Parental Rights Policy at the School Board Meeting

I spoke at the Cy-Fair ISD (independent school district) school board meeting Thursday night—for one minute. Actually, less than that, because I was waiting for a signal at the microphone, which I shouldn’t have done, so I lost about 10 seconds and didn’t get through my last two sentences. Anyway, the subject was a proposed parental rights policy, to align with state law, and to clarify some things for our district. While there was more in the policy related to parental rights (having access to records and educational materials, requiring parental permissions for such things as surveys and data collection of the child), the controversial part was about transgenderism.

Cy-Fair ISD School Board votes on parental rights policy, January 16, 2025,
screenshot from here

A couple of months ago, the Board passed a policy stating that students will use the bathrooms and locker rooms appropriate to their biological sex at birth. That got some backlash as well, but not as much as this one.

This one includes the following:

·       When a child presents as other than his or her biological sex at school, the parent must be informed.

·       No educational materials are allowed that support or indoctrinate or teach that gender is fluid or other than biological sex is allowed. Nor can a teacher or other staff share any such material, or online links to such material from their private collections.

·       Reasonable accommodations, such as using a different name or opposite-sex pronouns, can be made for a trans child at the request of parents, in consultation with the schools. If a teacher or staff member doesn’t feel comfortable complying with such decisions, accommodations can be made for that teacher or staff member.

I’m paraphrasing. The actual policy is pages 27-29 of the agenda, here. 

The policy comes on the heels of nearby Katy ISD, which instituted the policy in 2023 and has now had a year of implementation. Ours was not copied from theirs. At some point I plan to set them side-by-side, but as I look briefly, the ideas are similar, but this is not a copy and paste. I was privy to some discussion about this policy a couple of months ago, and felt my concerns and suggestions were heard and respected. So I knew the policy was being worked on, but I had not seen it until after Monday’s Board meeting work session.

We successfully elected six of the seven Board members (there were only 6 present at Thursday night’s meeting) because they aligned with our beliefs—instead of the woke agenda of the previous members. So I knew how the vote would likely go. But I also knew the room would be filled with opposition, and I thought they could use some support.

The One-Minute Speech

So, anyway, here is my one minute—and then I’ll say a bit more of what I couldn’t share in so brief a presentation.

I’d like to speak in favor of the proposed parental rights policy.

At Monday’s work session, the similar Katy ISD policy was referenced. The news story that followed mentioned that the effect of the Katy policy was 23 students in that district “being outed” to their parents last year.

Let me rephrase that: 23 sets of parents did not have their rights abrogated by the school district, who otherwise would have.

There are many supposed rights that a minor child does not get, among them: the right to publicly “change their identity” while enlisting the schools to keep that a secret from their fit parents.

It was mentioned, threateningly, that Katy ISD is under investigation for civil rights violations, and we would bring on such an investigation here. But which is better: fight an investigation that will verify that our policy adheres to the law? Or fight some 23 lawsuits annually from families whose parent-child relationships were seriously damaged because of the school’s unlawful violation of parental rights?

The fact that parental rights would be violated by school personnel without such a policy shows the need for it.

 

That's me, speaking in favor of the parental rights policy,
at the CFISD School Board meeting, January 16, 2025,
screenshot from here

More to Say

At Monday’s work session, there were some statistics given that I’d like to respond to.

We have about 115,000 students in our school district. Based on a supposed 1.4%, or 14 per thousand, there would be about 1600 trans and nonbinary students in the district. (That would be 17 per campus, although elementary schools should be much lower rates than high schools, so you might presume much fewer elementary students, and maybe up to 30 in a high school.)

That sounds high to me. I checked with research I’ve used before. A 2015 study showed the number of trans people in the adult population to be between 1 and 5 per 1000, with best estimates at 3 per thousand. While I won’t go into this here, statistics have altered significantly in the last couple of decades; prior to that, males claiming to be females were almost the totality of trans people, with almost zero females claiming to be males.

I found a 2022 study that showed the number in the population to be about 6 per thousand when ages 13-17 are included, but recognized the number as steady for adults (which is the 1-5 range, possibly still 3 per thousand).

The number for ages 13-17 is 14 per 1000, which is 3-5 times higher than the adult population. Either:

·       Young people are becoming gender dysphoric at much higher numbers than a decade ago; or

·       Young people who think they are trans resolve those feelings by adulthood; or

·       Both of those could be true.

Fourteen per thousand, as they claim, if one assumes most of the 13-17 would become adult trans people, would be a 5-fold increase in a decade. That is unlikely to happen; it’s a current high school phenomenon.

While the media would lead you to think trans people are everywhere, the odds of having any among your acquaintances would statistically be an anomaly, unless you have many thousands of acquaintances—or you seek them out intentionally.

If there are that many, assuming the human race does not change that rapidly (for such a change, you’d need many millennia—and a population that reproduces), the most likely reason for this relatively large number in high schools is social contagion. If it is social contagion, then we need to stop whatever is causing it.

And that’s why we’ve been working on the curriculum and materials.

