Tag Archive for: high school

High School’s Policy Tells Girls To Leave Their Locker Room If Uncomfortable With Trans Students

An Arizona high school has a policy allowing transgender students to change in their preferred locker rooms and telling female students to use alternative facilities if they are uncomfortable, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Students and parents at Catalina Foothills High School (CFHS) in Tucson, Arizona, found out about the new policy after Bart Pemberton, a parent of a female student from CFHS, spoke with radio host Garrett Lewis about an “unwritten policy” that another parent had told him about. The policy not only allows transgender students in the bathroom or locker room of their choice but also tells students who are uncomfortable with the policy to request an accommodation to use different changing facilities, according to emails obtained by the DCNF.

Pemberton told the DCNF that when he heard about the policy he set up a meeting with the school’s principal Jody Brase for Feb. 21.

“According to [Brase] it is an unwritten and unadvertised policy for the past 10 years,” Pemberton said. “It’s basically whatever they (the school administration) want it to be since it isn’t ‘official.’ Her rationale was that this is a small number of kids, the other kids know who they are, the kids almost always don’t fully undress, most of the kids won’t use the locker rooms, etc.”

Eileen Jackson, president of the Catalina Foothills School District (CFS) governing board, told Pemberton in an email obtained by the DCNF that the district’s Nondiscrimination/Equal Opportunity policy covers such matters and “guide[s] our administrators in their daily decisions that arise in the operation of our schools.”

“Similarly, any student who is uncomfortable sharing multiple-occupancy facilities with others has the ability to request an accommodation,” Jackson said. “Our district administrators respond to their needs and find alternatives for those students. In this way, we treat all students in the same manner. Further, our administrators do not require any student to be singled out or isolated based on any of the protected statuses identified in our policy.”

Pemberton told Jackson that her statement directly contradicted what Brase had told him and asked that the school board talk about the policies at the district’s March 28 meeting.

Pemberton told Brase his concerns were based on what had happened at other schools like in Loudoun County, Virginia, when a male student, claiming to be transgender, allegedly sexually assaulted two girls in two different school bathrooms. Brase allegedly told Pemberton that she was “aware” of what had happened in Virginia but was “confident it wouldn’t happen here.”

Genon Thomas, a female student at Catalina, told the DCNF that the school had failed to inform her that she would have to share the bathroom or locker room with biologically male students, calling the policy the “dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I found out through my family members sending the news to me since they found out,” Thomas said. “I shouldn’t have to share a bathroom or locker room with people who were not born the same gender as me. I just would not feel comfortable.”

Chandler Thomas, Genon’s older brother, and his cousin Dylan Thomas told the DCNF that they concerned about safety and potential discrimination against female students.

“By enforcing the policy to allow non-biological females to use the women’s bathroom, they directly force two options on biological females: 1) Use the same bathroom uncomfortably around these individuals or 2) choose to use another bathroom to feel comfortable,” Chandler Thomas, an alum of CFHS, said. “Simply put, this is discrimination caused by hate for discrimination, very reminiscent of the force driving Marxist ideology. This policy discriminates against biological females as well as any information opposing the ideology that manifested this policy.”

Dylan Thomas said he wanted “a definitive answer” about how the school will keep its students “safe, protected and comfortable.” Thomas also objected to his siblings and other students being subjected to “this delusion” and wondered how the school could claim it was preventing discrimination when it would force girls to leave their own locker room.

A spokesperson from CFSD district told the DCNF that no students are “singled out or isolated based on any of the protected statuses identified in our policy.”

“The CFSD Governing Board’s policy, unanimously adopted in 2015, states that our district is committed to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ethnicity, religion, creed, age or disability,” the spokesperson said.

The district did acknowledge that any students who are “uncomfortable sharing multiple-occupancy facilities (e.g., restrooms, locker rooms)” can “request an accommodation,” noting that administrators “find alternatives for those students.”

Jennifer Pershing, a mother of four with one student at CFHS, told the DCNF the school is embracing a “dangerous social contagion” and “discriminating against the truth.” Perishing said she has “compassion for children suffering from gender dysphoria” but argued that it was not going to help anyone to “pretend it is normal.”

