On Wednesday, the superintendents of three of America’s most ideologically captured school systems — Loudoun County, San Francisco, and Chicago — testified in front of the House Education and Workforce Committee in a hearing entitled “Breaking Trust: Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools.” Three hours later, the witnesses had proved the hearing’s thesis true. Asked time and again about the federal rights of the parents and children they serve, all three offered a masterclass in the catechism of bureaucracy: deflect, deny, and aver fidelity to the law, even when the federal government has formally (and frequently) found otherwise.
Loudoun County’s Dr. Aaron Spence told Congress his district is “in the business of building trust” and follows the law. If so, the Department of Education would like a word. In July 2025, it was formally determined that the district violates Title IX by opening intimate facilities to students based on gender identity rather than sex, and that Loudoun County Public School (LCPS)’s Stone Bridge High School had retaliated against a group of boys for reporting sexual harassment when a female student was given access to their locker room. In March, the district settled with two of those boys. And just last month, the Department opened yet another LCPS investigation after a teen boy allegedly photographed and filmed dozens of underage girls in bathroom stalls over three years — conduct for which the county sheriff has filed charges. Yet Dr. Spence’s response days before Wednesday’s hearing was, “I don’t believe that our policies are failing children,” and if somebody “decides to do something bad in a restroom, that’s not something that’s preventable based on our policies.” A federal agency’s findings of civil rights violations, a legal settlement, criminal charges, a fresh federal probe, and no policy failure in sight. The audacity is breathtaking.
San Francisco’s Dr. Maria Su arrived with laryngitis and a carefully executed script. Chairman Tim Walberg asked Su four times at what age children should be exposed to drag-queen story hour. Four times she declined to answer, retreating to “we welcome all 49,000 students as they are.” Asked by Rep. Robert Onder whether biological males should be in locker rooms with girls, she answered twice, “we follow state and federal law,” which the congressman rightly took as a yes (California non-discrimination law directly contradicts Title IX). When asked whether the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) hides a minor’s gender identity information from his or her parents, Su conceded the district is still “adjusting its practices” to comply with the Supreme Court’s March order in Mirabelli v. Bonta, blocking California’s nondisclosure regime. Three months post-Mirabelli, the district is apparently still “adjusting” to the proposition that mothers and fathers may not be deceived about their own children. Meanwhile, the district’s vaunted homegrown ethnic studies program made news this week when a teacher simply swapped the approved curriculum for personal lessons on Sydney Sweeney and Elon Musk, the “Nazi.” Who’s minding the classroom? In the SFUSD, apparently, no one.
Chicago’s Dr. Macquline King rounded out the panel, defending a district whose policies on gender identity keep parents in the dark and whose partnership with Planned Parenthood she has personally highlighted. Like her co-panelists, King treated every question about parental rights as an attack to be survived rather than an obligation to be honored, while committee Democrats coached the witnesses not to, as Rep. Jahana Hayes put it, “buy into the bull.”
This is the posture of an educational establishment that has forgotten who it works for.
Parental rights are not a talking point. They are federal law, and the era of pretending otherwise is over. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act guarantees parents access to their children’s education records; in April, the Department of Education found four Kansas districts in violation for concealing students’ “gender transitions” from their parents. Title IX protects girls’ privacy, safety, and equal opportunity; Loudoun has already been found in violation once and is under investigation for purported violations, again. The Supreme Court held in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents with religious objections to normative curriculum are entitled to notice and opt-outs, a right reinforced in the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, and a right that Dr. Su was forced to admit her school district must honor. Every one of these legal obligations attaches to federal checks that districts are all too eager to cash.
Parents are tired of being supplicants at the schoolhouse door. They are rights-holders with receipts and possessed of long institutional memories, with children still languishing under the weight of COVID-era learning losses. On Wednesday, high-profile school officials made clear two things: how little they grasp the federal law that binds them, and how much more litigation and enforcement are necessary to fully restore parental primacy in public schools. It’s high time these educators got a lesson in compliance with the law.
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Sarah Parshall Perry is vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education. Before coming to Defending Education, Sarah served as a Senior Legal Fellow for the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, part of the Institute for Constitutional Government at Heritage, where her work centered on civil rights and the proper role of the courts.
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