Figuring out if your child has a gender support plan at school is not always clear-cut.
Nicki Neily, president of Defending Ed, told Catholic News Agency that parents have to start by looking in the right places—often embedded in the websites of school districts or under a school’s “counseling resources” tab.
If a school’s gender policies are not apparent online, she said, it’s time to ask questions. “Ask the teacher, ask the principal: Does this district have a gender support plan in place?”
It’s not just about pronouns, she added. Parents should also ask about school policies on overnight field trips, sporting events, bathrooms, and locker-room access, “so they can make plans and triangulate accordingly,” she explained.
However, a school implementing gender support plans for students behind the backs of parents may not be forthright about their policies on gender ideology.
For Anna, it took extensive time and effort to pinpoint what was going on with her child.
Anna told CNA that she started by trying to understand why there were at least seven other children in her daughter’s peer group who were renamed and reassigned their gender.
“I started to hear very similar statements from my daughter and two others that were just too similar,” she said. “It was like everyone was getting their information from the same place.”
Through messages and online searches on her daughter’s computer and phone, it appeared that all of the students were echoing the same statements.
The real breakthrough appeared when she came across a download that linked to a page on the school’s counseling resources. From there, kids were connected to transgender services—most of them anonymous—putting them on a pathway to get medical-affirming procedures anonymously, Anna said.
Stories like Anna’s are becoming less of an anomaly. Earlier this month, the Independent Women’s Forum reported on a 15-year-old girl living in Alaska whose school “intentionally deceived” her parents by helping her socially transition with a new name, pronouns, and counseling without their knowledge.
A recent UCLA report published in June found that 18% of the transgender population in the U.S. is comprised of children ages 13 to 17 — roughly 300,000 total. That’s up from 10% in 2017.
For parents who are concerned, witnessing signs of emotional distress in a child may not be enough to pinpoint the cause.
Theresa Farnan, a Catholic author and moral philosopher, recommends that parents need to try their best to be actively involved in their children’s schools. Farnan is an advocate of homeschooling, but when public schools are a family’s only option she urges parents to have “eyes on the ground.”
One way parents can do this is by volunteering to work in a school’s transportation office, library, or lunchroom.
“If you‘re volunteering, say on lunch duty, and you’re walking through school heading into the end of May, you’re going to see the pride display,” she said.
Farnan stresses that Catholic parents must discuss these topics with their children.
“You’ve got to establish that open line of communication [and] articulate what the Church teaches,” she added….
The above comes from an August 30 story in the National Catholic Register.
Gender Spectrum is headquartered in San Leandro.
Public schools aren’t educating, they’re brainwashing.
Just nuts. I feel so bad for parents today. 25 years ago when my boys were going thru cali public schools all we had to deal with was the teachers wanting them on adderal or other SSRIs. That was bad enough.
I did not let my kid go on overnight “retreats” when he was in Catholic schools.
25 years ago, I was one of those nasty moms fighting the sex ed, death ed, drug ed, values clarification, and other junk paving the way for the poison now in full bloom in today’s schools. I was yelling for homeschooling then, but parents, for the most part, didn’t believe it was as bad as it was until they lost their kids to the drug culture. There are no “good” public schools.
And, Archbishop Mitty HIgh School in San Jose leads the way with gender confused and confusing faculty and staff, starting with the recently appointed president. Parents of students in “Catholic” schools need to be just as vigilant as parents of students in public schools. Why can’t we have the common sense and courage to pull our young people out of spiritually and morally failing Catholic schools? And, why are such schools being subsidized by parishes and contributions to dioceses? Is it surprising that Valley Christian High School, also in San Jose, has an ever growing percentage of Catholic students?
And, who teaches biology at these schools? If gender is fluid and one can choose to change and identify with another gender numerous times, why can’t one self-identify as another race (another chromosomal reality) numerous times?
For all of us, our fundamental identity should be that of a beloved daughter or son of God.
Yep, there was pro-gay propaganda on page 1 of the 2022 Mitty annual report, right below the pic and message from the new president of the high school. A rainbow-colored heart with a message that everyone should be accepted for who they are no matter what. Don’t believe me? Look for yourself: https://www.mitty.com/about-amhs/mitty-magazine
That was interesting and telling. Also telling, as I read through the rest of the Mitty magazine was a tragic story in the obituary section. A young faculty member (a Mitty alum) died during summer vacation. The memorial refers to his live-in “partner” (also a Mitty alum) and their out-of-wedlock son. No shame. No hint that anything was wrong with that arrangement. Two Mitty grads, one on faculty at the school, and they all think it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to be living together outside of marriage. There is no amount of money in the world you could pay me to be willing to allow my children to attend that school where their minds and characters would be ruined. The only sin at Mitty is not being in total support of the Democrat Party.
That was a drawing from a student in a inclusivity project. If you are so triggered by that, I do not know what to say.
And while I think it is wrong to have a faculty member who is in a gay marriage, an article on their death is not where you would criticize it.
It lets people know to pray.
