The  biggest challenge in mounting such a case? Finding parents willing to attach their name to the case and stand as litigants. Parents in deep blue Santa Clara county are understandably reluctant to subject their family to possible retaliation directed at them from those on the extreme left.

CAL has decided to reach out to certain California chapters of Moms for Liberty to see if

any parents of students in the public school system have encountered these "health services" and would like to fight for their removal.

(Note that Moms for Liberty Santa Clara County is looking into becoming a plaintiff in this lawsuit as a means of representing the interests of our parent members who wish to remain anonymous...).

Anyone interested in learning more about the case is invited to contact Courtney directly, either by phone (703.636.9959) or email (CCorbello@libertycenter.org).

We Must End the Mission Creep and Let Them Teach

Teachers of post 12 pupils are not psychologists, social workers or babysitters, nor should they ever be.

Surely on that we can all agree?

Yet their job has expanded far beyond teaching, so far in fact that one could almost argue that teaching itself has become the adjunct, not the core.

So where did the weakening and mollycoddling rot set in?

The slide began with the Children Act 1989 which placed child welfare as the paramount concern and gave statutory backing to the ancient in loco parentis principle. What started as a sensible duty of care during school hours slowly grew.

To begin, schools shift to children attending only two days a week with class sizes capped at no more than fifteen.

Sports, arts, music sessions are substantially extended from their current standing.

Each lesson functions as an exam.

Online aids support every lesson, and in-school time focuses on topic exams.

How the restructured model would work?

The school week reduces to two full in-person days, for example Tuesday and Thursday, freeing the remaining three days for structured home learning supported by online platforms. This cut in attendance lowers building wear, transport costs and teacher workload while allowing deeper focus during school sessions.

To begin, class sizes will be fifteen pupils maximum.

Teachers deliver high impact, personalized instruction on how to learn, teach and teach others, we are going back to the basics. Smaller groups enable real time feedback, reduced disruption and stronger relationships without the need for extensive pastoral roles.

Sports sessions extend significantly on both attendance days, perhaps two hours each morning and afternoon. This builds physical health, teamwork and discipline through organised activities, replacing much of the lost social interaction from fewer school days.

The same could be arranged for the arts and music.

Every pupil receives dedicated training in AI use from the start of Year 8.

Lessons cover prompt engineering, source verification, bias detection, fact checking against multiple references and ethical application. Pupils learn to treat AI as a powerful assistant rather than a crutch.

For each curriculum topic, pupils access comprehensive online aids including video explanations, interactive modules, practice quizzes, AI tutors and curated reading lists. These resources remain available seven days a week.

Home days focus on self paced preparation using these tools plus AI assistance to build understanding and draft work.

In school, time will centre entirely on assessment. Each lesson slot becomes a formal topic exam or practical demonstration under controlled conditions.

Pupils sit assessments that test genuine comprehension, problem solving and application rather than recall, the recall is done at home. Teachers mark in real time where possible, provide immediate verbal feedback and identify gaps instantly.

This can and should be streamed by ability.

This model restores teaching to its core, expert instruction and rigorous assessment. Non teaching duties disappear for classroom staff.

External Support staff, counsellors and coaches handle all other elements.

Teachers plan lessons, deliver content and assess progress within the two day framework.

Accountability

The structure demands accountability, primarily of the children. Pupils must engage with online materials on non attendance days, those that don’t face discipline, suspension and then expulsion.

Truancy or non completion triggers swift intervention focused on the family, not additional teacher burden and is carried out externally.

Exclusion (internal or full expulsion) is the default in all behavioral issues, that is not the problem of the school, they turn up ready to learn or they don’t.

Technical pathway at age 13 - with work experience

• Extended sports remain built in for physical development and discipline. AI tools support theory elements and project planning.

• One day home learning where pupils use online aids for related theory, business studies, regulatory knowledge (health and safety, building regulations) and AI-assisted preparation. This day mirrors the academic track’s home structure but tailors content to vocational needs.

• Two days work experience: Pupils attend real workplaces alongside tradespeople or small businesses in a work-experience format. They observe, assist where appropriate and gain direct exposure to daily operations, customer interactions and site practices.

• No formal employment or supervised production work occurs. Centers organize and rotate placements with local firms to ensure breadth of experience and reality.

Each pupil is formally set up as self-employed from the start of the technical pathway (with parental or guardian co-signing until age 16).

This involves basic registration with HMRC from which point their annual tax allowance as if an adult compounds to 18. Add a simple business bank account and introduction to invoicing and quoting through the curriculum.

Dealing with potential customers and all that comes with being self employed becomes a paramount topic.

The self-employment framework prepares pupils for independent work at the first opportunity, fosters an entrepreneurial mindset and allows easy transition into proper apprenticeships or full self-employment at 16.

This integration creates two clear, efficient tracks with one academic and exam-focused, the other vocational, practical and enterprise-driven, both resting on the same principles of limited attendance, small groups, AI support and restored focus on core education roles.

Pathway flexibility for transfers remains available.

Effect of dropping class size from a normal 30 to 15

This change fits naturally with the two-day attendance model and produces a balanced, more efficient system without needing extra staff.

Assume a traditional setup with classes of 30 and five-day attendance. Halving the class size to 15 would normally require roughly twice as many classrooms and teachers to maintain the same pupil numbers.

However, cutting attendance to two days per week halves the total pupil-days in school. This offsets the smaller class size exactly in terms of teacher utilization.

Teachers would handle the same overall number of pupil contact hours per week as before, but spread across smaller, more manageable groups on only two intense days.

The result is higher quality interaction per pupil without increasing total teacher workload.

Positive effects include:

• Eradicates all extraneous activities not 100 percent educational.

• Significantly more individual attention, real-time feedback and personalized teaching in every session.

• Reduced behaviour issues and disruption, especially beneficial for lower-attaining pupils.

• Funding and time for SEND support in external settings is increased.

• Stronger teacher-pupil relationships and higher pupil engagement.

• Lower marking and preparation pressure per lesson due to fewer pupils per group.

The same teaching staff could cover the entire pupil body by staggering year groups or forms across the two attendance days.

California teachers and administrators for whom the PRISM LGBTQ training runs counter to their religious and moral values are asked to contact The National Center for Law and Policy, who can provide guidance with filing an appropriate religious exemption.

