Former Fairfax County teacher: ‘Parent rights are being obstructed left and right’
Former Fairfax County special education teacher Debra Tisler reacts to the fallout over schools teacher training on children and gender identity on 'America Reports.'
Fox News acquired documents that show teachers in a Virginia school district are being trained to help students with their gender transitions without parental consent.
"This is just completely tragic what is happening. Parent rights are being obstructed left and right by the school system, and they're using loopholes and laws to try and get around it… parents need to know," former Fairfax County special education teacher Debra Tisler told "America Reports."
The Fairfax County Public Schools parents also said that although school psychologists are required to ensure that parents and children provide fully informed consent, it is not happening.
"They are colluding to circumvent laws where parents have the right to know what is in their child's family educational record there. It's absurd what's happening," Tisler said.
Fairfax County Public Schools is training teachers to help students with their gender transitions.
The school district said parental permission is not required for students who seek to be addressed by different names or pronouns.
According to documents obtained by Fox News, the school district's program is called "Supporting Gender Expansive and Transgender Youth" on July 22 for K-12 teachers. Under the program, teachers are being told parental permission is not required if a student wants to addressed "by his chosen name in class," "requests to use the locker room that corresponds with her identified gender," or asks to use "a private bathroom."
Parents and community members attend a Loudoun County School Board meeting, just 40 minutes from Fairfax. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
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Tisler said that while all of this is happening, there is no focus on literacy and educational needs.
"Huge amounts of learning loss has happened and instead they're focusing on pronouns and gender identification whereby they're circumventing, again, parent rights and as well as hundreds of years of child development, they're weaponizing the innocence of child development for an agenda that is not for the best interests of children," Tisler said.
Parents all over the country have been speaking out against coronavirus-related mandates in schools and progressive curriculums that have been associated with critical race theory or gender theory.
The issues prompted parents to rise up to run for school board seats after concerns over educational content during the coronavirus pandemic. Some parents who had little political experience pulled off victories.
A new parents' rights group in Minnesota called the Minnesota Parents Alliance launched an effort to train and support school board candidates, and get parents involved in their schools and communities.
Minnesota Parents Alliance has hosted trainings for school board candidates across the state, and plans to provide support for new school board members after they are elected.