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An investigation by grassroots nonprofit Defending Education shows over 12 million students in the U.S. attend schools with policies that encourage and sometimes require teachers to keep parents in the dark about a student’s desire to change gender identity.

A Missouri public school district’s 2024 policy for transgender students, for example, claims all ages are old enough to think about gender identity, and children as young as preschool age were screened on the topic.

The North Kansas City School District document says social transitioning – which includes changing a student’s name, pronouns, clothing or gender appearance through binding or padding – are “completely reversible.”

However, parental rights nonprofit Moms for Liberty national political director and Johnson County, Kansas chapter Chair Erika Sheets can personally attest to the damage done to children from exposure to alleged gender fluidity through school curricula can only be reversed through much time and effort.

Sheets’ special-ed daughter was exposed to such gender ideology in middle school by the gender unicorn – a gender-bending cartoon figure used in some schools around the country – and struggled with feeling confused about her identity.

“Our daughter was 13 and going through puberty and terrified, terrified of what was happening in her body, terrified of growing up and having to become an adult,” she told The Lion. “She thought this was her way out – ‘I don’t have to grow up and be an adult, I can just create a new character for myself.’”

Sheets worked to understand what her daughter was struggling with, even letting her go by a different name for a time, but her daughter still experienced “the worst year of her life.”

“It took two years to unwind this, because at the beginning of it we didn’t understand that this was a whole thing,” Sheets said about gender identity. “We didn’t understand that the school was presenting this, we didn’t understand that she had access to YouTube influencers that would have these videos that basically say, ‘If you feel bad, you might be a boy stuck in a girl’s body.’”

Gender ideology reaches beyond sex education in schools and is less obviously woven into math, science and ELA curricula, Sheets explained.

“Until something really blows up in your face, you may not know that it’s happening.”

Laws in many states – as well as Title IX and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) – protect a parent’s right to direct the upbringing of their children, including exposure to and encouragement of transgenderism. But there aren’t always practical ways to enforce them. Sheets says the only way to make a school district pay attention and enforce these rules is to sue them, but most parents lack the time and resources needed to successfully do that.

At the end of last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a parents’ rights case in California. The ruling declared parents have the right to information about their child’s gender identity expressed in school, and teachers have to give parents accurate details about the subject.

The case is still pending due to an appeal, but as of two weeks ago the parents and children involved as plaintiffs in the case are currently protected from unsolicited school transgender practices.

Still, over 600 schools in California alone have guidelines encouraging school personnel to withhold information about a child’s gender identity and gender dysphoria from parents, according to Defending Education.

Defending Ed’s 2023 investigation of secret transitioning by schools was updated only this past week.

One of the families suing the state’s department of education has a daughter who attempted suicide in eighth grade and had transitioned to be known as a boy in school the prior year without the family knowing. The parents learned about their daughter’s gender dysphoria from a doctor while she was hospitalized from the incident, not from the school.

The parents moved their daughter to a new school, and having faith-based objections to transgenderism asked her new teachers not to call her by a male name or use male pronouns. Teachers at the school disregarded the parents’ wishes and continued to uphold the girl’s male identity under obligation of California law.

“Under Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership, school personnel have even bragged about facilitating ‘gender transitions,’ and shared strategies to target minors and conceal information about children from their own families,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote about the case.

The argument has become a tug-of-war over who should have more authority in how a child is raised – parents or schools.

“At the heart of this case is a question Christians already know the answer to but that the law is still working out: Who has the primary responsibility – before God and under the law – to care for children and make decisions about their well-being?” The Gospel Coalition wrote about California.

“Children do not belong to the State – they belong to families,” McMahon continued.

“Schools have to understand that they are not the primary decision maker for a child and they shouldn’t be; no one is going to love a child more than their parents,” Sheets said.

Even when a child’s home life is suspected to be unsafe, institutions such as Child Protective Services are primarily responsible for investigating, not the school.