Grazie Pozo Christie: Keeping Florida parents ‘in the loop’ on kids’ education

Desks in empty dark high, middle, or elementary school classroom with light coming through windows.

At a golf outing over the weekend, one of my husband’s friends complained bitterly to him about “parents in Florida interfering in kids’ education.” He was afraid his granddaughter was going to miss out on reading, writing and arithmetic because of meddling moms and dads.

“In fact,” my husband explained accurately, “Florida law protects little children from inappropriate discussions of gender ideology and sexual orientation, and makes sure parents are told about any changes in their kids’ emotional or mental health.”

Of course, the discussion went on for some time, but, in the end, my husband was able to convince his friend that, like so many moves by Gov. Ron DeSantis, the enshrining of the rights of parents in law has been falsely represented in the media.

A left-leaning media with perfect confidence in teachers’ unions and in the fitness to instill liberal sexual mores in elementary school children has entirely mischaracterized the Governor’s initiatives. Happily, our Florida courts know better.

A lawsuit against the Parental Rights in Education Act has just been dismissed, and despite media reports to the contrary, Florida kids in kindergarten through eighth grade will be concentrating on getting an education, not indoctrination.

The dismissal is a big win for the DeSantis administration and a big loss for extremists who seek to hijack our public school system.

Unsatisfied with the normalization of gender ideology in children’s entertainment (see, for example, Disney’s many offerings) — unsatisfied with TikTok’s and other social media’s blanketing of social media platforms with posts cheering children’s sexual confusion — these sexual “liberators” want to conscript educators on their project during school hours.

Not only that, they think parents should be kept in the dark when their children evince the social, emotional, and psychological distress of gender dysphoria at school. Leftists call sharing such information with parents “outing” a child.

Parents call it “giving us vital information about our children.”

The application and promotion of gender ideology to children starts with opening their little minds to impossibilities like “a boy can grow up to become a woman.”

In the many states where this kind of classroom instruction is now mandated, teachers have plenty of options for reading hours. For pre-Kindergarteners, there’s “Red, A Crayon’s Story.” Here, a blue crayon has been mislabeled red with tragic consequences. A kindergarten teacher can move on to “In My Daddy’s Belly.” It’s a story that not only causes gender confusion but also destroys any chance of understanding basic reproductive biology.

At the middle school level, a teacher may offer the “Gender Identity Workbook,” which contains exercises to help students explore countless varieties of gender expression.

In Florida, keeping the curricula and classroom time for actual learning — reading, writing, arithmetic, history — is something that the vast majority of parents support. In our competitive technological society, there is no room for frittering away school hours and educational opportunities. School should not be for social engineering and promoting all kinds of “lifestyles.” Education ought to prepare our kids for a life of sober industry, civic engagement and successful, long-term relationships. What’s more, there is a growing worldwide realization that gender dysphoria in children is akin to a social contagion and that medical interventions (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries) are unethical experiments on children who cannot give proper consent.

Keeping Florida parents in the dark about all this is no longer possible, thanks to the lawsuit’s dismissal. I can hardly think of anything more vital than school officials’ transparency with parents when it comes to their children.

I’m pretty sure that within the first five minutes of becoming a parent, it becomes clear to every mother and father that they are their child’s prime protector and champion.

In today’s scary landscape of worsening youth mental health (18.8% of adolescents seriously considered suicide in 2019), for a school to hide a student’s experience of gender dysphoria from parents is almost criminal. Especially when studies show a strong correlation between gender dysphoria and suicidal ideation.

In Florida, we have the kind of weather that allows nine holes of golf on a Saturday morning all year long. We also have sanity in education, where students will continue to benefit from curricula focused on educational progress and not be harmed by a left-wing political agenda.

Perhaps best of all, we have schools where parents can count on being “in the loop” when it comes to their beloved children.

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Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., is a Senior Fellow for The Catholic Association and host of the nationally syndicated radio show Conversations with Consequences. She is a member of the Florida Board of Education.