Following law school graduation, while starting his civil litigation practice, he was invited to become an affiliate attorney of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), from which Dean has received extensive training in pro-family, pro-life and pro-religious liberty matters at ADF’s outstanding National Litigation Academies (NLA). Because of Dean’s pro-bono work, he was invited to receive special training at ADF’s advanced NLA. Dean is proud to be an ADF affiliate attorney and member of ADF’s honor guard.

Title IX Investigation

Secretary Linda McMahon: ‘The unions are not fighting for students or teachers – they are fighting to protect their own power’

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has launched a directed Title IX investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), targeting a controversial policy negotiated with the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) that critics say prioritizes protecting teachers credibly accused of sexual misconduct over the safety of students. 

The probe, announced on Tuesday, examines whether LAUSD’s handling of allegations–including sexual harassment, assault, romantic relationships with students, creation or use of child pornography, unnecessary physical contact, and failure to report suspected child abuse–violates federal law. Under the union agreement, such teachers are automatically reassigned to another school rather than terminated or immediately removed from student-facing roles during investigations.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey pulled no punches: “Under Title IX, schools must respond appropriately and address claims of sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment and assault, in a timely manner, but the District seems to be putting the continued employment of sexual predators above the safety of students. It is unconscionable that the District would simply ignore Title IX’s procedural requirements to protect teachers who cause life-changing harm to their kids. The Trump Administration will always fight to uphold the law, protect the safety of all students, and restore common sense to our schools.” 

This latest federal action comes as no surprise to California Globe readers. For years, the Globe has documented LAUSD’s pattern of shielding predators while saddling taxpayers with enormous costs. In February 2026, we reported that LAUSD was borrowing another $250 million in “judgment obligation bonds” to settle sexual misconduct claims—on top of $500 million authorized just months earlier. Prior to expanded statutes like AB 218, the district had already paid out more than $372 million in judgments and settlements between 2012 and 2024. Despite official policies calling for immediate termination in certain sex offense cases, repeated failures in screening, oversight, and removal have left students vulnerable. 

The district’s budget crisis has only worsened. As the Globe reported, student attendance has plummeted by as much as 40% in some years, yet personnel costs, driven heavily by union contracts, consume roughly 90% of LAUSD’s $18.8 billion budget. Lavish spending on bureaucracy and consultants continues even as students suffer. 

Mounting Resistance To The Teacher Union Leviathan

A May 4 Wall Street Journal editorial argues that the single biggest problem in state governance is the “political dominance of public-sector unions.” These include the SEIU, AFSCME, and, notably, the teachers’ unions. But now, several red states are pursuing reforms to curb their influence and give taxpayers a much-needed break.

In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little recently signed a bill that will end public support for teachers’ unions. The new law will prohibit school districts from deducting dues directly from teachers’ paychecks and will limit unions’ ability to recruit members during school hours. It will also end the practice of granting teachers paid time off for a range of union activities, including supporting candidates for office, soliciting membership, and participating in protests or advocacy.

This procedure is officially labeled “release time,” but more accurately, it’s “union time on the taxpayer’s dime,” a common practice across the country at all levels of government. This racket allows public employees to conduct various types of union business during working hours, with the taxpayer footing the bill.

Arizona is developing guardrails for public-sector unions through a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit school districts from collecting union dues through payroll deductions. The bill, which must be adopted by the legislature to appear on the November ballot, would also ban teacher strikes and require unions to distribute communications off school property.

In Florida, SB1296, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 1, requires unions that represent government workers in the state to secure at least 50% of members’ participation in any recertification vote and then win by a majority of the votes cast.

A bill working its way through the Oklahoma state legislature would allow school employees to cancel their union membership at any time. Unions would be barred from limiting an employee’s “right to terminate his or her membership only during certain dates or by using specific forms.”

The other national teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers, is even more one-sided. In 2024, the AFT gave $3,069,063 (99.89%) to Democrats and a scant $3,323 (0.11%) to Republicans.

Additionally, the Commonwealth Foundation reports that 95.8% of donations from government unions to state-level candidates went to Democrats. At the federal level, 98.8% of government union donations went to Democrats.

Not all states have good news to report on the union front, however. In deep-blue Oregon, a law now makes it illegal to “falsely impersonate” a union representative and imposes fines for violations. The legislation was written to discourage the Freedom Foundation, which sends mailers to union members reminding them that they can opt out of the union and save money under the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. AFSCME ruling. New York and Hawaii have also introduced similar measures.

While things are moving in the right direction for the most part, much more still needs to be done to rein in the unbridled perks granted to public employee unions.

For starters, as 501(c)(5)s, all unions—public and private—have a special tax-exempt status with the IRS that is accorded to “Labor, Agricultural, and Horticultural Organizations.” So, dues money is not taxed. Furthermore, when a union sells stock, it is excused from paying capital gains tax.

Additionally, teachers’ unions demand exclusivity. Although no public employee has to pay a penny to a union as a condition of employment anymore, unions often complain about “free riders.” The objection centers on the fact that unions are required to represent all workers during collective bargaining, so any non-payer is thus receiving a service without paying for it.

But in reality, it is the competition-phobic unions that are the problem. No law imposes the duty of exclusive representation on unions—in fact, the unions themselves demand it. As Mike Antonucci explains, “The very first thing any new union wants is exclusivity,” whereby “no other unions are allowed to negotiate on behalf of people in the bargaining unit. Unit members cannot hire their own agent, nor can they represent themselves.”

Another area ripe for change is that even if an employee decides to forgo union membership, they—willingly or not—remain part of the collective bargaining unit. When contract time rolls around, the teacher must accept the terms of the union agreement. Why should a worker be dragged into a collective bargaining agreement? Those who don’t want to join a union should not be forced to be part of the collective bargaining unit. They should be free to negotiate their own contract without a union. The idea of a “members-only” union is fair to both sides, but monopoly-obsessed union honchos invariably revile it.

What benefits do teachers receive from their unions?

One benefit they offer is liability insurance for educators. But instead of paying hefty union dues for this important benefit, teachers can join the Association of American Educators or Christian Educators Association International—professional organizations—and get better coverage at a much lower cost. Also, about 10,000 teachers have joined the independent alternative Teacher Freedom Alliance as more teachers realize they do not have to fund agendas they oppose.

In sum, several red states and the federal government are beginning to push back against teacher-union hegemony. However, much more needs to be done to address an unjust situation that has festered for far too long.