I have personal, experiential knowledge that nobody among the teachers or administration at Mitty takes Catholic faith seriously. Fake Catholic school. You will find every immoral sexual lifestyle preference represented on faculty, and it’s celebrated as diversity. Conservatives are ridiculed. Catholic doctrine is disregarded. Wish I could get the years I spent there back.
The Quad with a statue of the Blessed Virgin was renamed the “Timothy Brosnan Prayer Garden” such a joke of a Catholic school. Worships money and earthly success. Disgusting even on a Classical Greek level, no love of wisdom let alone the love of God
Will you marry me?
I couldn’t find the Timothy Brosnan Prayer in my prayer book. Can you provide the text?
Here it is: “We’re Mitty.com because we’re a business, not a school.”
The prayers that should be offered in that garden should be in reparation for the tens of thousands of Mitty students who were misled and miseducated about Catholicism when Brosnan was principal/president, mismanaging the school.
I had a video come into my youtube feed today. It was a former wrestler who now sells rehab and exercise videos called DDP Yoga. (I do not do yoga and I discourage anyone from doing it.) Why it came into my feed today, I do not know.
This wrestler was talking about a man that he was working with who is an addict. He explained that when he was with them, he was fine. But when he left them, he got around people who were not fine and he had a relapse.
He explained that the people who you surround yourself with are like an elevator-they raise you up or they take you down.
Then I started thinking, the Catholic Church and ideally its members are the ultimate elevator that raises you up. When we fudge on the faith, we are taking people down.
I would strongly encourage any Catholic parent not to put their child in public school, to get them into Catholic school and Catholic youth groups.
I would strongly encourage every Catholic to hold firm to the faith. To understand its value. If you do not understand something, educate yourself.
Pray the Rosary daily. Read Scripture daily. If you can, attend daily Mass.
If you have an issue at your parish, speak up (do not call names). But before you do, make sure that your own stand is correct and authentically Catholic, not just something you read on the Internet. Be God’s ally. You will raise others up even if you are not aware of it.
Catholic schools and churches and dioceses are being criticized by the left and the phony catholic media darlings, such as James Martin, for adopting policies that prohibit trans employees and trans-expressive students. They say such policies are exclusionary. Whenever you read or hear that argument, just substitute “white supremacist” for “LGBT person” and ask yourself if those criticizing Catholic schools for “excluding” LGBT persons would be similarly outraged if Catholic schools “excluded” white supremacists. Of course they wouldn’t. They’d say that Catholic schools should exclude white supremacists. There would be no calls for understanding, for compassion, for proclaiming the Gospel to the lost sheep in the case of white supremacists. Nope. But for LGBT persons, it’s a different standard because the aim is to undermine Catholic sexual moral doctrine by infiltrating schools. Keep them out. Save Catholic schools.
Then there are the after-school Satan clubs. Really.
How about sneaking it in as a Santa club but then rearranging the letters at the meetings secretly?
You don’t have to sneak it in. It’s in.
I also just learned there is a Pagan Pride that is trying to normalize the pagan religions.
After several years of paying through the nose for diocesan “catholic” K-12 schooling, which we discovered was essentially Common Core with a microscopic-thin “catholic” veneer, mostly taught by non-catholics, my wife and I made the difficult decision to homeschool. It’s been hard, but well worth the effort.
Not long after, we mostly disconnected from our local Novus Ordo parish. primarily to avoid the cognitive (and spiritual) dissonance it engenders. The hour+ drive to the vetus ordo is well worth the cost, given the certainty and coherency it provides, giving us the ability to confidently live out our faith as our Catholic ancestors did.
Catholic parents must be encouraged to opt out of state-run schooling, no matter the cost. The immortal souls of their children are at stake. There’s no higher priority. Trust in the Lord … He will provide.
i support your decision to home school. You should not disconnect from your parish. And calling it Novus Ordo is improper and I hope you are not teaching that error to your children.
Homeschooling is a grave responsibility as is parenting and you will not get everything right.
When I homeschooled, it was difficult and my offspring resent me for it as adults.
I am not sorry.
I just watched a video with Candace Owens saying that the heaviest compliment she ever received was a black person who said to her “You gave me my life back”. She talked about the analogy of a cave where people don’t even know that there is a big world out there-they think the whole world is in the cave.
You do have to be careful that your kids are not so cut off from the world that when they go out into the world they want to experiment with everything they see.
My kids had relatives who did not practice the faith, relatives who practiced the faith but then openly sinned, entertainers who we had to say – We follow Jesus not X, Y or Z.
You have to be aware that you should train up a child but sometimes the children learn to just tell the parents things that won’t upset them.
I know two separate parents who had children co-habitating where the kids just lied and told them “We are living together but we are not having sex.” And the parents believed them. They were honest with everyone else because they did not feel the need to lie to their friends or siblings or cousins.
I doubt the parents believed them, and if they had to lie about it, they felt guilty and knew they were doing wrong.
A science teacher just died at Mitty too. That’s two in two months. Something in the water? The jab?