The Los Angeles Unified School district is imposing a radical race and gender ideology on its students, including teaching kindergartners to “experiment” with pronouns and requiring teachers to keep their child’s gender transition a secret from their parents.
Documents from the LAUSD’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department, obtained by City Journal’s Christopher Rufo, show that the LAUSD is pressing teachers to impose race, gender, and queer theory on students through academic conferences, curriculum materials, and teacher training modules. Furthermore, other documents show that the LAUSD is imposing a policy around transgender students that would allow teachers to keep a student’s gender identity a secret from their parents.
The first document obtained by Rufo is a list of guidelines for teachers entitled, “Queer All School Year: LAUSD’s Queer And Trans-Affirming School Calendar.” The calendar has guidelines for each month of the school year, from August through June. Suggestions include “Attend LA Unified School District’s Standing With LGBTQ+ Students Conference” in the month of October, which the calendar lists as “LGBT History Month”; “Post LGBTQ-affirming signs in your office, classroom, and around campus” in December; “Participate in the Black Lives Matter in Schools Week of Action” in February; and “Celebrate Pride Month with literature, art, music, poster campaigns, or lunchtime events” in June.
Rufo also includes a PowerPoint presentation for the “Standing with LGBTQ+ Students, Staff, and Families” conference on “Best Practices for Affirming LAUSD’s Queer Communities.” Conference sessions include such titles as “Welcoming Words & Safe Spaces: Supporting Students Who Are Both Neurodivergent & LGBTQIA+”; “LGBTQ-Inclusive Content and Pedagogy for Elementary and Middle School Classrooms”; “What Your Queer Middle Schooler Wants You to Know”; and “Breaking the Binary in Education.”
Rufo also obtained a teacher training entitled, “Queering Culture and Race.” The goals of the training include “[engaging] in learning about the history of the intersection between race, sexual orientation and gender,” and “[exploring] what educators can do to support students.” The training begins with a history of LGBT activism, beginning with William Dorsey Swann, the first-ever self-identified “queen of drag.” It then contends that history is repeating itself, that “[t]he struggle experienced by William Dorsey Swann unfortunately continues today, and not just out in the community but in schools” because of a lack of LGBTQ+ acceptance.
The documents also include the “SOGIE Handbook of Language & Vocabulary,” an extensive glossary of terms related to issues of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. Rufo further reported that the district has inundated teachers with radical curriculum materials, including course materials from the consulting firm Woke Kindergarten that encourages kindergartners to experiment with pronouns, and to adopt non-binary gender identities that “feel good to you.”
In addition, Rufo obtained a policy bulletin from the district that instructs teachers to address the students by their preferred name and gender pronouns without any legal changes or parents’ consent, but at the same time directs them not to disclose a student’s gender identity, even to their parents, without the teacher’s discretion:
When communicating with a student’s parent, legal guardian, or educational rights holder… school personnel should be aware that the student may not have disclosed their gender identity to their parents… [P]ersonnel should consult and work closely with the student to assess the degree to which, if any, the parent is aware of the student’s gender identity or expression and is supportive of the student, and school personnel shall take into consideration the safety, health and well-being of the student in deciding whether to disclose the student’s gender identity or expression to parents.
The LAUSD is the largest school district in California and the second largest in the United States, serving more than 660,000 students.