Is It Time To Abolish Public Schools?

Fighting Against Wokeness

An article by Tyler O'Neil posted on The Daily Signal on May 12 2026

The LGBTQ+ agenda for brainwashing your kids isn’t subtle. Activists often chant, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”

Parents who wish to protect impressionable young kids from the noxious idea that Billy can become Sally don’t just need to watch their local elementary school—they need to remain on alert at the library and, perhaps most especially, in front of the television.

Concerned Women for America analyzed the streaming shows on Netflix geared toward young audiences, and found that more than 40% of most children’s programming includes some sort of LGBTQ+ theme.

But there’s good news here: You can help put a stop to it.

LGBTQ+ activists march in New York City on June 29, 2025. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

America must reject this ideology, root and branch, for sanity, justice, and the health of our children.

Beware: Monsters Roam Free, In Full View

Sherer practices her debased treatments through the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Sutter Health, that performed sex-rejecting interventions on minors until federal pressure ended the practice. Sherer is also affiliated with the formerly prestigious Stanford Health Care. These are not fringe clinics. They are exceedingly influential institutions, especially in Trans-a-lifornia.

In 2012, Sherer co-authored a foundational paper and co-founded the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health and Wellness aka the SOLGBTHW, which is almost as long as the incoherent LGBTQ+ii alphabet soup. This LGBT section became the AAP’s internal engine for pushing gender-affirming care into mainstream pediatrics. Sherer has served on its executive committee since at least 2016. She is also listed as an endorser of the 2018 American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement, authored by Jason Rafferty. The policy statement rejected the international standard of “watchful waiting” It replaced “give time for the children to mature” treatment plan with the unconditional affirmation of every child’s whimsical pronouncement of his or her “gender” and medicalization of any child whose activities or clothing preference did not align with the stereotypical child of his or her sex. This policy, that was ripped to shreds by James Cantor for its lack of scientific vigor and its misuse of citations that did not stand for the proposition asserted, is one of the most influential policies used as support for sex-rejecting interventions on children in the United States. It is my opinion that the AAP is the single most culpable medical society for the ruination of children’s bodies and the cataclysmic growth of the transgender agenda. It, along with WPATH is at the center of the crime board, although almost every medical and mental health society also climbed aboard the now-sinking trans ship.

According to emails obtained through public records requests and documents released by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall during the defense of Alabama’s law restricting pediatric gender procedures, the AAP designated four pediatricians to review the embargoed SOC 8 draft on the organization’s behalf: Jason Rafferty, Ilana Sherer, Juanita Hodax, and Brittany Allen. Three of the four held leadership positions in the AAP’s SOLGBTHW section, the very body with an institutional interest in maximizing access to pediatric gender interventions.

The internal communications are illuminating, even though they are highly redacted. According to those records, the AAP’s rationale for requiring Sherer, Rafferty, and Hodax to review the SOC 8 was explicit: to address the “implications for our existing legal arguments.” This was not a disinterested scientific peer review. It was a legal strategy session masquerading as one. Protecting members and the AAP’s legal liabilities was paramount; children’s health be damned.

The four-doctor group submitted its curated feedback to WPATH leadership in September 2022. Then-AAP president Moira Szilagyi sent a formal letter informing WPATH that the final draft “raised concerns” and that if those concerns were not addressed, the AAP would not merely decline to endorse SOC 8. It would actively and publicly oppose it. Thus, Dr. Sherer and her possé were empowered to change the entire course of sex-rejecting treatments for children. The WPATH could not or would not publish without the AAP’s support.

The threat worked. WPATH’s own Scott Leibowitz, co-lead of the adolescent chapter, bent the knee to Dr. Sherer. The surgical and cross-sex hormone age minimums were removed - twelve-year-old females could have their breasts amputated.

The Crazy Things Sherer Says

Most of Sherer’s public statements are carefully calibrated and consist of her telling her colleagues and parents to let children lead, and that she learns so much from those little minds, including new language and more gender identities than she could dream of. Besides the buffoonery, she tells lies. Lies that hurt children. Lies that trick parents into consenting to irreversible harms to their children.

In a recorded interview, Sherer stated flatly that puberty blockers are “completely reversible.” This claim used to reassure parents is false and she knew that she had no basis in that statement when she made it in 2020 as her colleague Stephen Rosenthal and UCSF were in the midst of a study to determine the long-term effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on youth’s bodies. How could she possibly know that the results of that study, that still to this day have not been published, five years after Dr. Rosenthal presented on the one-year study results? UCSF’s informed consent related to puberty blockers for youth in 2019, revealed not only the gap in knowledge but that infertility was a long-term risk.

Moreover, complaints about bone density issues related to Lupron were already known in 2017 with close to 10,000 complaints having been filed with the FDA.

After all, what’s a little pro forma diagnosis manipulation and insurance fraud between friends? Sherer does need to get paid.

Then there is the matter of age. In a second video from the same event, Sherer stated that she administers puberty blockers to children as young as 8 and 9 years old — third and fourth graders. Age is just a number.

The Language She Wants Your Children to Use

At the 2023 AAP Annual Convention, Sherer presented at a panel on gender and sexuality. Among the positions she advocated are that discussions of sexual identity should begin in early childhood, and that anatomical language should be replaced with gender-neutral terminology. The suggested terminology included the substitution of clinical terms for genitalia with expressions such as “front hole,” “outie,” and “dicklet.”

These are not just fringe positions she holds privately. She advanced them at the annual conference of the largest pediatric medicine organization in the United States, in a room full of the pediatricians who will see your children for their annual checkups.

Taking It Into the Schools

Sherer’s reach has extended beyond clinical medicine and professional conferences into the public school system. She participated in a panel event presented to students and parents at the San Francisco Unified School District, organized in partnership with Gender Spectrum. Gender Spectrum is a nonprofit that has stated as one of its explicit organizational goal to integrate gender ideology into every classroom. Gender Spectrum has collaborated with surgeons and gender clinic physicians to present at schools across California.

The roster of doctors who used California’s public school system as a recruitment and influence platform is significant. It includes Johanna Olson-Kennedy, surgeon Scott Mosser, and others affiliated with the major gender clinics. The schools provided a perfect pipeline for guaranteeing future patients.

meaningless and that internal feelings of female-ness or male-ness are genuine concepts. They are criminals and should be treated as such. They have been violating human rights of children and the mentally unwell for almost two decades with gleeful exuberance. I want their crimes to be exposed. Every. Single. Last. One. Of. Them. Therefore today, I begin the Crime Board Series knowing that this work will be used to ensure their deeds will not be forgotten, and if all goes as planned prosecute them.

