At 7 p.m. on Oct. 12, hidden away in the cafeteria at Gatehouse, the headquarters of Fairfax County Public Schools, the appointed members of the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee held their latest monthly meeting. Public perception of these meetings is that they are intentionally non-transparent.

Unlike other public meetings and work sessions, these meetings are neither recorded nor livestreamed. Though technically open to the public, they are not easy to access. Parents and members of the community arrive at Gatehouse without knowledge of where, in the large complex, the meeting will be held. Security personnel have to lead them to the meeting location. If members of the public arrive late and security personnel are not at the front desk, then they are not admitted.

The secrecy and hurdles to attending these meetings are suspect, leading parents to wonder what the public school district’s administrators and board members are trying to hide.

What we do know is that the 12 Democrat-endorsed school board members have appointed gender ideology activists to the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee, which advises them on the district’s sex education curricula. This stacking-the-deck method is standard operating procedure in Fairfax County’s public schools. Despite their incessant claims about the importance of inclusion, school board members only appoint advisory committee members who are ideologically homogenous so that they can draw the conclusions on which they have already decided.

The 2022-2023 Family Life Education committee of activists unanimously voted on several recommendations that were not well received by the public. These recommendations included gender-combined instruction for sex education beginning in 5th grade, gender identity instruction beginning in 4th grade, and changing the words “male/female” to “assigned male/female at birth.”

After the committee presented its recommendations, the district conducted a community survey. Months later, we learned that activists tried to bury the results because respondents were overwhelmingly against these absurd proposed changes to the sex education curricula. In particular, 84% of respondents indicated that they do not support gender-combined family life education instruction in grades 4-8.

At that point, it would seem like the simple response given community feedback would have been for school board members to vote down the unwanted proposed changes. Instead, they decided not to call for a vote, likely hoping that the public would lose interest over time.

On June 22, 2023, Michelle Reid, the district’s superintendent, and Fairfax board members were explicit about their intentions to advocate for and eventually pass the proposed changes to the sex education curricula. To the meeting attendees’ and parents’ surprise, Reid explicitly stated the quiet part out loud, “The majority doesn’t always dictate, right?” She added that the board still had plenty of time to pass the changes since family life education lessons take place “later in the year next [academic] year,” specifically in January and February 2024.

Like prolonged school closures during the pandemic, it seems that the proposed changes to the sex education curricula will be rammed through by out-of-touch school board members despite substantial community opposition. For example, Melanie Meren , who is running again in this year’s school board election, supported the changes at the June 2023 work session. She said that “learning about other genders” in elementary school and gender-combined classes would be “a step toward further accepting everyone and understanding people’s biology.” She added , “I mean, it’s just straight-up biology.”

Reid also foreshadowed at the June work session that the board should take up the issue again in the fall, which will likely be soon, following more discussions on professional development.

Fairfax County’s outright disregard for parental input is illustrative of what is happening across many unregulated local government and school district fiefdoms in America. And yet, despite the stacked committees, attempts to bury unfavorable survey data, and nontransparent meetings, parents and community members are still aware of and object to these illogical changes to the sex education curricula for our children.

The district’s superintendent and school board members may very well continue to search for ways to circumvent parents to achieve their desired ends, but we are watching.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and a member of the Independent Women’s Network.