California School District Emails Reveal Students Were Secretly Gender Transitioned

Originally Published: The Epoch Times March 17, 2023

File photo of a classroom on March 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

A parental rights group in Orange County, Calif., claims 23 students—eight of them elementary age—began social gender transitioning at a local school district without informed parental consent from January 2020 to October 2022.

The group, California Alliance for Education, obtained hundreds of pages of emails and documents from the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, which oversees pre-K through grade 12 schools for Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

A parental rights advocate involved with the alliance who goes by the pseudonym Kim Davis for fear of retaliation told The Epoch Times that in all 23 cases, parents were either not informed about the initiation of their child’s Gender Support Plan, known as a GSP, or were told and did not consent.

“All of these gender support plans were offered to students without any knowledge of the parents. The student is then asked if they want their parents included in the meeting, or to know about it. So, it’s the student’s decision,” Davis said. “It’s possible some of the parents of the 23 children may have been informed later, but the emails show the process of social transition was initiated without their involvement.”

Social transitioning means changing a student’s name, pronouns, and their email address to reflect their new non-binary or transgender identity.

The emails, obtained by The Epoch Times, reveal the following incidents:

• The district created plans to place mental health counselors in elementary schools to initiate GSPs with students without parental consent, and an elementary school principal and a director of student services discussed adding these counselors to assist with GSPs. In the email, the principal instructs a counselor to “build connection” with an elementary student and ask about preferred pronouns without first obtaining parental consent.

• A local LGBT activist pushed for the social transition of an elementary student against a parent’s wishes.

• Elementary school students were socially transitioned without parental consent. In one case, a mom didn’t want her child to transition, and the school moved forward with the social transition of the child anyway.

• A district student services director celebrated more than 500 mental health check-ins by counselors underway at district elementary schools.

• The district made room assignments for sleepover camps, such as sixth-grade Science Camp, based on gender identity instead of biological sex.

• A high school student’s parents did not attend a gender support meeting because the student didn’t want the parents to know.

The public records also show that an activity called Gender and Sexuality Galaxies (pdf) produced by the progressive organization Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights was sent to district counselors and psychologists, and one of the middle school mental health providers has pushed back against the teaching materials.

The colorful diagrams, which show 10 gender identities and 12 sexual orientation choices, with “infinite possibilities” of gender expression, were distributed to the counselors and psychologists on Trans Visibility Day on March 31, 2021, Davis said.

The document tells instructors to ask students to “imagine themselves as existing within the Gender Galaxy and the Sexuality Galaxy” and “imagine themselves as a space traveller” as they “write or draw their own story of planetary and space exploration.”

School District Policies

Annette Franco, a public relations officer for the school district, said in an email to The Epoch Times the district was not aware of the 23 cases documented by California Alliance for Education.

The district, she said, is required by anti-discrimination and privacy laws, including Assembly Bill (AB) 1266, to maintain confidentiality regarding a student’s gender support plan and preferred pronouns unless the student gives staff permission to inform their parents or guardians.

“We have an obligation as public school employees to put our personal beliefs aside and abide by all applicable laws that govern public school districts,” Franco said.

She cited district policy, which requires it to notify parents and students annually about the possibility of transgender students participating in sex-segregated school programs and activities with students of the opposite gender.

“The notice shall inform students and parents/guardians that the district will not typically notify them of individual instances of transgender students participating in a program or activity,” the policy states.

The California Department of Education has provided guidance to teachers and counselors advising them not to inform parents or guardians when a student asks for a social transition unless the student wants to tell them.

But Davis contends these mandates aren’t the law.

AB 1266, a 2014 law known as the School Success and Opportunity Act, states that students must be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, and use facilities consistent with their gender identity without regard to their biological sex.

“That’s all the law says. It says nothing about socially transitioning kids without parental consent,” she said. “So, it’s not the law. The California Department of Education guidelines appear likely to be unlawful in that respect.”

Davis cited provisions under the California Education codes and the