Something Teachers May Appreciate

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming to an end. 

There were flowers on desks, handwritten cards from students, and well-deserved recognition for the people who show up every single day for our kids.

But here's something I keep thinking about. We thank teachers for teaching. 

And yet, across the country, activist unions and school administrators are making it increasingly difficult for good teachers to do exactly that.

I've talked to teachers who went into education to open young minds to literature, history, and science. They chose this profession because they love kids and believe in what education can do for them.

Many of those same teachers now find themselves navigating mandatory training sessions, prescribed lesson frameworks, and curriculum materials that have little to do with reading, writing, math, or any of the foundational skills children actually need to thrive.

That's not what they signed up for. And it's not what parents signed up for either.

If we want to honor what teachers actually do, the best thing we can do is fight to give them their classrooms back.

The pressure on teachers does not come from nowhere. 

Activist unions have spent hundreds of millions in dues on political causes that have nothing to do with improving student outcomes. 

School administrations across the country have adopted ideological frameworks that crowd out instructional time and put teachers in an impossible position: follow the directives or risk their jobs.

Most teachers are not asking for any of this! 

Defending Education exists, in part, to create the conditions where that's actually possible.

• We track what's being required in classrooms across the country.

• We file public records requests to get the actual training materials and policy documents.

• We take legal action when school districts cross the line.

• And we give parents the tools to ask the right questions and push back effectively.

Christian Teachers Must Remain Strong!

Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior...  Psalm 25:5

is no mere professional development. It is an ideological loyalty test demanding that educators affirm beliefs about gender and sexuality that directly contradict biblical truth.

Yet there is good news: Christian teachers do not have to surrender their faith to keep their jobs. Under both the First Amendment and federal and state civil rights laws, they have the right to request a religious exemption from trainings that violate their sincerely held beliefs.

That’s why the National Center for Law and Policy, led by constitutional attorney Dean Broyles, is stepping forward to defend teachers of faith who refuse to compromise their convictions. “Teachers’ civil rights do not evaporate when they enter our public schools,” Broyles said. “California’s coercive mandatory PRISM LGBTQ identity cultural competency training directly conflicts with and seeks to actively undermine the deeply held religious beliefs of millions of California families, students, and public-school teachers.”

What the Law Demands — and Why It Is Unconstitutional

Under AB 5, public school teachers in grades 7-12 must complete the PRISM Training, or a closely aligned alternative, which instructs participants to affirm concepts like gender fluidity and to use students’ self-selected pronouns, even when doing so violates their conscience. The program also directs teachers to withhold information from parents about a child’s gender identity if the child has not given permission, falsely claiming that minors have a “right to privacy” from their own parents.

The training explicitly labels traditional Christian beliefs as harmful “heteronormativity,” “homophobic,” and “transphobic,” and equates adherence to biblical truth with discrimination. In essence, teachers are told they must deny their faith or face discipline.

A recent federal court ruling in Mirabelli v. Olson reaffirmed that public school districts cannot compel teachers to lie to parents or affirm gender ideology in violation of their faith. The court condemned such policies as a “trifecta of harm” to teachers, students, and parents. That decision opened the door for teachers statewide to challenge similar unconstitutional policies.

One Teacher’s Example of Courage

One Southern California teacher, represented by Broyles, has formally requested a religious accommodation from his district. In Broyles’s letter to school officials, he explains that the teacher’s faith requires him to speak truthfully, honor parents’ rights, and affirm that God created humanity male and female (Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:4). Participating in PRISM training would force him to endorse falsehoods about human sexuality and violate his conscience before God.

“The government has no legitimate place marginalizing, shaming, and demonizing the sincere religious beliefs of its good citizens,” Broyles wrote. “State and local LGBTQ+ laws or policies do not supersede well-established federal constitutional rights or a teacher’s right to be free from religious discrimination.”

Broyles also warned that districts cannot retaliate against teachers who request religious accommodation, and that his office will be monitoring any cases of harassment or discrimination.

A Call for Courage

Many Christian teachers are afraid. They worry that refusing the training might cost them their jobs or reputations. Others are tempted to simply “click through” the training and answer as the state demands, just to keep the peace. But as followers of Christ, we are called to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) and to stand firm in truth even when pressured to conform.

CFC’s Call to Action

California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt is urging both teachers and school board members to take a public stand for truth.

“Christian teachers should not quietly comply with a state mandate that calls evil good and good evil,” said Greg Burt, Vice President of California Family Council. “By standing up for their own rights, teachers are also defending the civil rights of parents and students, protecting every family’s freedom to live and speak according to biblical truth. We need courageous believers in every classroom and on every school board willing to draw a line and say, ‘We will not bow.’ Our children need to see adults who are unashamed to stand for God’s truth about life, family, and gender, no matter the cost.”

Take Action

If you are a Christian teacher being forced to take this training, you have legal options. Contact the National Center for Law and Policy for assistance in drafting a religious accommodation request. You can also reach out to California Family Council for resources and support.

Now is not the time for silent compliance. The next generation of students is watching. When faithful teachers stand firm, they bear witness to the truth that God, not the government, defines human identity, morality, and truth.

Just as Daniel, Esther, and the three Hebrew men stood unashamed before kings and rulers, California’s Christian teachers must now stand before their school boards and declare:

“We will not bow.”

Childhood Has Its Stresses

In the latest Beyond Gender podcast episode, Mia Hughes & I spoke with Ellie Lee, Professor of Family & Parenting Research at University of Kent & Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies.

You can watch the full conversation here:

Until very recently, the differences between childhood and adulthood were universally understood. Adulthood was characterized by responsibility, authority, and endurance. Parents were responsible for their children and exercised authority over them - mother knew best and her word was often law. It was widely understood that life could be difficult, work monotonous, and childhood turbulent. None of this automatically signaled pathology. Today, however, more and more of ordinary life is being interpreted through the language of therapy, diagnosis, and psychological vulnerability.

In the latest Beyond Gender podcast episode, Mia Hughes and I spoke with Ellie Lee, Professor of Family and Parenting Research at University of Kent and Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, about how this profound cultural shift took hold and how it impacts parents, children and wider society.