Pershing said some parents have tried to ignore what is going on because it feels like a losing battle, but she said that the “transgender ideology is a lie” and will “ultimately fail.”

Dylan Thomas noted that parents he has spoken to are looking for ways to take their kids out of high school either by transferring or homeschooling.

“Parents, teachers, and siblings that I have talked to couldn’t believe it, no one thought this delusional reality would come this far and seep into our own backyard,” Thomas said.

CFHS and Brase did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

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Republican Cracks Down on Trans Bathroom Policies After High School Restroom Assault

The top education official in a heavily Republican state is cleaning house, demanding that all public school districts and charter school have policies respecting the privacy of female students, after a male who identifies as female allegedly beat up two teenage girls in a high school restroom.

No media outlet covered the altercation, which took place on October 26, until the website Reduxx got a copy of the police report on December 12. According to police, a teenage boy became enraged when a teenage girl ignored him when he initiated conversation inside the girl’s restroom of Edmond Memorial High School in Edmond, Oklahoma. The boy then asked if she “wanted to fight” and came at her with clenched fists, pulled her hair, and threw her to the ground. the police report says. The girl said she was too weak to fight back. An eyewitness said the boy then “kicked her in the head and the back 2 times,” then punched her repeatedly. Another female said she intervened to stop the fight, because the attacker “is a man,” but said the boy punched her in the face twice; the police report described the second girl as having sustained a “possible concussion.”

“This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the state of Oklahoma,” said Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters (R) in an online video. Walters said he would launch a state-level investigation into Edmond Public Schools — but he would also require all Oklahoma public school districts to notify parents of their restroom policies and submit them to Walters for review. “Our legislature and governor passed and signed a bill that says boys cannot go into girls’ restrooms for this precise reason,” said Walters. “We will not allow the radical Left’s Woke ideology to endanger our girls by having boys in the girls’ restrooms, where assaults like this can happen.”

Walters previously critiqued public schools in Stillwater after outraged parents complained that administrators opened restrooms to teenagers of both sexes. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety,” Walters wrote to Stillwater education officials on April 8. “Today I am asking you to work with your fellow board members to make it so that your students only use the bathroom of their God-given natural sex. Biological males should not receive unrestricted access to women’s restrooms, leaving our young girls uncomfortable and afraid to enter them during school.”

“It’s wonderful to see Oklahoma’s Education Secretary Ryan Walters prioritizing the safety of girls over the desires of boys to be accepted as girls,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.

A month after Walters’s letter to Stillwater, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt (R) signed S.B. 615, which requires schools to designate all restrooms or changing areas used by more than one person for the “exclusive use” of one sex. Schools must make a “reasonable accommodation” by providing a single-use restroom or changing area to students who do not wish to comply. Any school district that refuses to implement this policy would lose 5% of state funding in the next year, and parents would have a “cause of action” to sue noncompliant schools.

Three students, represented by the ACLU and Lambda Legal, sued the state Department of Education this fall, alleging in court filings that people who identify as transgender are “being singled out for discriminatory unequal treatment.”

“Education officials in school districts across the country have been pressured by outside agitators like the ACLU, SPLC, GLSEN, and the Human Rights Campaign to adopt progressive and dangerous policies that undermine children’s safety and learning. In the face of this relentless pressure, it takes leadership to restate the commonsense values that parents expect and under which all children can thrive,” Kilgannon told TWS.

Walters also criticized the legacy media for refusing to cover the story of the alleged transgender physical assault for nearly two months. A Google search found that, as of this writing, the Edmond transgender restroom assault had not been reported by The New York TimesThe Washington PostThe Wall Street Journal, the Associated PressNBC NewsABC NewsCBS NewsReutersAxios, or Vice News.

Local media also suppressed the story of the transgender restroom attack. “I don’t think it meets the threshold to be ‘news,’” wrote Wendy Suares, a reporter for the area’s Fox affiliate, KOKH. The incident came as Virginia’s Loudoun County public school officials found themselves embroiled in controversy — and ultimately indicted — for denying that a male student who identifies as “gender fluid” sexually assaulted a teenage girl in a school restroom. Instead, officials had the girl’s outraged father arrested at a school board meeting, after quietly transferring the student to another school, where he reportedly molested another female student.

