The parents of a 12-year-old girl in the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD) in Salinas, California, claimed school staff indoctrinated their daughter into identifying as “trans fluid” after encouraging her to join a lunchtime “Equality Club.”
“You took away my ability to parent my child!” an irate Jessica Konen told the school board Thursday night.
Konen alleged two years ago school staff at Buena Vista Middle School encouraged her daughter to join a lunchtime LGBTQ club disguised with the name “Equality Club.”
Konen told the Epoch Times that toward the end of her sixth grade year, her daughter informed her she might be bisexual, and later on, in the middle of seventh grade, Konen said she was called to the school for a meeting with her daughter, a teacher, and the school principal.
During that meeting, Konen reported the teacher said her daughter was “trans fluid.”
“I sat across the table, and I was crying,” she said, according to the Times. I was trying to absorb everything.”
“They kept looking at me angrily because I kept saying ‘she,’ and that it was going to take me time to process everything,” Konen added. “I was very confused. … I was very upset. I was blindsided—completely blindsided.”
Konen said the teacher accused her of not being “emotionally supportive” of her daughter’s new gender identity, and said she should be using her daughter’s new name and pronouns. The teacher apparently added Konen’s daughter would now be using the unisex bathroom at school.
“I felt she completely coached my child,” Konen said. “It made me feel very, very small as a parent. I was unaware of anything. Not one time had she mentioned to me ‘Oh, I think that I want to change my name,’ or ‘I’m transgender’ or anything. Nothing. I only heard bisexual one time, and that was it.”
Konen reported that several days after the school meeting, the King City Police Department arrived at her home to inform her a Child Protective Services (CPS) complaint had been filed against her. The Times noted police officers questioned both of her children and asked if they wished to be removed from their home.
“They made me feel like a monster,” she said, but followed through by taking her children to meet with CPS.
Ultimately, the agency dropped the case, Konen said, and did not require that she use masculine pronouns in addressing her daughter.
The experience, however, left Konen frightened that additional inquiries regarding her daughter’s activities at school could lead to another CPS complaint.
Several more meetings with teachers revealed, unbeknownst to Konen, her daughter had searched online for information regarding suicide, though the school had failed to inform her.
Konen then removed her daughter from the school. According to the Times report, her daughter, now 14, is at a new school, using her birth name and feminine pronouns.
As Breitbart News reported in November, author and journalist Abigail Shrier revealed leaked authenticated documents that showed activist teachers from the Buena Vista Middle School boasting at a California Teachers Association (CTA) meeting in October. Shrier reported the teachers were touting their “best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
“Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents,” Shrier noted.
Two teachers, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki, reportedly led a workshop about how to run a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club in conservative communities.
“Because we are not official – we have no club rosters, we keep no records,” Caldeira reportedly said. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”
Another middle school teacher, Kelly Baraki, was reportedly heard describing how she has changed the name of her “GSA” to the “Equity Club,” and then later to “You Be You,” in order to keep parents at bay.
SUSD officials responded to Shrier’s report by stating:
Many of the comments and themes stated in the article are alarming, concerning, disappointing, and do not in any way reflect the District or Board of Education’s policies and practices.
“Regarding the teachers involved, appropriate personnel steps are being taken to make sure such activities and comments will not be repeated,” the district stated.
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