Gender Guidelines in Maryland County School System Challenged by Parents Group
The Culture War nationwide over gender identification in public schools is burning hot in Frederick County, Maryland.
Boys identifying as girls have been free to use restrooms designated for girls in public schools for six years, according to media reports. But many parents aren’t happy about it.
The County School System states in policy 443: “Gender identity is a protected status in Frederick County Public Schools (FCPS).”
Yet, citizens with children or grandchildren in Frederick public schools have protested the policy for years and have sponsored their own slate of candidates for the Board of Education to get it revised. The groups include Moms for Liberty and Our Voices for Freedom.
In the last election, only one of their candidates, Nancy Allen, gained a seat on the board. Allen, whose career has been in non-profit administration, told The Epoch Times that citizens told her that they objected to the adoption of the new health framework in the school’s curriculum in 2019. The focus on gender identity, social emotional learning, and racial identity were also concerns of Allen’s supporters.
Regarding policy 443, “without parental consent and parents involved, it makes it harder for the school system to do its job,” Allen told The Epoch Times.
“The Board of Education members believe they must protect students from their parents,” she said. “The argument that parents may not be accepting of their child’s decision is not an excuse to eliminate the parents from the conversation. If parents appear to be a threat to the child, the school then has the legal responsibility to report those findings. But I believe that is rare,” Allen said.
“I want to help the school administration see that it’s not their role to replace parents.”
Pushback on Parents’ Role Being Challenged
Parents in Frederick County seeking a mandate for parental notification when their children change their name or pronouns met pushback from school board members and other citizens at a packed public meeting on March 8. Jim Lehmann, founder of Transparency in Education, explained that the students who want to change their pronouns frequently are exhibiting a condition of gender dysphoria, which can be remediated by therapy and parental involvement.
Lehmann has proposed a new rule that would “require that parents be brought into the conversation when their children exhibit the symptoms of gender dysphoria or express a desire to transition.”
“The medical data support that this is the most effective path for children and their families, who are in the best position to understand the full and complete picture of a child’s medical and psychological profile,” he said. “Continuing the current policy, which excludes parental notification, means schools are embarking upon a therapeutical approach without the support or knowledge of parents or medical oversight.”
Lehmann said he was heckled at the Board’s public meeting on March 8, which included transgender parents and transgender students opposing his views.
The debate over whether schools have overstepped their role by standing between parents and their children who question their sexual identity has cropped up outside of Maryland. Florida’s Republican leaders have restricted how race and gender are taught in schools, and are planning to intervene in school policies further in coming months. Last August, an independent school district in a Dallas suburb banned teachers from allowing students to use pronouns that didn’t match their birth sex.
Tom Neumark, who founded Frederick Classical Charter School in 2013, advocates for parental involvement in counselling their children. “The schools are at loggerheads with the parents,” Neumark told The Epoch Times. “Our policy would stop the school from social transitioning the students after they notify school staff they want to identify as other than their birth sex,” he said.
“Changing a student’s name and pronouns is a form of therapy, and social transitioning steers children toward medical transitioning, and we are against that,” Neumark added.
“There are a bunch of reasons children develop an interest in transitioning, including underlying conditions that are presenting as gender dysphoria such as anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, sexual trauma or social contagion,” he said, adding, “Ten years ago, sexual dysmorphia was as rare as one in 10,000 youth, now it’s one in 71.”
‘Hands Off Our Kids’
Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich gave the keynote speech to activists at a formation meeting on March 11 of a political action committee aiming to recruit school board candidates who would champion the voice of concerned parents called the Maryland Alliance of Parents and Students.
“Hands off our kids is the bottom line,” Ehrlich told The Epoch Times. “Everyday Maryland kids wake up to an unconstitutional reality,” he said of the school system. “We have complete dysfunction in our public schools are being deprived of their constitutional right to education that will allow them to compete in the workplace.
“I am sure that someday, I will visit adult correctional institutions and meet some of the same kids today who were failed in our public schools,” he said. “The battle over control of schools is a front in the culture war that parents didn’t start—it was brought to them by the progressive left. And culture wars are ugly, but the stakes are so high now, conservatives have got to win,” Ehrlich said. The new PAC has membership in 10 counties.
The battle over how much independence County Boards of Education should have is working its way through the Maryland Senate with Senate Bill 199, which mandates that all state school systems must comply with state standards for health curriculum and gender identity, or risk losing up to 20 percent of their funding from the state.
The measure was denounced by the Maryland Association of State Boards of Education and called a power grab by “Concerned Parents of Carrol County Maryland,” which has conducted a petition drive to force the removal of State Superintendent of Education Mohammed Choudhury.
The House companion bill, numbered 119, has passed the Maryland State Assembly but the Senate bill has met substantial opposition from some members of the public, according to media accounts.
