In his short tenure in office, President Donald Trump has already taken swift action to eliminate radical gender ideology and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives from public institutions, including K-12 schools.
Trump has signed multiple executive orders that would eliminate federal funding to any school that continues to promote these dangerous ideologies. As a result, the president needs a strong leader at the helm to guide the Department of Education in fixing our nation’s schools.
That is exactly why he nominated Linda McMahon, who is the perfect choice to repair the damage done by the previous administration.
School districts led by left-wing activists will likely resist Trump’s orders to remove indoctrination from their classrooms. This is where McMahon will need to step in and make an example of these bad actors.
The parental advocacy group Parents Defending Education created a list of school districts likely to resist the orders that should already be priorities to investigate. These districts have notoriously drenched their curricula in DEI and gender ideology in an attempt to turn America’s youth into a new army of left-wing advocates.
One of the worst districts pushing political activism onto students is Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. The district recently created a committee to “explore instruction on gender identity in elementary school.”
The goal is to introduce gender ideology into the curriculum as early as the first grade. A district committee unanimously voted the proposal through. Students will be taught that “for some people, their sex assigned at birth and gender identity are the same, and for some people, their sex assigned at birth and gender identity are different.”
The district notably overhauled the admissions process to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Thomas Jefferson was once one of the top ranked schools in the nation. Its ranking has now dropped to 14th after implementing a DEI-conscious admissions process in 2020 that deemphasizes merit and after watering down its curriculum to meet the resulting lower overall performance of its student body.
The district openly brags that it eliminated standardized testing from Thomas Jefferson and is now providing “a fixed number of additional points to students from economically-disadvantaged families, English-language learners, and students with Individualized Education Plans”—“points” that will give them an advantage in the admissions process.
Despite the once-revered school losing its prestige and providing a less robust education to its students, the district has shown no intention to reverse course.
Fairfax County Public Schools would be a perfect district for McMahon to investigate.
Another disastrous district to consider is Denver Public Schools in Colorado.
The district created a documentary titled “Reclaiming the Narrative: A Documentary About LGBTQ+ Youth” that is promoted on its website. The documentary follows 16 students within the district who identify as LGBTQ+.
The school system intends to “reframe and disrupt detrimental narratives with moments of joy and celebrations of intersectional identities” with the film.
The school district also created guidance known as the “LGBTQ+ Tool Kit” that instructs teachers to hide a student’s social “gender transition” from parents.
This so-called tool kit also states that the district integrates “LGBTQ+ topics” into “all content areas and in all grade levels.” Permission from parents is not required.
Denver Public Schools used taxpayer money to create this documentary promoting gender ideology and outright promotes indoctrinating students. These actions are blatantly against the president’s orders—and likely, most parents’ wishes—and deserve an investigation.
McMahon should also be aware of the Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin. The district had an infamous moment in 2022 when teachers were provided with absurd LGBTQ+ training where staff were told that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities.”
This training included a “White Privilege Test” for teachers. They were considered to have white privilege if they answered in the affirmative to a certain number of questions.
One question posed the scenario, “If a police officer stops me, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.” Staff were also shown the “Genderbread Person,” which is a chart drawn like a gingerbread man used to teach that gender exists on a spectrum.
While these are just a few egregious school districts that promote gender ideology and DEI, thousands of school districts throughout the country have done the same and continue to do so.
The situation is so dire at this point that Parents Defending Education has a growing tally of school districts nationwide that McMahon and her team could use as starting points.
No school should use its platform as a public institution to indoctrinate children into adopting sinister, cult-like ideologies.
Trump made the correct decision in choosing to defund schools that continue to be bad actors, and McMahon is an excellent choice to carry out this agenda.
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