Illinois High School Accused of Concealing Students’ LGBT Club Participation from Parents
An Illinois High School teacher has been exposed for hiding student participation in an LGBT club from their parents, according to emails obtained by Parents Defending Education.
According to the obtained emails, Red Bud High School in Illinois referred to its Gay-Straight Alliance club as “Bubbles” and deliberately refrained from inviting parents to virtual meetings related to the club. In one email, a teacher explained the strategy, stating, “We use Google Classroom. I don’t invite parents though. In the beginning, we named it something that did not identify the group, but the kids knew what it was. ‘Bubbles’ was what they came up with. Kind of random, but they all knew.”
Revelation of this incident was discovered by Parents Defending Education, a non-profit organization designed to “reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas.”
Michele Exner, a senior advisor for Parents Defending Education, criticized the alleged actions of the high school, stating, “This is all a part of the dangerous trend of parental exclusion policies that we have seen take root in school districts across the country.” Exner went on to emphasize the importance of parents maintaining the right to raise their children and expressed concern about schools attempting to exclude parents from the decision-making process.
“These misguided school officials want to exploit their positions to influence children to hide information from their parents. Parents are the ones who maintain the right to raise their children and should not tolerate schools that want to shut them out of the process,” he continued on a statement.
In response to the allegations, the superintendent of the school district Red Bud High School is a part of, issued a statement to The Daily Wire, asserting that the district does not support hiding information from parents about school activities. The district also explained that the actions of the teacher were a violation of school policy.
This recent incident is part of a larger debate regarding transparency and communication between schools and parents. Over the past few years, the U.S. has seen a dramatic increase in the number of teachers who believe that they are allowed to have conversations with students about their sexual identity that exclude parents. Such behavior is disgusting and should be immediately condemned by educators.
