New Jersey’s Department of Education (NJDOE) has issued guidelines instructing schools to be “supportive” of gender transition and to let transgender-identifying students use opposite-sex locker rooms and wear opposite-sex clothing at school.
Moreover, a child’s choice to change gender should remain secret from parents if the child wants, the guidelines say.
“There is no affirmative duty for any school district personnel to notify a student’s parent or guardian of the student’s gender identity or expression,” the guidelines say.
All these radical recommendations are only guidelines, according to Daniel, a Mantua Township parent who asked to withhold his last name out of fear of retaliation.
Even so, schools told parents that the “guidelines” are the law of the land.
“The board attorney said, ‘This is law from the state. We have to follow it,’” Daniel said of the district board’s views on the matter. “They just keep lying to the parents of the district.”
New Jersey law demands that schools call transgender-identifying students by their preferred names and pronouns, let transgender-identifying students dress as the opposite sex, not force transgender-identifying students to use the locker room of their birth sex, and “create an appropriate confidentiality plan” for students.
But the law doesn’t demand that schools put transgender-identifying students in opposite-sex bathrooms or hide students’ transgenderism from their parents.
This arrangement allows local schools to secretly promote radical gender ideology without parents ever getting a say, Daniel said.
He said that parents have attempted to fight this issue at many meetings with Mantua Township’s school board.
“The superintendent would just keep telling us, ‘This is not an open dialogue. I will not discuss this with you,’” he said. “That’s been going on for the last two years.”
Already, the guidelines have exposed children as young as second grade to transgender influence, Daniel added.
“[My daughter] comes home and she tells me every day, ‘There’s a boy that wears a dress in the school,’” he said. “If that kid wanted to, he could go to the bathroom with my daughter.”
