A middle school in California socially transitioned an 11-year-old without her mother’s knowledge or consent. (Photo: Maskot/Getty Images)
California mom Jessica Konen won a $100,000 settlement from her daughter’s school district, Spreckels Union School District, after Buena Vista Middle School had socially transitioned her 11-year-old daughter, Alicia, without her knowledge or consent. The school district still refuses to admit that it’s at fault.
Many are calling this a landmark case, saying it will make other school districts across the country think twice before transitioning kids behind their parents’ backs.
Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, told The Washington Stand, “This is a great development in the overall move to stop mistreating children based on gender identity declarations at school. When California is debating the issue of whether or not to inform parents if their child makes a declaration or is accommodated as the opposite sex, this is also timely.”
At the beginning of her sixth-grade year, a friend invited Alicia to the school’s Equality Club, headed by two seventh-grade teachers, Lois Caldeira and Kelly Baraki. While there, the teachers told her that she was bisexual and later on identified her as transexual. (Alicia wasn’t sure what either of those terms meant, but trusted the teachers, was given more material to read, and believed them.)
Later, in the spring, Alicia went to the school counselor because she was depressed and stressed. She had weekly meetings with the counselor as well as Caldeira and the principal. Alicia was informed that she was depressed and stressed because she was “not being who she was” and that if she became her “true self,” she would get better.
According to the legal complaint, Caldeira and Baraki identified students for the school’s Equality Club “based on comments students made to them, comments that they overheard students make to others, and their own observations of students in the classroom setting, and otherwise. Once they identified students for the club, Caldeira and Baraki would invite them to participate.”
In a leaked recording from a 2021 California Teachers Association conference, these teachers discussed how they kept meetings private and “stalked” students online for recruits.
“When we were doing our virtual learning—we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing school work,” Baraki admitted. “One of them was googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”
Before you read the following, let me assure you, I checked this one out myself first. It’s true. Still think you can trust Google?
Spreckels Union School District adopted a “Parental Secrecy Policy,” ensuring that staff at Buena Vista would “conceal from parents that their minor children had articulated confusion about their gender identity, evinced a desire to change their gender identity, or assumed or expressed a new gender identity, unless the student expressly authorized the parents to be informed.”
Remarkably, Spreckels Union would “intentionally deceive parents regarding students’ new gender identity and expression by, among other things, not publishing the Parental Secrecy Policy on the Spreckels Union website, using students’ birth names and pronouns in communications with parents despite using students’ new names and pronouns when parents were not there, instructing students they were not to tell their parents about their new gender identity or expression because their parents ‘couldn’t be trusted,’ and otherwise concealing those facts from parents.”
Devastatingly, the school’s actions drove a wedge between Konen and Alicia.
These are tactics promoted and encouraged by teachers unions such as the California Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association, as well as the union for school counselors, the American School Counselor Association.
They result from common attitudes among the education establishment and others on the political Left who view parents as potential threats to their own children if they don’t accept LGBTQ ideology.
For example, Peter Renn, an attorney for the LGBTQ legal organization Lambda Legal, said, “Outside of school, these students may similarly face potential hostility at home because of who they are. For example, involuntarily outing a student as LGBTQ to their parents can very well lead to them getting kicked out of the home in some circumstances.”
Thankfully, during Alicia’s eighth-grade year, she was learning at home due to COVID-19 school shutdowns. This is when, in Alicia’s words, she “ended up being out of control of the school” and figured out who she really was—a girl.
Now, five years after Alicia started being transitioned by her school, she and her mom have received counseling, and their relationship has been restored.
Konen and Alicia’s lawyer, Mark Trammel, are calling on parents across the country to be pro-active and realize that this is not just something that happens in California. He says that his office has likely received calls from parents in all 50 states who have gone through something similar to Konen’s situation.
Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement, told The Washington Stand:
This situation is further evidence that many in the education system view parents as a threat to children. Parents need to be very careful about the environments and people they entrust their children to. There are a lot of ‘nice’ people who will do terrible things to you and your children.
Konen advises parents to be fully involved in their children’s lives; do their research on their school’s faculty, curriculum, and clubs; and listen to their intuition.
