January 1, Parents Say Middle School Officials Allowed Kids to Transition in Secret

Parents in Massachusetts have filed a lawsuit against a school district and administrators over a middle school’s gender identity policies, saying that they allowed their children to transition without their knowledge.

The complaint alleges that Ludlow Public Schools is violating parents’ civil rights by allowing students to go by different names or pronouns without informing their parents.

Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri allege that their 11-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son were undergoing “social transitions,” in which school officials referred to their child by a different name and pronouns as part of a new gender identity, without the parents’ knowledge or permission.

Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron, the second couple in the suit, claimed that they are “deliberately hindered from ascertaining whether their children are being secretly counseled.”

In the suit, the parents allege that Todd Gazda, who was the superintendent of Ludlow Public Schools at the time, referred to objections over the secret social transitions as “intolerance of LGBTQ people” that was camouflaged by claims about “parental rights.”

“School officials are making decisions about the lives of children that they are not qualified or authorized to make and doing it without telling, and often deceiving, parents,” Vernadette Broyles of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign said in a statement.

---

Source:

Parents file federal lawsuit against Ludlow school officials over gender identity protocols