parents would be consulted over the administration of Tylenol or permission to go on a field trip, is beyond outrageous,” Meg Kilgannon, the Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This one of the many reasons we are seeing sustained pushback at school board meetings across the country.”

Notice that just went out to all school district employees in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Parents are an afterthought, even for issues as serious as a child changing their gender identity. pic.twitter.com/mPbOc15v2t

— Parents Defending Education (@DefendingEd) October 29, 2021

A national parents group also criticized the new policy, pointing out that authority is delegated to schools, “which then act ‘in loco parentis'” while the students are there.

“Oshkosh Schools likely require parental consent to give a Tylenol to a student at school. What school officials fail to understand, it seems, is that parental rights do not disappear when parents send their children to school – the very reason the school has authority over the child is because of parental consent,” Parents Defending Education Director of Outreach Erika Sanzi told the DCNF. “Concealing information from parents, or worse, deceiving them, is entirely at odds with that delegation of authority.”

This is not the first time schools have been accused of keeping parents in the dark about various issues. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said in September that her sons were quizzed weekly about their gender identity without her knowledge. In July, an online training seminar for teachers in Missouri’s Francis Howell School District became a contentious subject after Dr. LaGarrett King advised teachers how to sneak “social justice” indoctrination past parents in “Trump Country.”

In Loudoun County, the school board was accused of covering up a May 28 sexual assault in order to secure passage of a transgender policy. The school board adopted that policy in August, according to the Daily Signal.

The accused assailant was found guilty in juvenile court Oct. 25.

Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation to deny federal funds to schools that “facilitate a gender transition” without “express parental consent.”

The Oshkosh Area School District did not reply to an email from the DCNF requesting comment.