The Wake Up Placer (WUP) team is partnering with a group of local leaders to share that Placer County teachers, and other LGBTQ allies, are introducing transgender education themes into schools tailored to kindergartners through 8th grade kids.
The goal of this article is to share books that are in the Roseville City School District. The WUP team will be working Satto publish reviews of other districts this summer.
The Roseville City School District (RCSD) has ~20 schools, that teach kindergarteners through Middle School kids- basically from 5 years old to 13 years old.
The RCSD has ~11,000 students and a 21 to 1 student to teacher ratio. They have about 550 teachers.
More information about the district can be found here:
National Center for Educational Statistics https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?ID2=0633600&details=
Teachers in California pay ~$750 a year in dues to the California Teacher’s Association. That suggests that the California Teacher’s Union collects ~$400,000 a year from just the teachers in the Roseville City School District.
Link to CTA dues: https://www.cta.org/document/membership-dues-2023-24
The California Teachers Union is rumored to be spending $4,000,000 to change school boards, and possibly city council boards, in Placer County during the 2024 election cycle (later this year). This number represents about 2X what was spent in all Placer County city, and county level elections during the last Presidential election cycle in 2020.
Over the last two years Placer County has seen teachers and their allies have attacked local school boards for seeking to keep parents informed of any actions that a school staff takes with their student concerning the students gender.
Dry Creek Teacher threatens Board- Rumble video shares an exemple.
Local, regional, and national media has acted as an ally and attacked school board members- Wake Up Placer shares an over of the attacks.
We have also seen teachers attack people who disagree with discussing the idea of gender fluidity with elementary school students. One local example.
A goal of their efforts has been to create and support policies that allow teachers to withhold information from a child's parents. It appears their goal is to have the final say in conversations about gender issues with any child that attends their school.
One example of the seriousness of the teachers’, and allies’, effort can be seen in Erin Friday’s story and how her daughter was treated by their public school.
Megan Kelly interview of Erin Friday here: https://www.megynkelly.com/2024/04/29/erin-friday-protect-kids-california-act/
While the above issues share the frame of the challenge presented by Placer County Teachers, and their LGBTQ allies, a concern that needs to be added to the discussion is the idea that there are a significant amount of books that share the idea of gender fluidity with K-8 kids in Placer County Public School libraires.
This article shares reviews of a few of the books available in the Roseville City School District libraries that teach children from kindergarten through 8th grade that they can change their gender, primarily by just feeling they are another gender. Some of the books suggest that spirits can share a child's true gender with them.
The Light Bulb Initiative partnered with Wake Up Placer and has created the following four videos that share books that are in the Roseville City School District’s school libraries.
Flor fights Back: Story about a young transgender black girl and how she fights to support gay protesters at the Stonewall Riots
This is our Rainbow: A set of short stories about all members of the LGBTQ community
Grandad’s pride: A young girl works with her ‘step’ granddad after his husband passes to create a pride parade in their city. Book is written for ages 4 and up shares pictures of men in leather outfits and shares slogans like ‘trans kids are magical”.
https://rumble.com/v4xekvk-episode-62-my-grandads-pride.html
Love Letters to Joy: Story shares the challenges of an autistic child who is on a path to being a valedictorian but is having challenges dealing with her pan sexual nature so she seeks help from her high school paper’s anonymous love columnist.
https://rumble.com/v4wkbyc-love-letters-to-joy.html
Lastly- the Light Bulb Initiative did a high level review of the books that we have been able to collect from the Roseville City School District and the Dry Creek Joint Union Elementary School District.
https://rumble.com/v4vl3x5-episode-61-books-in-placer-county-school-districts.html
To ensure that parents, and our community, understand the level of effort that teachers and their allies are providing to this effort, Wake up Placer is working with groups to collect and share communications in a transparent way.
Groups include:
The Light Bulb Initiative: Please check them out – you can see all their social media locations here:
https://linkfly.to/thelightbulbinitiative
Moms for Liberty: Placer County Chapter: Please review their Facebook page and reach out to them if you are interested in their work.
