Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools: Teachers Decide What Parents Know About Their Kids

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) updated Title IX policy makes it clear: The district wants to parent students, not protect them.

by: Sloan Rachmuth

At CMS's school board retreat last week, the district’s lawyer announced new policies to ostensibly protect transgender students from bullying and suicide, but the mandates will accomplish nothing of the sort. In reality, teachers have been given a weapon by administrators to wedge between them and their parents.

"Sex discrimination" is prohibited by Title IX in education. In the law, there is no mention of "gender" or "gender identity." But recently the Biden administration announced its plans to redefine "sex" in the law to include them.

Biden's promised changes have far-reaching implications, and CMS is implementing them ahead of schedule. One is that parents will now be kept in the dark on everything when a child presents with a condition called “gender dysphoria.”

According to documents obtained by an Education First Alliance record request, CMS educators have been instructed to decide whether or not to include parents of minor children who use opposite-sex bathrooms and request being called by a name unfamiliar to their families.

School officials will now update all school documents, except those sent to parents, with the child's chosen name. When parents find out - and they will - officials will tell them they have no right to know because of Title IX.

Psychiatrists diagnose those with a strong desire to be rid of their biological sex characteristics with “gender dysphoria,” a condition strongly correlated with depression and suicidal thoughts.

In her presentation to board members the district’s lawyer warned that unsupportive parents, not the illness of gender dysphoria, that contributes to psychiatric malaise and puts children at risk. Schools are the safest place for some children, she claimed.

Because this new policy frames gender dysphoria as a safety issue, schools won’t have to seek parental permission for children to participate in lessons on choosing and changing one’s sex. In fact, schools are likely to use the mandate to deny parental opt-outs.

CMS' new pro-trans policy also instructs teachers to self-censor their conversations to prevent revealing their students' birth names or biological sex. Meanwhile, the policy acknowledges teachers' first-amendment rights. The policy will likely penalize those who refer to the wrong pronoun when discussing a child in the teachers’ lounge while giving cover to teachers discussing how they met their same-sex lover to third-graders.

Disturbing, but not surprising is that the policy gives boys the right, carte blanche, to use the girls’ changing facilities anytime and without explanation. And if boys want to sleep with girls on this year’s high school trip to DC, then so be it.

By deputizing teachers and school administrators to subvert parental rights, CMS' new policy is an invasive use of government authority. No doubt many principals and teachers in the district will want to protect parental prerogatives, the Superintendent will claim that its district rules take precedence.