A previous article on this Substack described a webinar hosted in November 2021 by the Ventura County Office of Education (VCOE) in which attorneys instructed school staff on various ways to deceive parents regarding a student’s gender identity. There was information discussed in that webinar regarding special education students, but we delayed commenting on it because what the slides suggested was astonishing: school staff were apparently trained to hide gender identity changes from parents of special education students. We continued to investigate, and based on the information found, we now believe that our original suspicion was correct.
As a reminder, in the VCOE webinar, school staff were trained to implement gender ideology interventions – behavioral transition, social transition, ideology indoctrination – without notifying parents. Special attention was given at the end of the presentation to special education students. The advice given appeared to bypass parental rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)1 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act2.
The special focus given to students with special needs when discussing gender identity ideology is concerning, but the coordinated effort to keep information from parents is deeply concerning. Any child with special education needs is highly vulnerable. Children who receive special education services due to depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, or ADHD are seeking answers to their suffering. Children with autism or a diagnosis such as obsessive compulsive disorder can become hyper-fixated on concepts. Children with Down syndrome or other intellectual disabilities have cognitive impairments that make them particularly vulnerable. All of these children are likely to have deficits in social intelligence and critical thinking skills that would make it difficult for them to sort through these complex issues, and yet the presentation discussed in this article, which was given at least four different times by the same law firm, specifically provides suggestions on how to keep this information secret from parents.
Background
First, we need to provide some background information on special education in California. Disabilities that allow a child to receive special education services include autism, Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities, and cerebral palsy, to name a few. The California Department of Education recognizes 13 eligibility categories shown below from slide 80 of the presentation at the center of this article:
These categories are also mirrored at the federal level in the IDEA legislation.
All parents should also be aware of California’s School Success and Opportunity Act (AB 1266). This law specifically allows schools to keep information about a student’s gender identity from their parents if they so request. It refers specifically to anti-discrimination and privacy laws to allow school staff to lie to parents:
“Preserving a student’s privacy is of the utmost importance. The right of transgender students to keep their transgender status private is grounded in California’s antidiscrimination laws as well as federal and state laws. Disclosing that a student is transgender without the student’s permission may violate California’s antidiscrimination law by increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student’s right to privacy.”
The School Success and Opportunity Act also requires schools to allow students to use the bathroom and locker room that corresponds with their gender identity rather than their biological sex. Parents of special education students, and specifically female special education students, should take note that a central safeguard to sexual assault risk has been removed. To apply the directives of this law and the advice provided by the lawyers would include scenarios in which biological female special education students with autism, intellectual disabilities, Down syndrome, etc. can choose to use the men’s locker room or men’s bathroom without parental notification, consent, or oversight. This is a highly dangerous situation where vulnerable students are left unprotected in the name of gender identity ideology.
read more:
https://genderlcgb.substack.com/p/special-deception-for-special-education?s=r
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