My 6-Year-Old’s Gender Confrontation Sparked A Fight Against New Mexico School Secrecy

For the last year, I’ve spent much of my free time rallying New Mexico moms and dads around a fundamental principle we’ve taken for granted until now: parents have a right to know what is happening to their children at school.

In school districts across our state, policies affecting children’s privacy, safety, and even identity have been hidden from parents.

The week of November 9, the federal government finally heard us. The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it would open investigations into both Santa Fe Public Schools and Albuquerque Public Schools over allegations that these districts allow school officials to conceal students’ gender transitions from their parents.

For families like mine and so many others, this development is monumental. Someone is finally paying attention. But make no mistake: this is not the finish line.

My husband and I have lived in Santa Fe our whole lives. Growing up, I participated in our local fiestas, played sports, and was featured in our local newspaper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, simply for being part of the community. But now I’m being accused of starting a culture war by that very same newspaper.

I never set out to become an activist. But would you sit by and dismiss your six-year-old daughter’s struggle to articulate that she was forced to use the bathroom with a boy who made her uncomfortable?

My life turned upside down when my daughter came home distraught over this very scenario. When my husband and I sought answers from the school district, we encountered policies and administrators who, in our experience, seemed more concerned with defending those policies than addressing our concerns. Months of meetings and unanswered questions eventually led us to make the difficult decision to withdraw our children from the district.

Since then, I have banded together with countless parents and students who have encountered these same policies that have quietly crept into our school system without our knowledge or consent. More and more parents are now speaking out, and momentum is on our side.

New Mexico, like the rest of the country, just held statewide elections. My question to the newly elected and re-elected members of our government is this: why do we rank last in education nationally, yet our leaders continue to double down on policies that not only undermine parental rights but also distract from the very curriculum we send our kids to school to learn?

I know I am not alone in this. I know many fellow parents who are afraid to speak out because they fear retaliation, losing their jobs, or worse — their children being ostracized in their communities.

But their silence should not be mistaken for approval.

One of the most common responses I hear from critics is that only a small percentage of students are affected, so why even bother talking about this?

This issue is not a “minor” issue in New Mexico classrooms, no matter how much some try to dismiss it. Currently, flyers are being handed out to elementary school students, outlining their “rights” to gender support plans. This affects every child in that school district — and that is not an insignificant number of children.

But even if that weren’t the case, parental rights are not determined by percentages.

Whether one child or thousands are affected, parents deserve to be involved in significant decisions about their children’s well-being. A six-year-old’s rights do not become less important because “few” children share her experience.

These children are learning to articulate their feelings, process emotions, and, in some cases, stand up for themselves. Schools should never exploit that developmental gap.

I hope these investigations finally expose what parents like me have been raising concerns about all along. And I hope that this also leads to a broader examination of Title IX concerns, particularly when gender support plans affect other students’ access to sex-separated bathrooms and private spaces.

We need clear policies that require meaningful parental involvement. We need transparency in advance about what gender support plans mean and entail for the entire classroom. We need schools to take privacy concerns seriously, without dismissing parents or forcing families to pursue legal action to get answers.

This investigation is an important step toward accountability for parents like me who have been in this for the long haul, but I didn’t start speaking out because I wanted a federal investigation. Or because I wanted to start a culture war, as some accuse. I started because my daughter deserved better. I will not stop until our schools do better by her and every other child in New Mexico.

***

Kristy Borrego Ojinaga is a Santa Fe mother and member of Independent Women’s Network.