Furious Colorado parents have claimed their 11-year-old daughter was forced to share a bed with a transgender female student on an overnight trip to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia to comply with the school district’s policy.
The young girl, only identified as D.W., reportedly only found out that the fifth-grader she was assigned to bunk with on the first night of the June trip, her mother Serena Wailes said.
“Her bedmate informed her that he was a boy who identified as transgender,” she told Fox 31.
“She was terrified and really upset about the idea of sharing a bed with a biological boy, even though she had a good relationship with this other student.”
D.W. repeatedly had to ask Governor’s Ranch Elementary School chaperones to let her move to a different room, said Wailes — who accompanied her daughter on the annual school trip.
She was only able to move after several hours and negotiations, but was told she would have to lie about the reason she changed rooms because the transgender fifth-grader was in “stealth mode” with her identity protected under Jefferson County Public School policy — which Serena and her husband Joe’s attorneys from the Alliance for Defending Freedom argue is “unconstitutional.”
They are now demanding that the school board inform parents in advance of the gender of the student with whom their child will be expected to share a bed with.
Attorney Kate Anderson asserts in a letter to Superintendent Tracy Dorman that Serena was repeatedly assured that the boys’ and girls’ rooms would be kept on separate floors of a hotel, and students would need special permission to travel between them.
She said Serena then demanded to see a chaperone on the trip in the hotel lobby after receiving a whispered phone call from her daughter, informing her that she was supposed to sleep in bed with a transgender student.
“The school chaperone asked the Waileses’ daughter if they could merely move her to a different bed rather than a different room,” Anderson writes in the letter sent Monday, which was obtained by The Post.
“While she was still uncomfortable with this arrangement, she agreed to try it for one night because she was tired after a long travel day.”
The letter goes on to say that school chaperones told D.W. to lie to her roommates about the reason for the bed switch, claiming she simply wanted to be closer to the air conditioner.
But one of the roommates, who was unaware the student was transgender, then asked the transgender pupil if she would like to switch beds as well.
“It then took the girl and her parents multiple requests to get her moved to another room,” the Alliance for Defending Freedom claims.
“And even then, chaperones told the girl to lie about the reason for her move because of the district’s overnight rooming policy — a policy that violates parental rights and student privacy by rooming students based on gender identity while hiding that information from other parents and students.”
Eventually, a school chaperone decided to move the biological male to another girls’ room.
Meanwhile, even after the girls inside D.W.’s room were informed that the student was transgender, they were asked to keep it quiet.
Under the school district’s policy, the needs of a transgender student will be assessed on a “case by case basis with the goals of maximizing the student’s social integration, providing equal opportunity and minimizing the stigmatization of the student.
“In most cases, students who are transgender should be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity consistently asserted at school.
“Any alternative arrangements should be provided in a way that allows the student’s transgender status to be kept confidential,” it says.
The policy also states that “under no circumstances” should a transgender student be required to share a room with children “whose gender identity conflicts with their own.”
Anderson argues in her letter that the policy “violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of our clients and their children, the parental rights of them and other parents in your district and the privacy rights of all students.”
“Every parent should have the information needed to make the best decision for their children,” Anderson said in a statement.
She suggested the district provide the policy to parents ahead of school trips to let “them work things out ahead of time, who their kids are going to room with, without revealing anybody’s identity or who is going to be scheduled into the rooms ahead of time.
“They could just let parents know, and let them opt out of it ahead of time,” Anderson suggested on Fox 31.
The Post has reached out to Jefferson County Public Schools for comment.