According to state enrollment data, the number of students identifying as “non-binary” increased by more than 4,000% in New Jersey’s public schools over the previous four years.

According to enrollment data from the New Jersey Department of Education, only 16 children from the state’s public schools claimed they were “non-binary” in the 2019–20 academic year.

However, the figures show by the 2022–23 academic year, that number increased by over 4,000 percent to 675 students. Among the 675 students who identified one another as “non-binary,” 41 are in elementary school.

The rise in “non-binary” students in New Jersey’s public schools coincides with liberal leaders’ position that parents should not be notified if their children express a change in their gender or sexual orientation.

New Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin filed a lawsuit against the district after a local school board last month adopted the policy, claiming it is in line with efforts to notify parents of anything that might materially affect a student’s physical or mental health.

By that call for teachers to “out” children to their parents without their permission, according to Platkin, the policy “discriminates” toward LGBTQ students. Phil Murphy, the state’s liberal governor, supported the lawsuit.

Murphy declared in May that Hanover Township Board of Education’s new policy mandating employees to “out” LGBTQ kids to their parents violates their rights and endangers their mental health.

The growth in “non-binary” students is not surprising, according to Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at parental rights charity Parents Defending Education. School policies and curricula are “completely based around gender ideology.”

Transgender students in New Jersey public schools have also increased. 1.8 percent of U.S. high school students are transgender, according to a 2017 CDC report. Four years later, the American Academy of Pediatrics discovered roughly 10% were so.

Teen mental health issues, especially among LGBTQ teens, are rising.

The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ activist group, revealed 70% of LGBTQ teenagers said their mental well-being was primarily or always “poor” during the coronavirus pandemic, based on the findings of a 2021 nationwide survey.

NJ Fresh Faced Schools founder Nicole Stouffer, a biostatistician and parent, said the enormous surge in self-identified “non-binary” pupils is statistically important and medically relevant.