Several dozen Midwestern teachers discussed ways to change the gender of their students without notifying parents in an online chat room this week.
About 30 teachers and administrators from states including Iowa, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio met in an online chatroom hosted by the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), an organization that has received millions of dollars in federal funding . The Daily Mail gained access to the four-hour workshop, which focused on revising various new education statutes to “heal marginalizing effects and disrupt problematic policies.”
Kimberly Martin, DEI coordinator for Royal Oaks Schools in Michigan, described her efforts to hide elements of social transition, such as a student's name change, from their parents.
“We're working with our record keeping system so that certain screens can't be seen by parents … if there's a nickname there that we're trying to hide,” Martin said.
Jennifer Haglund, a counselor at Ames Community Schools in Iowa, blasted Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for signing a law in March barring men from competing on women's sports teams and boasted about her personal LGBTQ activism.
“I know I have my own proper code of ethics, and that doesn't always line up with the law,” Haglund said.
“The stakes are very high for trans youth,” said Shea Martin, an Ohio teacher and contributor to the far-left blog Radical Teacher. “I think that requires working subversively and quietly sometimes to make sure trans kids have what they need.”
Martin also said she had worked against “laws that prohibit or limit transgender advocacy.” Martin also said that in discussions with elementary students, teachers should avoid treating “reinforced heterosexuality as the norm.”
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Gender ideology is becoming an increasingly contentious issue in the United States — a recent poll by the Institute on Public Religion found that 65% of Americans say there are only two sexes, up from 59% in 2021, with support for the gender binary on the rise across almost all demographic cohorts. Additionally, a plurality of respondents, 36%, opposed teaching transgenderism at any level in K-12 education.
Hundreds of laws have been introduced in red and purple states to limit drag sex in public, ban sexually explicit books from school libraries, prevent men from competing in girls' and women's sports, and prevent the administration of hormones to minors or body modification surgeries, among others. These laws have been labeled “anti-LGBTQ” by activist groups such as ACLU and Human Rights Campaign and from the Biden White House, fueling intense national debate.
MAP is part of the Great Lakes Equity Center and operates in 13 different states: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin. It covers over 7,000 school districts and more than 11 million students. States and localities under its jurisdiction have a wide range of positions on sex and gender issues.
According to the Daily Mail, MAP receives federal funding under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and last November received more than $8 million from the Department of Education.
