A California mother whose 11-year-old daughter had allegedly been helped to transition from female to male by school personnel accused the school district of keeping information about her child’s gender transition from her.
Aurora Regino, whose daughter attends an elementary school in the Chico Unified School District, told the school board last Wednesday that, during a meeting with her daughter and a school guidance counselor last school year, the child told the counselor she wanted her mother to know about her new identity.
California mom confronts school district after 11-year-old changed genders without her knowledge https://t.co/Havw5NKVw6
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“They ignored her request and did nothing to support her in letting me know what was going on at school,” Regino told the board just before a vote its members ultimately took to continue its existing “parental secrecy policy.”
Regino explained to the school board what was happening in her family’s life prior to her daughter’s claim she felt like a boy:
Shortly before this happened my father had recently passed away and I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My daughter was distressed and began questioning her sexuality. So, she decided to reach out to a wellness counselor at her elementary school. That day my daughter shared with her guidance counselor that she felt like a boy. The counselor immediately affirmed this new identity. From then on, the counselor continued to have one on one meetings with my daughter without my knowledge.
The working mother described the negative effects of the “parental secrecy policy” on her daughter.
“Throughout her transition, my daughter changed very quickly, was bullied, and as a result was very unhappy,” Regino said. “And because her school kept this transition a secret for me, she was on her own.”
According to the Chico Unified Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), one of its stated goals is to “help parents to bridge positive behaviors between school and home” and a summary of its 2021-2024 LCAP Outcomes includes “increased opportunities for parents/guardians to be engaged at school.”
While Regino said she wants every child to “feel safe and supported,” she stressed that “the policy currently in place at Chico Unified has been damaging” to her family:
It’s a slippery slope to allow any adult in our schools to keep secrets from parents for any reason. The actions the school board district took to immediately exclude me from supporting my daughter was very damaging to her and our family. She was very young and didn’t understand what being transgender really meant or the obstacles she would face going through a transition. The school transitioned her and left her to figure it out on her own. It seems to me the district is getting it wrong on both sides. You don’t know how to handle these very serious and sensitive situations. Because once you transitioned her, you left her to handle it all by herself, the bullying and the staff even outing her.
After Regino presented her story to the school board, its members voted, 3-2, to continue the “parental secrecy policy.”
Regino told Fox & Friends First she “wasn’t extremely surprised.”
The mother has now filed a lawsuit against the district for keeping her child’s gender identity and transition from her.
According to Regino, the policy the school board approved once again affects children from pre-K through grade 12.
“It’s incredibly damaging that they’re upholding such a crazy policy for such young children,” she said, noting that children need their parents’ guidance as they grow up.
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Doctor and Child” by Pavel Danilyuk.