Professor Lee’s work began in abortion politics, but over time she became interested in a much broader transformation in Western culture. Increasingly, the major social roles of adult life - parenting, education, work, and even relationships - have come to be framed through what she calls “therapy culture.” Distress is no longer seen as an inevitable part of life or development, but as evidence of psychological harm, unmet emotional needs, or hidden trauma. Difficulties are increasingly treated as conditions to be managed rather than experiences to be endured.

My first book, Cotton Wool Kids, explored the impact of contemporary parenting culture, and I have long been a fan of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, so I was especially keen to hear Ellie Lee speak about modern parenting culture. We spoke about how parents are now often expected to operate as amateur psychologists, constantly monitoring emotional states, validating feelings, and interpreting behavior through diagnostic frameworks. Parenting advice increasingly treats ordinary childhood misbehavior as evidence of potential disorder. Tantrums are interpreted as emotional dysregulation, shyness as a potential anxiety disorder, and defiance as a pathological condition.

Ellie explains how these changes have profoundly altered the relationship between parents and children. Historically, parents were expected to provide guidance, structure, and authority. Today, many parents feel uncertain about exercising authority at all. Instead, parenting models increasingly place the child’s feelings and perceptions at the center of family life while parents are often encouraged to suppress their instincts, downplay their authority, and avoid imposing their values too strongly.

viewed through diagnostic categories, with behaviors once considered part of normal development reframed as symptoms requiring intervention.

We discuss the condition known as Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), a controversial and increasingly popular label often used to explain oppositional or avoidant behaviour in children. Ellie questions whether some modern diagnostic trends risk encouraging adults to reinterpret normal developmental struggles through a medical lens, often in ways that lower expectations for children rather than helping them mature.

These themes connect directly to contemporary debates around trans-identified children. In many cases, adults have become hesitant to challenge or question a child’s self-declared identity. The older assumption that adults guide children through confusion and developmental instability has weakened. Increasingly, the child’s subjective feelings are treated as authoritative and fixed. Parents too are more often judged by other involved adults and found wanting. The ‘good enough mother’ is now more often perceived as not really good enough after all.

This has created profound consequences. Now that distress is interpreted primarily through identity and pathology, medical intervention begins to be viewed as compassionate, necessary, and even morally urgent. Ellie’s analysis helps explain why debates around gender identity medicine cannot be separated from wider cultural changes in parenting, authority, therapy culture, and the medicalisation of everyday life.

Yet despite the seriousness of these issues, the conversation was not pessimistic. One of the most hopeful parts of the discussion centred on the importance of boundaries, confidence, and adult responsibility. Children benefit when adults are willing to tolerate discomfort, uncertainty, and temporary unhappiness rather than attempting to eliminate all distress.

Ellie’s broader point is both simple and deeply countercultural. Human development depends not only on care and empathy, but also on structure, limits, and learning to live with frustration and reality. A culture that pathologizes ordinary life risks weakening the very capacities that help people grow stronger.

The episode raises important questions for parents, clinicians, educators, and wider society. At what point does compassion stop helping individuals develop resilience and instead begin encouraging fragility? What authority should parents have over their children? Who decides what is best for a child? What is the impact of the medicalisation and pathologisation of distress?

A comparison of the principles and purpose behind two competing models of therapeutic care

Gender-Affirming Care arrived like a bat out of hell as a novel approach for people who identified as transgender. It had no robust, reliable, or replicable evidence base to support it. It had no coherent or well-established therapeutic model underpinning it. There was no new scientific discovery that supported its arrival. There were no giants of psychology who put forward this remarkably unusual and antithetical approach to the therapeutic process. Instead, Gender-Affirming Care arose as a consequence of a political campaign from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in a bid to build an understanding of trans identity as healthy, normal, and something to be celebrated in public life.

Prior to this, the word ‘affirmation’ emerged as a response to discrimination, particularly in the mid-20th century United States. To affirm someone was to recognise their equal dignity and legal standing in the face of exclusion, laws and customs that denied it. Movements for racial equality, women’s rights, and later gay rights used the language of affirmation to insist that marginalised groups should not merely be tolerated but fully recognised as citizens with the same legal and social standing as others. It was a public, political act aimed at securing rights. Only in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century did it shift into therapy jargon, where it came to mean endorsing personal identity claims. As with many new fashionable words such as “lived experience” or “authentic self”, it was happily accepted as a quick way to demonstrate that you were a therapist who was happy to keep up with contemporary times.

Today, as the number of detransitioners continues to increase, there is a growing discomfort among clinicians who sense that something has gone wrong in contemporary therapeutic culture. ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ in particular is increasingly viewed as a fringe approach, one that sits in direct opposition of the core principles of conventional therapy.

Gender-Affirming Care is dressed in the language of compassion. Yet behind the reassuring vocabulary sits the automatic medicalization of a person’s sense of identity. We have never before sought to medicalize identity in this way, nor have we tried to use medical technology to create a physical representation of an internal sense of self. Therapy has moved from helping people understand themselves to helping them reshape their bodies and faces so that their appearance reflects an inner psychological reality. This is a very different task, with no real precedent.

Gender-Affirming Care asks the therapist to take a client’s stated identity at face value, to support it and facilitate the client to obtain medical procedures that attempt to somehow translate that inner sense of self onto the body and face. For example, a female-born client may feel deeply uncomfortable with her body and so disconnected from herself that she comes to identify as non-binary. On the surface, the Gender-Affirming Care approach seems humane. The client is distressed and presents with a clear explanation for her suffering, and the therapist agrees. The distress is given a narrative and the narrative is protected. The client goes on to take testosterone and procure a mastectomy. But therapy is not meant to be a place where narratives are protected; it is meant to be a place where they are examined. Nor is therapy supposed to focus on the body - the psyche is more important in psychological work.

If the same client attended a therapist who takes a Sex-Affirming Care approach, the client would have a very different experience, as this approach begins from a different premise. Sex-Affirming Care recognises that the human body is not incidental. It might be an inconvenience to be worked around, but it must be contended with, as our bodies are the foundation of our existence. We are born in our bodies and we die when our bodies die.

