Parents of fourth and fifth graders in a Beaverton, Oregon, elementary school are outraged about the creation of a Queer Student Alliance (QSA) club they say their children were asked to join without their consent.
At a January 18 virtual school board meeting, parents of children aged 9-11 years who attend Raleigh Hills Elementary School expressed concern about the appropriateness of the club, reported Reduxx the following day.
Parent Bambi addressed the school board (video begins at 56:18) regarding her experience with the school principal’s alleged dismissal of her concerns:
So, I’m a parent of a fourth grader who had some fifth grade students come into her classroom and do a presentation on an LGBTQ club. My daughter was asked to sign up and she did because everybody was doing it and she thought that that’s what she should do.
I then became aware of email conversations back and forth between the principal and other school officials dating back to November of last year. The emails showed this club being planned out and how to go around needing parents’ permission.
These meetings are taking place during the school day and, per the emails, that was one of the ways to be able to get around parents needing to approve it. The emails instruct transparency, but only if a parent asks. Nothing came home with my daughter or was sent to me from the school explaining such a presentation was going to take place in the classroom. I was not given the opportunity to opt her out.
Last year my daughter struggled a lot online and I asked the principal for help. After asking the teacher multiple times and was just being told to do the best we can. The principal said there really isn’t anything that she could do for me and she emailed me a list of tutors that I could pay for.
I’m very disappointed that the request for my educational support was dismissed, yet I was left in the dark about her being exposed to a very inappropriate for her age presentation which feels more like her being groomed and recruited by older students.
And I didn’t send my daughter to school today and I didn’t plan to until I had a conversation with the principal, and I did that today and, again, I was dismissed, and she downplayed the severity of the incident.
More parents are discovering, and some taking legal action against, alleged “secretive” attempts on the part of activist teachers and school officials in indoctrinating young children in an LGBTQ agenda.
As Breitbart News reported Tuesday, a California mother is now taking legal action against her school district, claiming two LGBTQ activist teachers “secretly manipulated” her 11-year-old daughter “into believing she was a transgender boy and gave tips on how to bind her breasts.”
Jessica Konen filed a legal claim against the Spreckles Union School District that states two teachers, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki, from the Buena Vista Middle School, who headed the school’s Equality Club, indoctrinated her daughter into identifying as “trans fluid” after encouraging her to join their lunchtime LGBTQ group they first called the “Equality Club.
Author and journalist Abigail Shrier revealed in November that leaked authenticated documents showed the two middle school teachers touted a month earlier at a California Teachers Association (CTA) conference their “best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
Harmeet Dhillon, founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty, filed the case on behalf of Konen and told DailyMail.com:
Parents are supposed to have access to all the educational records of their children. The concept that the schools have a right to be running secret, don’t-tell-your-parents clubs and don’t-tell-your-parents programs and actively coaching children how to mutilate themselves, which is you know, not growing your breasts, is certainly not consistent with California law.
According to Reduxx, Beaverton school board officials said their club was initiated, and is led by, two fifth-graders who claim to be transgender.
But Jeanette Schade, a mother and former educator who runs a community organization called Build Back Basics in Education, challenged the school board officials’ claim.
Schade, who also spoke at the school board meeting, said she filed a public records request for information related to the club, and discovered that several teachers were involved and had planned to initiate it in November 2021.
Additionally, she noted from the documents that teachers had been striving to keep the club a “secret” and to avoid parental knowledge of the club.
“They even inquired from district counsel,” Schade told the school board. “District counsel also stated that, if it’s held during the school day, non-instructional hours, not after school, parents do not need to be informed.”
“For fourth and fifth grade students, this is absolutely appalling,” she continued. “Parents should absolutely be informed.”
“You cannot tell me … this club is being run by students,” Schade asserted. “This club is very clearly directed by staff and it is clear which staff are directing this club. Just go look at the emails that I posted.”
Erin Herrick, a member of Save Oregon Schools, said the Beaverton School District had failed to exhibit a “culture of transparency,” and had actually become a “culture of secrecy” with regard to the LGBTQ club.
“Why would this school, or this school district, purposely hide this from parents?” she asked the school board. “Why would they have these elementary children sign contracts without parental knowledge or consent? What are the true motives behind the school hiding this club from the parents?”
“The Raleigh Hills parents deserve to know all groups offered to students and give consent before having an adult lead a school-affiliated group,” Herrick asserted.
But Elessia Buddress, a parent who wore a rainbow-flag scarf, addressed the board and identified her daughter as being in a leadership role within the QSA club:
The word pride is a gross understatement for how I felt when I heard that the middle schoolers had started a QSA, a safe welcoming space for all in their community. My middle schooler has been an active participant in it all year. She found confidence in taking on a leadership role within the QSA while she typically does not feel comfortable talking in a larger group.
Some folks in Beaverton and beyond are against such a club. If students came forward and asked to start a video game club or chess club would they be upset if they didn’t get parental consent?
I think it’s that they’re maybe homophobic, transphobic, queerphobic. I don’t know what it is, but I do have to question their logic and morality.
According to a report at the Daily Wire:
Fourth graders at Raleigh Hills Elementary School, located in Beaverton, were presented with a slideshow in early January unveiling the formation of a QSA club — unbeknownst to parents. The presentation, which says the club will “have conversations about identity, gender, equal rights, and social issues,” “explore LGBTQ+ history and activism,” as well as “advocate for change in our school and community,” was presented by a social worker and a few fifth graders.
Social worker Amanda Cook allegedly distributed a sign-up sheet for students to join the QSA, the report continued.
In one class, all but one boy signed up for the club. According to that boy’s parents, Arlene KoePal and Zachary Beacock, their son insisted to Cook he could not sign up without his parents’ permission.
The parents said their son told him Cook said he did not need his parents’ permission, and the fifth-graders who were presenting told him, in front of his entire class, that he would be “missing out.”
Nevertheless, the boy refused and said, according to his parents, “I ain’t signing no contract with the devil.”
KoePal, who described herself as “liberal,” told the Daily Wire she “lost it,” and now does not believe the school district’s claim the QSA was initiated by students.
“I’m not homophobic. But this just isn’t right,” she said. “This stuff needs to be taught at home. There is a bigger picture here. This isn’t just a bunch of kids wanting to get together and start a club. Why would the school target fourth and fifth graders?”
Since the club’s start only several weeks ago, Reduxx reported it has apparently expanded to include over 40 students at the school – nearly eight percent of its total student body.
The Daily Wire reported that Beaverton School District Superintendent Don Grotting gave his support to the QSA in a statement Friday:
He slammed concerned parents who “questioned” the club and its lack of transparency as using “charged and hurtful language,” offering that “[s]ome offered misinformation” in a board meeting.
The report also observed members of the Beaverton Education Association (BEA), the local teachers’ union, are in support of the QSA and applauded its creation.