California School District Helps Students Hide Gender Identity From Parents

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Southern California school district trains counselors to help students hide their transgender identity from their concerned parents, according to documents obtained by The Daily Signal.

Capistrano Unified School District in southern Orange County, California, allows students to change their name and gender in school records without parental permission.

The Individual Transition Plan, obtained by the nonprofit law firm Center for American Liberty through a California Public Records Act request, asks the counselor filling it out whether the child’s parents “need to know” about their child’s transition. It later asks the student to respond with “yes” or “no” to the statement: “My parents/guardians are aware of my transition.”

Parental signatures are optional to finalize the transition plan. The form is not publicly available on the district’s website.

The transgender-identifying student and school counselor meet to fill out the form, then make a list of “safe spaces and safe people” on campus, and, lastly, identify who knows about the student’s name change.

Capistrano Unified School District confirmed to The Daily Signal that it uses the Individual Transition Plan form.

“The Identity Support document is provided to assist District employees in supporting students who have approached staff members regarding their identity and expression and the need for support in the school setting,” Chief Communications and Public Engagement Officer Ryan Burris said. “This document is intended to be a support and is optional, and is meant to assist staff members in establishing and meeting the student’s needs while complying with applicable laws and the District’s policies.”

Burris said the district values communication with students and families, and works with students “whenever possible, to help them with disclosure of information between students and their families.”

“The District does not make plans to transition students,” he said.

Parents should be the first to know if their child is struggling so they can address it, a Capistrano mother who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation against her elementary-school-aged son, told The Daily Signal.

“It just shows and highlights the hypocrisy of the school district, because they will say that they want to be in partnership with the parents and work with the parents, but then they want to keep secrets from the parents, and that’s my biggest concern right there,” the mom said. “Don’t keep secrets from the parents.”

A school counselor “argued” with a parent who was upset about being kept in the dark about his or her child’s transition, internal emails obtained through the records request show.

“Just had to argue with a parent about a name change that they were unaware of and upset about. But school needs to comply with students wishes if they’re over 12 per AB 1266,” the counselor wrote.

For justification, the counselor cited the state’s Assembly Bill 1266, which says students should be treated in accordance with their “gender identity” at school.

“A transgender or gender nonconforming student may not express their gender identity openly in all contexts, including at home,” the California Department of Education has said about AB 1266. “Revealing a student’s gender identity or expression to others may compromise the student’s safety. Thus, preserving a student’s privacy is of the utmost importance.”

Emails show two school counselors discussing a student’s “legal right” in California to “be referred to by the pronouns they identify with and to use the restroom and locker room they identify with.” Parental permission is not needed to make name and gender changes in the student records, one counselor wrote.

“Tom consulted with the district legal team, and it appears that no staff member on campus can tell the parents if the student requests they do not know, unless there’s a ‘need to know,’” the counselor’s email says.

Counselors are trained to help kids transition, emails show.

An academic adviser sent a training assignment to a school counselor asking her to consider her “personal biases” on LGBTQ issues and the “human costs to transgender students” in a three-to-four-page essay.

A counselor warned a school psychologist against changing the student’s name in a portal that parents could access.

“What we’ve done, is send out an internal email to teachers after an ITP meeting notifying that X students now goes by Y with such pronouns,” the email says. “That way, student feels accepted at school, and parents don’t necessarily find out (if that makes sense).”

A school counselor offered to reach out to a middle school teacher’s potentially gender-confused students to ask whether the students want to go through the transition plan.

Parents are not the enemy, the local mother critical of the process said.

“The parents just want what’s best for the kids,” she said, “and there just needs to be a team approach, and excluding parents from the conversation is not the right direction.”

Parents, not schools, have the right to direct their children’s upbringing, said Mark Trammell, executive director of the Center for American Liberty, the group that filed the records request.

“It raises serious red flags when schools keep secrets from parents and ignore legal obligations to make policies and curriculum publicly available,” he told The Daily Signal. “Transparency isn’t merely a request, but a requirement for protecting parental rights and government accountability. The Center for American Liberty is committed to ushering in this transparency so parents can be fully aware of what their kids are being taught in schools.”

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Originally published by The Daily Signal. Republished with permission.