Parent Sends Open Letter to Idaho Government Officials: ‘Gender Identity Questions In Schools’

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Op-Ed sent to us by a parent to whom it may concern:

My daughter attends Idaho Arts Charter School here in Nampa, and her first day of school was 8/25/2021. I heard from many parents who shed light on something that happened in most of the 6-12-grade classes. During class, the students were asked to introduce themself, and provide their preferred pronoun (i.e., what gender are you?). In my daughter’s case, the teachers requested for her to write this information down. However, I heard from other parents who said that some teachers additionally went around the room and asked students to share this information verbally with the class.

I heard teachers are asking for this information to be more inclusive for kids in the LGBTQ+ community after teachers attended some training—training where there was a discussion about increased suicide rates for kids in that community.

What gives the school district, the school administration, or teachers the right to ask personal questions of our kids? It is one thing for a student who chooses to identify differently to come to a teacher and ask to be acknowledged differently. It is quite another to ask every student to provide this information, information stored in some record at the school.

We send our kids to school to learn science, math, reading, writing, etc., not asked potentially uncomfortable or embarrassing questions. It is especially true for those younger students, many of whom have not yet had thoughts of, or been presented with, complex questions about sexuality. Schools today cannot even teach science-based sexual education in school without parental knowledge and consent. I remember being notified and given the option to remove my kids from those sexual education classes if I so chose. Why was I not provided with the same information and choices regarding this topic—a topic I argue has much more impact on kids than science-based sexual education? Presenting questions like this without parental consent smacks of dishonesty and secrecy and has no business in our schools.

My question for you is this—do you support this kind of questioning in our schools? If you do not, I wonder, is there anything you and your colleagues can do to prevent things like this from happening in the future?

I look forward to hearing from you.