NJ School Board Member Faces Recall After Distributing Gender Survey to Nine-Year-Olds

A veteran school board member in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, is facing recall after she distributed a gender survey to students as young as nine years old.

Christine Dye, who has been on the Essex County School Board for more than a decade, including five years as board president, is the subject of a recall effort after thousands of people signed a petition. 

The survey was distributed last spring and was approved by the rest of the board, according to Dye, who has a day job in the finance sector.

Dye also served on the local Equity Diversity and Advisory Council, which created the survey, according to New Jersey.com.

NJ.com reported on the development:

Community members filed a petition with the state Department of Education in July 2021 objecting to how the survey was distributed in the 1,570-student district. A state administrative law judge later ruled the district violated the law in administering the survey without the required parental consent.

Dye wrote a letter to the editor published on a local news site in April stating she could “fully understand the concern of the parents over how the survey was administered,” but added, “this topic has been exploited to the point of destruction.”

A state administrative law judge found the Cedar Grove Board of Education violated state law when it surveyed students about their gender, race and religious affiliation without first going through parents. The state Department of Education upheld the ruling. Under state law, a petition to recall a school board member must be signed by more than 25% of the people registered to vote within the district on the date of the last general election. That can be a difficult threshold to reach, which is why most recall efforts never get to a vote.

Twenty percent of nationwide attempts to recall school board members were successful between 2009 to 2021, NJ.com reported.

Dye has until Thursday to resign or she will face a recall referendum on the November general election.

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