by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
Students in a Southern California school district could be forced to choose between rooming with a transgender-identifying student or missing out on an overnight school field trip.
If parents complain about their child rooming with a transgender-identifying student of the opposite biological sex, staff in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District listen to the parents’ concerns, then say that the child’s rooming assignment isn’t the parents’ choice, according to emails from 2021 and 2022 obtained by the Center for American Liberty and shared with The Daily Signal.
The only option for students who are uncomfortable staying in a room with transgender students is to opt out of the trip, Sarah Coley, the school district’s administrative director, said in an email to school district employees regarding a sixth-grade science trip.
“You would say to the students/parents, ‘If you have questions about the assignment, please feel free to discuss with me,’” Coley wrote in the email. “Then, if a parent says ‘hey, I don’t want my student with [who],’ you could provide an ear to listen and consider whether the student is a good fit, but the eventual response would be, ‘If you / your student is not comfortable with the rooming assignments and process of staying with other students in a room, then they can elect not to participate in this optional trip.’”
Coley’s email continues: “Parents and students do not get to pick, and saying I don’t want to stay with ‘Susie’ because ‘Susie isn’t a real girl,’ is no different than saying, ‘I don’t want to stay with Sara because Sara is [white/older/non-religious, etc.]’”
Coley, a 2018 graduate of California State University Long Beach, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
A mother who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about threats to her family told The Daily Signal that parents should be able to assume their child is safe with school officials, but they can’t in the Newport-Mesa district. The mother said she chose to take her children out of the district and homeschool them a few years ago.
“You just have to assume that my child is not safe, which is really scary,” she said. “The school does not have your child’s best interest at heart. They are more concerned with social justice issues.”
Mark Trammell, executive director of the Center for American Liberty, the group that conducted the public records request, criticized what he called the Newport-Mesa school district’s inconsistency in using privacy rights to hide gender identity from parents while ignoring privacy rights in making rooming assignments.
“It is ironic that school districts cite a student’s right to privacy as justification for schools keeping secrets from parents, but completely disregard student privacy rights when forcing girls to room with a boy pretending to be a girl,” Trammell said in an email to The Daily Signal. “Either the right to privacy exists or it doesn’t; schools cannot selectively apply it when it advances their woke political narratives.”
Newport-Mesa is the same school district where a high school promoted an LGBTQ organization that helps minors find referrals for irreversible transgender surgeries and hormone regimens.
Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California, has scannable QR codes in its hallways that take students to an “LGBTQ+ Resources” webpage, including a link to “LGBTQ Affirming Therapy.”
The high school took down its resource page after the publication of The Daily Signal’s report on Wednesday.
Coley also championed “Sexuality and Gender Galaxies” in emails to school district staff members that provide definitions of terms, including “two spirit,” “asexual,” “polysexual,” “clear platonic,” and “androgynous.”
According to the emails, Coley also is the point of contact for “Gender Support Plans,” which ask the person filling out such a form to indicate the level of support of a student’s parents for his or her gender identity. Students ages 12 and older may formulate gender support plans in the Newport-Mesa school district without parental knowledge or consent.
The district hides these Gender Support Plans in a “locked drawer in the admin’s office,” emails show.
In an email Thursday to The Daily Signal, the Newport-Mesa school district denied that it uses such support plans.
“We do not refer students for gender-affirming care nor do we have gender support plans without parental involvement,” public relations officer Annette Franco wrote in the email. “The student-driven resources are intended to complement the essential role that parents play in their children’s lives.”
In another email to district staff, Coley said students as young as 2 years old may be transgender, so the school district should use preferred pronouns for all ages—and respect the wishes of students of all ages to hide his or her gender identity from parents.
“The student’s age is not a factor,” Coley wrote in the email. “For example, children as early as age two are expressing a different gender identity.”
“It is strongly suggested that teachers privately ask transgender or gender nonconforming students at the beginning of the school year how they want to be addressed in class, in correspondence to the home, or at conferences with the student’s parents,” Coley wrote.
The administrator said that intentionally using a student’s given name and personal pronouns instead of their preferred ones qualifies as “harassment.”
“If a member of the school community intentionally uses a student’s incorrect name and pronoun, or persistently refuses to respect a student’s chosen name and pronouns, that conduct should be treated as harassment,” Coley said in the email. “That type of harassment can create a hostile learning environment, violate the transgender student’s privacy rights, and increase that student’s risk for harassment by other members of the school community.”
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Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is a reporting fellow for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Send her an email.
Photo “Students in Class” by Tima Miroshnichenko.