Backholm said, “I am encouraged by the result of this lawsuit, not only because it is appropriate under the circumstances, but because it will hopefully deter other schools from doing something similar in the future. When significant things are happening in a child’s life, parents need to be the first to know, not the last. Schools that do not believe that should quickly be reformed or cease to exist.”
Kilgannon agreed. “No one can ‘do over’ even one second of childhood, never mind the years that can be consumed by this evil and the irreparable harm that is done. Let’s celebrate this victory and remember it is but one battle in the ongoing war to protect children and parents.”
Image Source: KGO-TV YouTube video screenshot composite
A mom in California says she was the victim of “cancel culture” over her politically incorrect comments made during a school board meeting about LGBTQ materials being included in other school curricula.
Janet Roberson told KGO-TV that she lost her job 10 days after speaking at a meeting of the Benicia Unified School District school board in April. She has three children attending schools in the Benicia school district.
“It’s not a choice. People are not gender fluid, and to teach our children this is not okay,” she said during the meeting.
Roberson said that people who disagreed with her contacted her employer, a large real estate company based in New York, and publicized her comments. She said she was called bigoted and racist over the comments.
“I thought, gosh, as a mom speaking at a school board meeting, you should be able to do that without losing your job,” said Roberson.
The company, Compass, released a statement denying that its staffing decision had to do with her political beliefs.
“Compass does not make decisions about agents’ affiliations with the company based on their personal political or social beliefs,” the company said.
Roberson said that, as an independent contractor, she had no legal recourse.
“We should all be able to have our opinions without trying to cancel each other. I think I’m really trying to come out strong against this whole kind of cancel culture,” she explained.
Benicia Unified School District Superintendent Damon Wright defended the district’s policy to include LGBTQ materials in school curricula by saying, “Parents and guardians have the right to opt out of all or part of sexual health instruction.”
Roberson told the Daily Wire that she would have done it all again.
“For me to lose a job is horrible and not okay, but I would be willing to do it again,” she said. “Absolutely. To speak the truth and to stand for freedom and for what our Constitution stands for — 100%.”
Roberson says she was able to find a new job.
Here’s a local news report about the incident:
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A California mom is outraged after her daughter’s school district upheld a “parental secrecy policy” allowing school officials to offer gender counseling without informing parents.
Aurora Regino said her 11-year-old daughter’s elementary school in the Chico Unified School District helped her transition from female to male during the last school year, but a guidance counselor kept her in the dark during the entire process.
“During one of the meetings, my daughter told the counselor she wanted to tell me about her new identity. They ignored her request and did nothing to support her in letting me know what was going on at school,” she told board members at a meeting last Wednesday.
The board weighed a measure that would allow for “more parental inclusion” but ultimately voted to keep the existing so-called “parental secrecy policy” in place with a 3-2 vote.
“It was a really sad decision that they made, but unfortunately I wasn’t extremely surprised,” Regino told “Fox & Friends First” host Todd Piro on Tuesday.
“This policy that they have in place, to keep these situations a secret from the family, is incredibly damaging. It was extremely damaging in my case with my daughter. She was bullied and she didn’t have the support that she needed from her family and, also, she was outed within the school with other people within the office knowing her new gender and pronouns that she didn’t even tell them, and she had to go through those feelings of wondering how they even knew all on her own.”
California mom Aurora Regino speaks to her daughter’s school board ahead of a vote offering more transparency for parents. (Chico Unified School Board of Education)
Regino, who is suing the district for keeping her in the dark about her daughter’s identity and transition, lambasted the policy as “incredibly dangerous” and said the struggle to advance parental rights in the area had been hard-fought.
She told Piro her daughter is doing well, but she is determined to speak out on behalf of her family and others with similar experiences, so everyone knows what is taking place in public schools.
“When this originally happened to our family, nobody could’ve ever told me that this was going on, especially at the young age of elementary school,” she said.
The policy that board members voted to uphold, according to Regino, extends to children as young as pre-kindergarten who are approximately five years old and reaches through the 12th grade.
“It’s incredibly damaging that they’re upholding such a crazy policy for such young children,” she continued after a moment, arguing that such a tumultuous time in children and adolescents’ lives is when they need parental guidance the most.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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