Therapists who take a Sex-Affirming Care approach remain grounded in biological reality. They do not deny the existence of the individual’s internal sense of gender, but nor do they deny the limitations of medical procedures. We can rage against the limitations of our bodies, but we cannot deny they exist. We can seek a wide range of medical interventions, but we cannot discount their impact, including infertility, impaired sexual functioning, chronic pain, cardiac problems, osteoporosis, and many other challenges. These consequences matter because therapy, at its best, is a discipline that gently but persistently brings people back into contact with what is real.

The problem with Gender-Affirming Care is that it prioritises the body and the physical representation of the self over the individual’s internal mind. Identity-based treatment does not query where or how the client has come to this understanding of the self, but rather presumes that our sense of identity is an immutable, subjective sense of self that can only be known to the individual. In the meantime, Sex-Affirming Care is psychologically-based approach that rests upon conventional psychology, where it is understood that our inner workings can lead us into all sorts of difficulties. It rests on the shoulders of giants, from Freud to Jung, Beck to Rogers. Psychologically-based treatment is not infallible, however there is a vast range of theory and a significant evidence base to support it.

The Gender-Affirming therapist moves from affirming the client’s identity to confirming it. It removes agency and collapses the important distinction between empathy and agreement. A therapist should have the skill to communicate that they deeply understand a client’s distress without endorsing the explanation the client has constructed for it. In fact, that is often where the real therapeutic work lies.

Many clients arrive in therapy with powerful convictions about themselves. They might be convinced that they should leave their job or their partner, or that they need to radically change their lives by moving house or relocating to another country. These convictions can feel absolute. They can organise a person’s entire sense of identity - the person may believe they will only be truly happy when a particular outcome is achieved. Yet therapists know that human beings are not always reliable narrators of their own lives, and we seldom experience a prolonged sense of satisfaction once these most desired outcomes are reached.

Most of us use a range of psychological techniques such as avoidance, cognitive distortions, and defense mechanisms to help us come to terms with the difficulties of living. These strategies often help us avoid swallowing some bitter pills about our existence. T. S. Eliot captured this truth when he observed, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” in Murder in the Cathedral. This is why, if the therapist simply mirrors back what the client presents, they are not carrying out therapy. They are doing a disservice to the client and risk becoming a charlatan who pretends that everything the client says is right. They become a validation service.

Sex-Affirming Care provides the mental space for a client to come to a deeper understanding of the self. Slowly but surely it helps us bear some reality. It asks what lies beneath the person’s sense of identity. If a client who was born and raised in Ireland, with Irish parents, came to identify as Jamaican and became determined to procure medical interventions that confirmed this sense of identity, my job as a psychotherapist would be to use my skill to encourage the client to consider their developmental history, their family dynamics, any trauma they experienced, their temperament, and potential social influences that led them to this conclusion. I would treat the person’s sense of identity as complex rather than as a simple embodiment that needs medication to be resolved.

There is a humility in the psychological approach. It accepts that little in life is simple or truly knowable, and that identity is not something to be fixed in place under pressure. There is also depth and seriousness to Sex-Affirming Care. The body is not infinitely malleable and medical interventions carry significant consequences. An identity-based therapeutic model is more superficial; it operates under the presumption that our identities emerge fully formed from some unknown sense of self, disregarding the individual’s psychological defence mechanisms. Gender-Affirming Care presumes that affirmation is the correct response and thereby inadvertently forecloses opportunities for deeper exploration. It narrows the field of possibility at precisely the moment when it should be widened.

Advocates of Gender-Affirming Care often present it as the only compassionate response to trans-identification. That claim does not withstand scrutiny. Compassion is not measured by how quickly a therapist agrees. It is measured by the depth of attention given to the whole person. This involves challenge, contemplation, deeper understanding, and often tolerating uncertainty.

We are living in a moment where declarations of identity are treated as weirdly sacred. Therapy has been drawn into this conceptualisation. Yet the task of therapy is not to concretise a client’s current self-understanding; it is to expand it. Sex-Affirming Care keeps that task intact. It insists that reality matters, that the body matters, and that truth is not the enemy of compassion.

Wayward Gender Policies Continue To Harm

A major international study is raising urgent concerns about vulnerable youth being directed to gender identity pathways – while systems guiding them fail to address root causes of their distress.

These are not thriving children seeking clarity.
These are struggling children entering a system failing to help them heal.

But here’s the reality parents are still facing:

• Some states and school districts continue teaching students they can change their sex

• Schools do socially transition students without parental knowledge or consent

• Hospitals continue to receive government support tied to gender-related services

• Systems allow minors to access care while limiting parental involvement

Policy may be shifting—but practice has not caught up.

This Demands Immediate Attention!

Parents are told protections are in place—while their children often experience something entirely different inside schools and healthcare systems.

These are not low-risk decisions, but involve:

• Children struggling with mental health

• Interventions with uncertain outcomes

• Systems that may move forward without fully addressing root causes

If your child is placed on a gender care pathway, it is dangerously difficult to reverse.

My Take

by Suzanne Gallagher, Executive Director of Parent's Rights in Education

Parents, this is your wake-up call.

We are seeing warning signs from international data, policy shifts at the highest levels, and yet many of the same practices continue.

That should concern every parent.

Children who are struggling need real help. They need care that looks at the whole child, not just one aspect of their identity.

But instead, many are being guided into pathways that may not resolve their distress, and parents are too often left out of the process.

You cannot protect what you cannot see.

And right now, too many parents are kept in the dark.

Are Teachers Still Able To Teach?

Whew. Layers and layers of new annual costs. That’s expensive.

But the union, called United Teachers of Los Angeles, is pretty pleased with what it sees as complete routs of area taxpayers over the years, then tells you how they do it:

“... thousands of UTLA members knocking on doors and talking to voters in the last two election cycles shored up a pro-educator school board majority… “

You don’t need a glossary to read the shorthand of “pro-educator” – that means “pro-union.” And a pro-union candidate can count on “thousands” of union members knocking on doors.

That’s how it came to pass that 26,745 union members voted in favor and only 2,080 against. Moolah moolah.

The school district rolled over for that on behalf of area taxpayers and said not a word about poor student performance. Doesn’t matter. This is all about political power, and the other side doesn’t have “thousands of … members knocking on doors.”

So, if the money and benefits are so good, why are teachers down? California’s teachers are the nation’s highest paid in both starting salary ($58,409, soon to be $77,000 in LA schools) and average salary ($101,084), according to the National Education Association.

