Re: Administrative Regulation 259

Re: Administrative Regulation 259

TRANSGENDER & GENDER DIVERSE STUDENTS – ENSURING EQUITY AND NONDISCRIMINATION

Dear Principal ——, Superintendent —— and School Board Members,

I am writing to contest Administrative Regulation 259, with which I fundamentally disagree. Advised by proponents of gender ideology, and ironically under the guise of safety, the school has chosen to drive a wedge of secrecy and distrust between students and their families.

It is my constitutional right to raise my daughter how I see fit. Furthermore it is my privilege, honor and duty to guide her into adulthood to the best of my abilities. My child is not yours to raise, and she is certainly not yours to perform a psychological, social experiment upon. Because of policies and practices like yours, her emotional well-being, critical thinking skills and safety are undermined.

This letter specifically addresses the school’s policy to keep secret from parents their child’s gender identity, chosen name and pronouns.

As a tax-paying district parent since 2008 who has sent her two children to the district Elementary, Middle and High School, I am aggrieved to find myself excluded from a very important conversation with my child, who I have loved since before she was born. Like you, I agree that children’s safety is of the utmost importance, and to that end it is clearly harmful for children to be taught that keeping secrets from their parents is smart or safe.

Additionally, encouraging children to prioritize ideological gender identities over biological reality is to set them on a path to physical and mental impairment, unhappiness, and failure as adults. It also amounts to religious instruction. Because gender ideology, like religion, is a belief system. It is not rooted in science or fact, but theory. Therefore, it has no place in secular schools.

Before the 2021-2022 school year, I was under the impression that my daughter was safe at school, being educated, cared for and respected. I was certain she attended school in order to learn how to be a thoughtful, accountable, successful adult. After all, yours is a school that defines itself as a “fiercely proud, tight-knit educational community.”

Instead my daughter was encouraged, through a psychological approach far beyond your ethical scopes of practice, to insist that she is the opposite sex, and that she can “safely” change her sex through the use of drugs and cosmetic surgeries. Though much of what she is learning is from the internet, the school actively fosters, facilitates and celebrates these beliefs. This psychological approach has become a well-trodden path—from social transition to medical patient for life.

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Here are some examples of contradictions I found between what the school district purports, and Regulation 259—

On the Parent Info page from your website it says:

“—— High School is well known for its high levels of parent engagement.”

And yet, Administrative Regulation 259 states:

“…[S]chool personnel should not disclose information about a … student’s gender identity and expression to others, including the student’s parents…”

The Parent Info page continues:

“Parents are encouraged to communicate directly with students and teachers to help foster dialogue [and] an environment of openness which helps to advance the progress of our school community.”

And yet, Regulation 259 states:

“Students shall be addressed by the name and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity without … obtaining parent … permission.”

On the Community Page from your website it says:

“—— is a community characterized by a deep sense of civic pride and involvement…”

And yet, Administrative Regulation 259 states:

“[T]here may be situations (e.g., communications with family…) where it may be necessary and recommended for staff to be informed of the student’s legal name and gender… [S]taff should prioritize the … confidentiality … of the student…”

In Superintendent ——’s 2021 Welcome Back Letter to parents it says:

“…[N]o matter what the circumstances are or what changes we may have to make, our … community will continue to work together to ensure that our children will have the skills they will need to succeed.” (emphasis mine.)

And yet, Regulation 259 states:

“If school personnel are unsure how a student wants to be addressed in communications to the home or in conferences with parents… they may privately ask the student.”

And,

“District and school personnel may encounter situations where transgender students have not disclosed their transgender status. School personnel must be mindful of the confidentiality and privacy rights of students when communicating with others, so as to not to … reveal… a student’s gender identity…”

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So on one hand we have the warm, inclusive school philosophy that heralds the education of its children and the tight-knit strength of its community, and on the other, a divisive, destructive regulation that instructs teachers, and subsequently students, to actively participate in secret-keeping from parents about the very identity of their children.

Parents like me, because of Administrative Regulation 259, have been cast as villains, in the name of equity, safety and inclusion.

But I am not a villain. I love my daughter with all my heart and I have devoted my life to raising her to be an independent thinker, a responsible and accountable young adult, and a confident young woman.

And now I am left to fight uphill to reach that end, against every institution who would teach her otherwise—who would instead encourage her to devalue her race, her class, her sex and her sexual orientation, and who would lead her to believe that she should invest in a fictional version of herself—one that can never exist in material reality.

I know, as a parent, and as a 53 year-old adult, that trying to be something you are not causes stress, strain and damage. When I spoke to my daughter’s counselor about this issue on July 27, he said that when a kid walks into his office, he’s going to support them.

As if I wasn’t.

My reply to him, and to you is, I believe in supporting a kid as well. But support is not the same thing as affirmation. Support means teaching a child that no one outside her can make her happy or validate her identity. (—— hopefully knows this, as a counselor.) Support means teaching my daughter that she cannot control what others think of her or how they respond to her. Her happiness and validation have to come from within. Support means teaching my child that biology is real and that she can’t change her sex. It means not indulging a delusion that can lead to irreparable harm.

So my plea to you is stop supporting children’s fantasies that they can opt out of material reality and become something they are not. Stop harming children like mine by indulging in their fictional names and identities. Stop keeping secrets from parents about their children. Stop destroying family cohesion with lies, deceit and secrecy. Stop supporting gender ideology. Start supporting children.

Inclusion and anti-bullying are one thing. Gender ideology is quite another. It is a belief system. It is religious. And I vehemently abstain.

—— is a secular school. It is time to act like it.

Sincerely,

Felice J. Killer
Mother of Kai A. Killer, —— Class of ‘22
and Jamie B. Killer, —— Class of ‘24