Our policy would remove pro-gender-fluidity materials from libraries and instructional materials. The news told us this similar policy resulted in Katy ISD “tossing out” some 400 books. If there were 400 such books in their libraries, in addition to other influences in curriculum, that would lead one to believe the social contagion theory. And we already know similar numbers could be found in our school district.

To be clear, they are not “banning” books when they choose not to buy and place into circulation materials that do not adhere to the educational purpose and standard of the district. We’re not talking about burning To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn, both of which I read together with my children; we’re talking about books that graphically depict—in words as well as pictures—deviant sexual acts with children. The actual message of “you’re not the only one this has happened to” in reference to such acts is to normalize them. (Someone expressed in their one-minute speech it’s good for children to see such things in literature, so they can relate.) Normalizing oversexualized behavior in children, whether forced or consensual, is called grooming; it is a step in victimizing the child. Normalizing gender fluidity is putting the idea into a child—and affirming the idea as a social good—which looks an awful lot like recruiting into a belief cult.

More About the Meeting

I could go on about the topic. I’ve written about it here, here, here, here, here, and here, and probably other places I didn’t find in a quick search. And I’ve written even more on other LGB topics. But for now, let’s get back to how the meeting turned out.

With one member absent, the vote was 5-1 in favor of the policy. It passed. The lone vote against was the predictable Julie Hinaman, the one board seat we were unable to flip. She disagrees with the other Board members on almost everything. The opposition side is definitely organized. There was a group called Cypress-Tomball Democrats that took up more than a couple of long rows, and wore matching blue T-shirts; they stood whenever one of their number spoke. (CFISD is in Cypress, northwest Houston, and Jersey Village, but not Tomball, so some of these may not have even been from our district.)

The room was packed, almost no empty seats. I and two others spoke in favor of the policy. The other 31 who had signed up to speak all spoke against it. I could summarize them all:

·       You’re all hateful, you bigots.

·       Parents of trans kids are almost all abusive. They kick them out on the street.

·       Schools should be a safe place for LGBTQ+IA kids; all those other kids don’t matter. [I don’t know what all the extra letters and symbols mean.]

·       If you don’t give trans kids all the support they insist on, you’re causing them to commit suicide.

·       This Board should be doing things that matter, like bringing back all the bus routes and dealing with discipline and violence. [The board is, of course, doing those other things. It’s not this instead of that. Also, there’d be more time for the other, if there wasn’t so much time taken up by these protesters.]

A number of speakers were teachers. They stated blatantly that they support keeping parents in the dark about what their kids do in school. And there was a parent who said he’d much more trust a trans kid than a parent of a trans kid.

I did get booed, by the way.

Also, I got asked by the media to do an interview afterward. It was scary enough to get up in front of several hundred people to give my one minute with a room full of—dare I say it, frothing mob of intolerant sex-obsessed haters. But I said yes to the interview. It was KHOU. They were kind, and it didn’t turn out too badly, although I’d just as soon never do that again.

One question they asked me was why I came. I had to think about that, and how to say it. This was not on camera. But, I knew how the vote would turn out. I just wanted to support my friends on the Board, and offer a little something that probably no one else was saying.

What really happened was, when I woke that morning, God put it on my heart. I felt I needed to do it, and I needed to get my name on the sign-up list to speak before noon. So I did it.

I didn’t feel physically threatened; police officers were plentiful. But that room had been full of venomous hate. So I suppose it was kind of brave. I was shaking afterward, and it took until bedtime to get my pulse to stop racing. I guess I was stressed.

There was another issue on the agenda that got similar treatment. It related to whether to change a health class from required to elective. Health includes sex-ed, but that can be opted out (rather, it must be opted in specifically, I believe). One speaker told us Christians that, if we’re against that health class, we must favor more abortions, even in a state where they’re no longer legal, because this class teaches how to avoid unwanted pregnancies, so without it being forced upon all students, we’ll get more abortions. 

So, again, the intolerant crowd wants to force every child to be indoctrinated their way. Or, if you assume there is some good information in the class (I’m sure there is), no family should have a choice about it, even though all the materials related to state testing will be handled in other classes. The choice to make it an elective passed, so no one who wants to take it will be missing out.

Ironically, the meeting started with an annual “honor the school board” presentation, with love and affection coming from all the schools and staff, in a short, heart-touching video. And then the room full of haters told them how horrible they are.

So it’s all the more reason to support our brave Board members, who have to face the hate more constantly and publicly than I faced in my little adventure. It’s a lot of work, and they do not get paid. We should thank them for their hazardous-duty service.

Related News Stories

·       Houston Chronicle  “Cy-Fair ISD board may adopt controversial policy that 'outs' transgender students to their parents” 

·       Houston Chronicle  “Conroe ISD trustees plan to make a new gender fluidity policy” 

·       Houston Chronicle  “Katy ISD’s transgender policy under civil rights investigation by Department of Education” 

·       Houston Chronicle  “Katy ISD will require teachers to report transgender students to parents” 

·       Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act 2025  H.R.28 — 119th Congress (2025-2026)All Information (Except Text)