Half the teachers in California would walk away from that? Plus generous pensions, ample time off, and top-level health benefits, which often boost total pay over $100,000 for most teachers?

Ed Week, a strong supporter of radical teacher unions, accidentally points to unions as the cause of poor morale.

The magazine said teachers wanted more mental health days, planning time, four-day weeks, smaller class sizes, and better-behaved students.

The first four are matters a union might tackle, and maybe UTLA or another one has and we just haven’t heard much about it. But the last one, student behavior, stands out.

Fifty years ago, teachers could count on administrators to help enforce a positive learning environment for students. They cannot now. Indeed, many campuses are hotspots of political activism. The union leadership pushes its politics far harder than classroom improvements.

For those teachers, somehow, politics has replaced math and language skills as the apple of the unions’ eyes. Their long-ago promise (the 1906 charter) to advance education and the teaching profession has morphed into, essentially, a nihilistic, anarchistic revolution against their own country.

Refocusing on children’s education means forcing educators back to emphasizing essential courses, and getting rid of them if they don’t.

Reports of The Death of 'Woke' May Be Greatly Exagerated

The NYU Executive Committee of the Student Government Assembly expressed “profound disappointment” that their graduation speaker was to be internationally renowned social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In a Statement on All-University Commencement, the committee asked the administration to “reconsider.”

“The pivot from figures of universal inspiration,” NYU students complained, “to an individual who has been accused of making homophobic remarks in a class and public misconceptions about transgender identity, and has promoted disturbing rhetoric around antiracism, social justice, and diversity, equity and inclusion, claiming that the abolition of DEI may be the only way out of the Leftist ideological capture of American campuses, is deeply unsettling and clearly undermines the University's stated values.”

Those accusations are deeply mistaken and profoundly misleading. The one accurate claim is that he did acknowledge that the abolition of DEI might be the only way for academia to correct course. So Haidt is clearly not an inspiring choice for students who are attached to that destructive paradigm.

But Haidt is nothing if not a figure of inspiration for parents, writers, and budding social scientists. He has produced four bestsellers, of which three, including The Coddling of the American Mind, are global blockbusters. His latest, The Anxious Generation, has spent over a year on international bestseller lists, leading to not only parental and community efforts, but real policy changes to protect the mental health of children and adolescents.

This includes an initiative at NYU called “IRL” (In Real Life). As a result of Haidt’s work, designated spaces on campus are device-free to encourage face-to-face interaction and time away from the distractions of social media. The student statement, however, unironically asks whether the choice of Haidt was “yet another effort to push the IRL narrative.” At elite universities, where everything is “narrative,” even efforts to encourage friendships and immersive real life experiences can only be interpreted as an effort to push a narrative.

“Many students have reported feelings of disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment” as well as “being misunderstood,” the statement reads. Awkward phrasing aside, at least these students didn’t insist that Haidt’s selection was “harmful.” When I worked with Greg Lukianoff and Haidt on The Coddling of the American Mind, attempts to disinvite and deplatform speakers were often framed as efforts to protect vulnerable students from the “harm” of speakers’ words — or even the speaker’s mere presence.

Psychologists at UCLA, Harvard, and Ohio State have found that believing words can harm is associated with worse mental health: more anxiety and depression, less resilience, and worse emotion regulation. And when students see words as violence, they can become willing to endorse actual violence in response to speech — or even to prevent it.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Gen Z is roughly 10 times more accepting of using violence to prevent speech than Baby Boomers, and more than 25 times more than the Silent Generation. Roughly 43% of Gen Z survey participants refused to endorse the view that violence against speakers is never acceptable.

Protesting commencement speakers is hardly new. When I graduated from Barnard College in 1990, students at Wellesley College were “outraged” by the choice of their commencement speaker, Barbara Bush, because she wasn’t a career woman.

But when students of past generations tried to school their elders, their elders schooled them right back. Psychiatrist and author Jean Baker Miller called those students’ objections “simplistic.” Wellesley alumnae quipped that the class of 1990 had apparently not learned the school’s Latin motto: “non ministrari, sed ministrare,” not to be served, but to serve.

​And the pushback wasn’t partisan. Feminist Pat Schroeder offered, “I have nothing but respect for Barbara Bush.... Being a wife and mother is not a protestable offense. After all, if it weren't for mothers, there would be no students at Wellesley.” Mrs. Bush, always the soul of discretion, said simply, “They're 21 years old and they're looking at life from that perspective.”

Gen Z has been less fortunate. Instead of university administrators and other leaders asserting their authority, they have increasingly appeased and indulged students’ emotional instability, arrogance, and even rule-breaking — including with respect to disruptions, harassment, threats, mobbings reminiscent of Maoist struggle-sessions, and even violence. This is not beneficial for anyone, including those students who violate the boundaries of protected free expression.

Both Jonathan Haidt and Barbara Bush delivered their keynote addresses. Mrs. Bush’s is now included in NPR’s list of best commencement speeches of all time:

“As important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be,” she said, “you are a human being first. And those human connections—with spouses, with children, with friends—are the most important investments you will ever make.”

That advice has never been more true or more necessary. And it’s not so different from the message NYU graduates heard from Haidt on Thursday. “Call someone you love just to say hi,” he told them, “Invite someone to dinner. Say yes when someone invites you. Be the one who makes things happen in the real world.” Hopefully, the graduating class learned something from him.

We may have witnessed the most MS NOW moment of all time.

On Monday [May 18 2026], MS NOW host Katy Tur moderated a panel in which she discussed recent, supposedly controversial comments by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La.

“What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government, they come from you, our Creator and heavenly father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?” she asked incredulously.

I’m just going to pause here and quote from this obscure line in the Declaration of Independence. And by obscure, I mean one of the most famous lines in the English language.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal… ” maybe Tur never got past that part, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

One of Tur’s guests, Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, actually managed to answer her question with a straight face but with an acknowledgement that her audience may remarkably not be familiar with the concept of God-given rights.

“You know, I think that idea is not wholly uncommon, the idea that we sort of have unalienable rights that come from God can be read in a fairly benign way,” Coppins responded. “Which is basically that we have innate human rights, that our constitution and our government, our democratic government, are meant to codify. Right. That idea is not totally abnormal.”

Unfortunately, it’s not as universal as it once was.

