Global Courant 2023-05-02 11:35:23
A California high school teacher is suing school district leaders after she was allegedly told to mislead parents about students’ gender identity.
“It’s a shame that I have to go toe-to-toe and compete against a community of people that I love,” teacher Elizabeth Mirabelli told Fox News Digital. “I’ve been there for 25 years. This is a community of people I care about, people I’ve served for a long time. And that gives me a moment to stand up, but I felt I had to make that choice to make.”
Attorneys for Mirabelli and fellow teacher Lori Ann West, who both taught for decades at Rincon Middle School in Escondido, filed a federal lawsuit against the school management in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California last week after the women alleged that they are actually required to lie to parents about their children if they adopted a different gender identity at school.
The lawsuitwhich was also filed against administrators at the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) and the California State Board of Education, alleged that the K-8 school district’s harassment and discrimination policies required teachers to disclose a child’s transgender or gender-diverse identity without hesitation. accept and to hide it from families.
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The lawsuit also alleges that they were instructed to use students’ preferred names and pronouns at school, but to revert to their biological pronouns and given names when speaking to their parents. Teachers were told to tell “a suspicious parent” to only talk about “information about the student’s behavior related to school, class rules, assignments, etc,” the indictment said.
According to a transcript of a February 3, 2022 training presentation for EUSD staff on the “rights of gender diverse students” obtained by Fox News Digital, teachers were instructed that a student’s “assertion is sufficient” to determine gender identity, and that failure to confirm that it would be harassment. The training also claimed that there is “no requirement for a parent or guardian agreement or even knowledge for us to treat that student in accordance with their gender identity.”
Mirabelli told Fox News Digital that the policy came into existence around the 2019-2020 school year in the school district and that while some of her colleagues were punished for not following it, it wasn’t until the 2021-2022 school year that she “personally stood for a dilemma.”
That year, several of the new students on her roster approached her asking her to refer to them by another name and not to tell their parents. She said she had been thinking about how best to handle the situation when she learned from the school counselor that student names were being changed in official school records without parental knowledge or consent.
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Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who both taught for decades at Rincon Middle School in Escondido, claim that school policy required them to lie to parents. (Credit: Google Maps)
“How do educators know better than their own parents and families? Why are we taking over the welfare of these children and making decisions as personal as their first name?” she said. “I just thought that was really going too far as a teacher, as an educator. That’s overstepping our role in their lives. And then we’re not allowed to tell their parents? I just thought it didn’t seem right.”
She noted that she has a good relationship with her students’ parents, most of whom she says are uncomfortable with the district’s policies but feel “powerless to do anything”.
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Mirabelli, who is Catholic, said her faith played a role in how she reacted to the policies, which she says run counter to her beliefs. She sought religious accommodations to avoid them, but said she only got partial accommodations after many weeks of bureaucratic back-and-forth.
She sued under the First Amendment after the school reportedly flatly rejected her request to be exempt from the aspect of the policy that excludes parents.
Escondido, California, is about 30 miles from San Diego. (George Rose/Getty Images)
“I think we all know pretty easily that lying isn’t something you want to do, and it’s certainly not something you want to teach kids,” she said. “If I say to a child, ‘Yes, honey, you can have a whole personality here at school, but we’re not going to tell your parents,’ what does that teach a child?”
She said teachers who go along with such deception weaken the bond between parents and their children, and the message children get is that “manipulating others is acceptable, lying when necessary”.
Mirabelli noted that schools seem to be more concerned with exploring alternative identities than preparing students to compete academically. (Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/photo alliance via Getty Images)
“I think people from all walks of life can understand that educators have a role to play,” she said. “Our role in a free society is to prepare (students) academically, to go out and achieve their goals and dreams; to compete, to go to college. It’s not to cross those boundaries.”
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Mirabelli said fellow teachers from across the political spectrum have expressed support for her position.
“The schools are normalizing and encouraging students to explore these alternative identities, but their academic progress is in the tank,” Mirabelli said, adding that many students’ math and reading skills are three or four years below elementary school levels. .
A photo of a Pride Progress flag, with colors of the Transgender Pride flag. (Mike Kemp/In Images via Getty Images)
“We affirm all these social trends, but we send them out into the world, and they can’t go to college and compete because they don’t have access to the high levels of literacy it takes to become a scientist, a doctor. . , a lawyer or a teacher,” she said. ‘That is the problem. We have to concentrate on our work again.’
“The Escondido Union School District is committed to providing a safe and positive environment that empowers our students to learn and realize their unlimited potential and empowers our teachers to excel as educators,” EUSD told EUSD. superintendent dr. Luis A. Rankins-Ibarra told Fox News Digital in a statement. “As part of that commitment to student learning, the district observes all federal and state laws.”
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Protesters in support of transgender rights gather outside the Alabama State House in Montgomery, Ala, on Tuesday, March 30, 2021. (Jake Crandall/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP)
Thomas More Society special counsel Paul Jonna, who represents Mirabelli and her colleague, said he believes their case could open the floodgates for similar cases, which he hopes will eventually come to the Supreme Court and take the issue nationally. level will resolve.
Both Mirabelli and Jonna are confident in their complaint, which the teacher says is “founded in the law and in the truth.”
Jonna said he was surprised to learn how “pervasive” similar policies have become in schools, not just in Southern California, but other states as well. He took note of the case of Pamela Richard, a retired Kansas teacher who received a $95,000 settlement last fall after a lawsuit against the Geary County School District, which administrators allegedly expected to mislead parents about students’ gender identity .
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Thomas More Society special counsel Paul Jonna said he was surprised to learn how “pervasive” school policies have become to keep parents’ gender identity away. (Courtesy of Thomas More Society)
“(There’s) no doubt in my mind, there’s definitely been higher-level coordination,” Jonna said of why such policies have sprung up as far away as rural Kansas. “I’m very interested in learning more about that. It’s something I don’t know.”
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“But how did this policy creep into school districts all over San Diego and all over California and probably many, many states? I’m sure there were big, powerful organizations behind these policies, but I’m just speculating now. I don’t know, but we’re going to figure it out,” he added.
Jon Brown is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected].
