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Junior high school was a difficult time for my daughter. She was struggling with her classes, friendships, and even her own sense of identity.
Like any loving parents, my wife and I were worried. We worked closely with her teachers and other school personnel to understand her challenges and help her overcome them.
What we didn't know was that these same people were lying to us – intentionally withholding important information and misleading us about what was happening to our daughter.
Dan and Jennifer Mead (Providing an alliance to protect freedom)
A few months ago, the people we considered partners in our efforts, without our knowledge or consent, used a boy's name and male pronouns for our daughter at school. I was deciding on my daughter's social transition. They hid their actions by calling her only by her real name when speaking to us and carefully removing any mention of her man's identity from her records that she shared with us. I did.
My 11-year-old daughter's school plans to have her share a bed with a male student.
It took a flaw in the school's documents (the man's name had been left on the documents) to uncover what was happening. Once she understood the big picture, she was finally able to solve the problem her daughter was struggling with. Thanks to that, she is now at peace with herself and her identity and is doing amazingly well.
But if this can happen to our children, how many other parents are unaware of what school officials are putting into the hearts of their sons and daughters?
That's why we have decided to file a lawsuit through attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom because of the actions of Rockford Public School District employees and challenge the policies they lied to us about.
When we confronted officials about their actions, they stood by us. We are currently expecting a response from them regarding our lawsuit by February 8th. We couldn't just sit back and let the same thing happen to others.
Much has been said about our case in recent weeks. Some sources appear to want to shift public attention away from the school's responsibility to parents. Other coverage appears to be aimed at distracting the public with overly simplistic reporting and implicit opinions about us as individuals. So we would like to share the reasons for the actions we took.
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Regardless of where you stand on the details of what We should all be concerned about this deliberate effort to keep parents in the dark, as the school district has been hiding from us. Because when school district policies allow or require lying to parents, it's the children who are hurt.
In our case, the school district's policy not only required staff to remain silent about vital information about our daughter, but actually encouraged staff to falsify official records, hide the district's actions from us, and It encouraged deception. The policy itself was hidden from parents and taxpayers.
No school district should make important decisions on behalf of parents, much less hide those decisions from parents. Parents know their children better than anyone and have a constitutional right and moral responsibility to direct their children's upbringing, education, and medical care.
The school district's policy ignored this fundamental right, and in doing so, it harmed a daughter who needed the help of her parents.
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Instead of ignoring parents and imposing their own ideology on children, school officials should work with us to support our children. Instead, many school employees are told by superintendents, school boards, and teachers unions that parents: no It's about protecting rights when it comes to what happens to kids in school. This idea goes against not only the parents' wishes but also the law.
If your school district has enacted these policies, you have a legal right to vote against them in the next election, demand their removal, or take a stand. Changing these policies will require many voices. It requires a willingness from the whole community to come together.
Of course, maintaining this position in public is not easy. It's easy to turn a blind eye and believe that situations don't directly affect you. We never expected something like this to happen in our school district, and it certainly never would have happened to us. If the school hadn't made the mistake, the staff would still be fooling us. Sooner or later, these deceptions affect us all.
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We could have pulled our daughter out of school and let what happened to us go. But while we want justice to be served for her and our family, we also want to alert parents and individuals around the world to what is happening, to struggle with these issues, and to make changes. I want to encourage others who are trying to make a difference.
Many people have spoken out publicly and privately to support us. Please note that we may not be able to respond to every comment, but we want to hear from you. I cannot express enough how much your unity means to us. Now is the time to come together for our rights as parents and for the health, safety, and future of our children.
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Dan Meade is an artist and parent living in Rockford, Michigan.