Wake Up Placer (WUP) is working to educate the community on many issues. In addition to learning about the books that are in public school libraries another issue is that the community needs to know about is that many/most of the current set of California policies and laws that remove parents rights have been blocked by Federal laws and Federal Courts. The below WUP article reviews Placer County teachers’ actions and the outcome of a challenge, in Federal Court, to California laws that remove parental rights.
If you would like to research your school please check out Destiny Discover- Follett School Library search tool. Its easy to use and with it you can search any K-12 public schools library in the US.
https://www.gofollett.com/aasp/ui/pick/
Final thoughts:
Its important to share that the work that WUP did WAS not exhaustive.
WUP learned during our search that many times books sharing the idea that kids could change gender were not assigned to logical topics within the library’s catalog system. Many books were cataloged under themes like history or science.
WUP believes that many parents do not understand that most public school teachers support sharing these ideas with their children. WUP is also concerned that parents do not feel safe having a conversation about many issues with their child's teacher. Nothing can happen on any issue until parents talk with their child's teachers.
Over the last year, WUP staff attended many school board meetings: school boards of Auburn, Lincoln, Rocklin, and Roseville public schools. By attending these meetings, WUP found significant teacher support, in every district, for the idea that kids can change gender and that if a student chooses to change gender, the teacher is responsible for supporting the student by not sharing that information with that child’s parent.
A generic example of the teachers’ position taken from a Dry Creek Joint Elementary School District meeting shares, in a teachers own words, that the School Board should not make her choose between her job and supporting elementary school students that think they were miss gendered.
Wake Up Placer’s Rumble has many more video clips that share public school teachers openly supporting the idea that school kids can change their gender.
What this, and many teachers fail to share, is that current Federal Law does not support California’s actions on this issue. Federal Law, as upheld in the Escondido school district injunction, should be shared by the media but its has not been. You can read the Federal Court injunction here:
https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/casdce/3:2023cv00768/757886/42/0.pdf
The Thomas Moore Society is the legal team that plead the case and their adroit comments can be read here:
The above legal information provides a framework for the issues around both parents’ rights and the books that the WUP team has found in the Roseville City School District. The framework is formed because if parents dont have a right to know if a teacher is talking with their child about changing their child’s gender, books like these cannot be discussed.
Many people think these books are designed to share topics that children are not ready to discuss. Its clear from this parent, who is also a school counselor, who shares her feelings that elementary school kids’ “coming out process is sacred and should be protected” that parents’ must talk with more than just your school district board. Teachers, your kid’s teacher, is probably pushing children in your school to think about changing their gender. Until we ask teachers why-and perhaps ask them to stop- things will not change.
To make a change, teachers and school superintendents ALONG with the Schools board should be contacted.
For the Roseville City School District, we offer that contacting the following people is VITAL, They can be contacted via a phone call or via their email address.
REMEMBER: When you communicate to be FIRM but PEACEFUL and POLITE
Roseville Teachers Association: President; Julie Ferguson jferguson@rcsdk8.org
Roseville City School District, Superintendent: Derk Garcia: DGarcia@rcsdk8.org
FOUR Roseville City School District Board Members have not made public statements about these books or the right of a parents to know about any conversation a school employee may have about this topic with their child.
Please reach out and ask them to make a clear statement about the value they see in these books and ask them to clearly share if they think that teachers should be able to talk with ANY student about these issues and withhold that discussion from that child’s parents.
(REMEMBER: be FIRM but Peaceful and Nice)
President: Alisa Fong afong@rcsdk8.org
Clerk: Rob Baquera:rbaquera@rcsdk8.org
Board member: Julie Constant: jconstant@rcsdk8.org
Board member: Megan Krafka: mkrafka@rcsdk8.org
One Board member, Mr. Johnothan Zackerson is looking to have open, public discussions on this issue.
Please reach out to him:
Board member: Johnathan Zachreson: jzachreson@rcsdk8.org