Johnson weighed in on Tur’s comments, saying in an interview with Townhall Editor Larry O’Connor that it was “stunning” she didn’t know the concept of God-given rights was in the declaration.

The speaker of the House said that it was incredible that “someone who is in the mainstream media, on TV every night espousing her views … does not understand the birth document of the country.”

It is stunning, but it is not surprising in my mind.

There is now a significant bubble of America’s college-educated elites who’ve somehow spent decades speaking in the public arena who’ve never come across an idea that was once wholly elementary.

It is stunning, but it is not surprising in my mind.

There is now a significant bubble of America’s college-educated elites who’ve somehow spent decades speaking in the public arena who’ve never come across an idea that was once wholly elementary.

They’ve absorbed completely the idea that rights surely come from government to the point that they don’t even know how wildly out of step that notion is with the entire American political project.

It’s not hard to see why there is such a wide philosophical chasm in this country, why politics now seem so existential.

We aren’t just battling over a few strongly held ideas. At this point, we aren’t even speaking the same political language.

Of course, the concept of God-given rights was essential to the Founders’ justification for the American Revolution. The Framers designed our government not so that it would give rights, but so that it could protect them as best as could be done in the imperfect world we live in.

Members of our most prestigious media institutions apparently don’t even know that their constitutionally protected right to free speech comes from the idea that it is inalienable, endowed by our Creator.

But if the standard for free speech is simply a matter of who has the most governmental or institutional power then I find it doubtful that anyone will have freedom of any kind at the end of our country’s next 250 years of existence, or that we’ll even have a country.

The folks at MS NOW don’t seem to grasp this, and it’s not looking promising that they ever will.

Support School Board Trustees

Who Protect Children and Promote Liberty

California Chapters of Moms for Liberty Endorse Sonja Shaw 

for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Teacher Unions Are Destroying America

Teachers unions are once again threatening to strike...and it could impact your child’s school next. But how much do parents really understand about what’s driving these decisions?

In this classic episode of Parent Alert, host Jill Simonian sits down with teacher and education advocate Rebecca Friedrichs to break down the growing influence of teachers unions, and why so many people are asking: what are these unions really fighting for?

As school districts like LAUSD face potential strikes, this conversation is more relevant than ever.

An important interview with educator Rebecca Friedrichs

James Monroe: The Connective Tissue of the Founders

Note that tensions had always existed between those advocating for creation of a UNITED States (the Federalists) and those looking to form a United STATES (the Anti-Federalists). The question of how the executive branch would operate and the extent to which the states would remain autonomous and independent in their authority (applying the right to self-administration to all significant internal matters, without unwanted interference by a centralized federal government), this was hotly debated during the Convention.

During the battle, Lieutenant Monroe took a musket ball to his left shoulder. It could not be easily removed, and he lived with it for the rest of his life.

I leave you with our docent's summary of the relationship between the Founding Fathers:

• If you want to know what to do, talk to Jefferson.

• If you want to know how to do it, talk to Madison.

• If you want to get it done, talk to Monroe.

Sidebar: From ‘the United States are’ to ‘the United States is’

How did the United States change from a plural entity—these United States—to a singular one? What does that linguistic shift tell us about power and authority? Melissa M. Lee, the Klein Family Presidential Assistant Professor of Political Science investigates such questions in “From Pluribus to Unum? The Civil War and Imagined Sovereignty in 19th Century America,” a new paper co-authored with Nan Zhang of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research and Tilmann Herchenröder of the University of Oxford. 

In the case of the United States, this question was ultimately settled with a bloody civil war, Lee says. The Union’s victory in 1865 reinforced the federal government’s claim to sovereign authority over the individual states, but according to Lee’s research, this idea was more quickly and readily adopted in the North and spread more slowly the South, as seen through the plural usage of “the United States are,” as opposed to the Northern convention of “the United States is.”

Moms for Liberty Santa Clara Works with 917 Society

Getting Constitutions into the hands of every 8^th grader

Midterms are Fast Approaching. Your Vote Is Vitally Important

America Celebrates Its 250^th Birthday

1776-2026

Rooting Out Pornographic Materials In School Libraries

Ongoing Education and Updates:

A regularly updated blog is maintained featuring the latest developments related to sexually explicit materials in schools. In addition, we offer training webinars to educate, empower, and connect individuals engaged in this important work.

At every level focus remains the same, namely to provide clear, practical tools that lead to meaningful results and protect the hearts and minds of our children.

Randi Weingarten's $4 Trillion Weapon

In the video, Weingarten says this:

“There’s two times for retailers that are really big times for them. One is Christmas and the other is back to school. So first, using our pension funds, but also using ourselves as consumers… to try to actually get these corporations or the moneyed interests, the capital interests in the country to be far more aligned with workers.”

That is the strategy, in her own words: using our pension funds. What follows is what that has actually meant.

Off The Press  @OffThePress1            

A California school district spent $300,000 to partner with an LGBTQ+ center that provides “affirming programs, resources, and community care” to minors ages 12 and up. 

Pomona Unified School District in Pomona, California, signed a memorandum of understanding for the 2024-2025 school year for a “mentoring program” with Pomona Valley Pride. 

Under the memorandum obtained by the Daily Signal, the pride center was to provide “academic support, mentoring, and tutoring services to all students in middle and high school who identify themselves LGBTQ+ and their families to address their unique needs and challenges.”

The Department of Education is slashing federal regulations that could hinder states from improving their schools, the administration’s latest move in its dismantling of the agency and its effort to return education policy to the states.

The Education Department has approved Education Flexibility applications for the states of Florida and Illinois, meaning they now can waive statutory or regulatory requirements for school districts without first having to submit those waivers to the federal government for review and approval.

A total of 18 states have now opted into the program that seeks to give state and local education departments more authority over efforts to reform schools.

Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, called this a “bold step forward in strengthening states’ ability to fully harness the flexibilities already at their fingertips in support of better serving students, families, educators, and communities.”

“With a record 18 states now taking advantage of Ed-Flex authority, we urge state leaders to build on this momentum by adopting forward‑leaning strategies that move decision-making closer to the classroom and elevate the power of local leadership,” she said.

Become a Part of the Frontlines...

* The ability to act fearlessly as a joyful warrior, someone who is willing to stand on solid principles and fight for what is right, especially when faced with a hostile environment.

Interested in learning more? Please reach out to our chapter's membership coordinator Kingslee.

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