-- by Jim Ruland, board member, Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance (www.fcta.org), 05/17/2015
On MAY 7, 2015, the FCPS Board voted to expand its Non-Discrimination Policy 1450 to include "Gender Identity" as a special protected group. The FCPS Board made no effort to engage parents or advise the public what this means for student or employee safety, respect of privacy, parental rights or the right to a distraction-free, education-centered environment.
Despite all the assurances of the FCPS School Board Members on Thursday, May 7th that "nothing will change" after their vote, two business days later on Monday, May 11th the School Board made public the FCPS Family Life Education (FLE) Committee Report recommending the addition of the Gender-Identity (Transgender) Agenda down to middle school students in 7th grade. And the FLE Committee reported it had been working on these changes for over one year!
The FLE working document is full of strikethroughs of text
to be transferred from FLE and into the Health curriculum, which means that
parents will not be able to "opt-out" of the new policies.
Here are some statements pulled from the recommended objectives:
Grade 7: Students will be provided definitions for sexual orientation terms heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality; and the gender identity term transgender.
Grade 8: Individual identity will also be described as having four parts -- biological gender, gender identity (includes transgender), gender role, and sexual orientation (includes heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual). The concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum will be introduced.
Grade 9: Emphasis will be placed on tolerance and nondiscrimination of all people.
Grade 10: Emphasis will be placed on an understanding that there is a broader, boundless, and fluid spectrum of sexuality that is developed throughout a lifetime. Sexual orientation and gender identity terms will be discussed with focus on appreciation for individual differences.
ACTIONS TO TAKE: IMMEDIATELY