“Schools are for educating children, not ‘fixing them,’ promoting politics, or virtue signaling,” Kilgannon told TWS. “Thanks to Secretary Walters for this effort.”

Edmond Public School Superintendent Angela Grunewald responded in an oddly upbeat video that the school did not know the alleged perpetrator was a male, because his birth certificate did not mark his gender. Grunewald said her school district follows all applicable state laws and punished the male for fighting, as well as using the restroom facilities of the opposite sex.

Walters, who is running to become State Superintendent for Education, has promised to thoroughly review all state schools for compliance with the law — and, most importantly, to protect the safety and privacy of underage girls.

Walters’s “review of school policies just might reveal additional work to be done in 2023,” Kilgannon told TWS. “Something tells me he’s ready to do whatever it takes to protect all the children in his charge.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trans-Identifying HHS Official Admits Gender Transition Procedures Can Cause Sterility

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Tobacco Use Decreased by 64% among High School Students Since 1997 while Marijuana Use Doubled

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzes tobacco and marijuana use among white, African American, and Hispanic students in grades 9 through 12 from 1997 to 2013. The data come from CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS) conducted every two years.

The good news is that student use of cigarettes and cigars has declined 64 percent, from 20.5 percent in 1997 to 7.4 percent in 2013. The bad news is that marijuana use more than doubled during that time, from 4.2 percent to 10.2 percent.

Further, marijuana use among students who also used cigarettes or cigars increased from 51.2 percent to 62.4 percent over that time, with even higher increases towards the end of the study period among African American and Hispanic students.

The use of marijuana among those who used cigarettes or cigars did not change among Hispanic students from 1997 to 2007, but then escalated from 54.9 percent to 73.6 percent in 2013. African American students’ marijuana use among those who used cigarettes and cigars held steady until 2009, but increased even further, from 66.4 percent then to 82 percent in 2013.

When tobacco and marijuana are used together, the likelihood of harm to individuals, including cognitive, psychological, respiratory, and addiction problems, also increases.

The substantial 64 percent decline in cigarette and cigar use among students took place as the result of evidence-based strategies such as increasing tobacco product prices, adopting comprehensive smoke-free policies, and conducting national public education media campaigns.

Read “Cigarette, Cigar, and Marijuana Use Among High School Students—United States—1997-2013” here.

Florida: Islamic bias found in high school history textbook

Creeping  Shariah reports:

Two Brevard School Board members are reviewing a world history textbook used in ninth grade Advance Placement classes amid concerns that it is biased in favor of Islam — at the expense of Christianity and Judaism.

House Representative Ritch Workman and individuals from two citizens groups spoke against the textbook, Prentice Hall World History, at the Brevard School Board meeting Tuesday, citing examples of phrases and passages they believe show bias.

“Our children deserve facts and accuracy, not history being revised for our own failure or desire to not offend one culture or another,” said Workman, a Republican from Melbourne.

The textbook, which has been used in Brevard for the past three years, devotes a chapter to Islam, with sections including the rise of Islam and the building of the Muslim empire. Conversely, Christianity and Judaism do not have their own chapters and instead are referenced in paragraphs embedded in other sections.

Workman also expressed concern about how historic events are portrayed and what phrases are used. For example, he said the textbook reads Jesus proclaims himself to be the Messiah but declares Muhammad becomes a prophet.

School board members Amy Kneessy and Andy Ziegler promised to review the textbook, which is published by Pearson, a well-known printer of educational textbooks.

“No matter what the subject is, whether it’s math, English, science or world history, students need to have accurate, unbiased information,” Kneessy said. “If textbooks are unbiased or incomplete, it’s our job to fix that.”

Pearson Spokeswoman Susan Aspey said the company and its authors adhere to “the highest editorial standards when creating course materials, which undergo a rigorous review process.”

“The textbook referenced was approved by the state of Florida and meets all requirements for the High School World History Course,” she wrote in an email. “A review of the book shows there is balanced attention given to the beliefs of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.”

Ziegler said the underlining issue is accuracy and fairness — and should be investigated.

Read more.

Related video from an event featuring Brigitte Gabriel, founder of ACT for America,  in Jacksonville, FL: