Our Colorado public school district organizes a cross-country overnight trip each year for fifth graders to visit historical sites in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, and my daughter was very excited to go.
She raised money from a lemonade stand to use for spending money, we let her borrow a phone to take photos, and she had her very own Till card for making purchases. The whole trip was about teaching kids self-advocacy, self-sufficiency and independence in the birthplace of our nation’s founding.
But because our school district withheld vital information from my husband and me prior to the trip, our 11-year-old girl was forced into the difficult and uncomfortable position of having to advocate for herself regarding one of our culture’s most contentious topics.
The situation started on the first evening of the trip when we discovered that my daughter, without her or my knowledge or consent, was to sleep in the same bed with a fifth-grade boy who identifies as a girl.
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My daughter had been told before the trip that she would share a hotel room with three others: two girls from her school and a student from another school whom she didn’t know.
To her credit, my daughter went out of her way that first day to make this student feel welcome and included. But when it came time for bed, the student told my daughter about being transgender – a boy who identifies as a girl.
Naturally, my daughter was immediately uncomfortable sharing a room, let alone a bed, with a boy, regardless of the student’s gender identity, and snuck into the bathroom to call me. I had joined the trip to accompany my daughter, and together we shared our concerns with school officials and asked them to move my daughter to a different room.
No one had told my husband and me that there was a possibility our little girl would be sharing a bed with a male student on this trip. In fact, Jefferson County Public School officials assured us of the opposite. In planning meetings before the trip, we were told that male and female students would stay on opposite floors and would not be allowed to visit each other’s rooms.
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What we didn’t know at the time was JCPS’s "transgender students" policy and practice is to room students based on gender identity rather than sex. So here we were, standing in the hotel lobby close to midnight, working with the trip chaperones, whose hands were tied by JCPS’s policy, to make new sleeping arrangements for students who had so eagerly looked forward to this trip. JCPS chaperones ended up moving the boy who identifies as a girl and another girl to a different room.
As I witnessed firsthand, there is a very unequal application of JCPS’s policy in practice. The school district didn’t consider students like my daughter who would not want to room with a student of the opposite sex, nor consider parents like my husband and me, who should have been aware of this policy beforehand.
We were intentionally kept in the dark.
I can only thank God I was there to support my daughter and proudly watch as she learned to advocate for herself while being respectful and thoughtful of others. I can’t imagine parenting this situation from afar; I would have felt so helpless.
Yet this could happen to other parents across the country, which was why we decided to send a letter through our Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys to the school district about the unconstitutional nature of its policy.
To avoid this unconstitutional breach of parental rights, public schools must make parents aware of student rooming policies so that they can either agree to them or have adequate time to make alternative arrangements for their kids.
My husband and I are hopeful that our two youngest children, fourth-grade twins, will be able to join this special school trip next year. But one thing’s for certain:
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We won’t participate until JCPS officials openly and honestly share their policies and practices about student rooming. Schools should respect our right to make informed decisions that are best for our children.
That means public schools must be transparent. Their policies and procedures affecting our kids’ well-being must be accessible and easy to find, not hidden. They must protect the privacy of all students equally. And they must respect the fact that parents, not the government, know and love their children best.
