Note: The following is an excerpt from a Daily Wire article on how the teachers’ unions are ensuring gender expression ideology is being forced on schools.

America’s largest teachers union, The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), “coached its members on how to inject gender identity politics into classroom teaching,” said the report published by the Defense of Freedom Institute on Wednesday, August 22nd.

The report describes the ATF’s Together Educating America’s Children (TEACH) conference in July. Two of the sessions at the conference were titled “Affirming LGBTQIA+ Identities in and out of the Classroom” and “The TGNCNB [transgender, gender non-conforming, nonbinary] Inclusive School and Classroom,” the report said.

“Both session descriptions offered attendees ideas and action items to take back to their schools,” reads the report. “The unions’ mission is clear: train teachers to affirm every gender identity that conflicts with a student’s sex, ignore basic biological facts, hide the training from parents, and shape school policies to force others to do the same.”

The AFT, along with the nation’s second-largest union, the National Education Association (NEA), are both wholly committed to pushing radical gender ideology in schools, the report says.

Just before the union’s July conference, the ATF also adopted an LGBT resolution that promotes “age-appropriate and inclusive policies” on trans-identifying students sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with the opposite sex.

The ATF’s resolution also commits the union to work with LGBT activist groups, one of which has a model policy advising school districts to use a student’s new pronouns without notifying parents.

Both unions have “vehemently” opposed legislation meant to protect students from sexually graphic content and gender ideology.

The NEA also issued guidance last month on how to place “inclusive symbols” in classrooms and encouraged teachers to buck policies banning Pride flags and Black Lives Matter symbols.

The unions see the parental rights movement as “an existential threat to their power over public education,” the Defense of Freedom Institute’s report says.

“The average rank and file teacher got into that field because they care about learning and they care about students,” said one of the report’s authors, Angela Morabito.

“And it is not lost on them that teachers unions are actively working against those goals … The teachers unions are very clearly on the wrong side of not just what’s good for students and families, but what’s good for their own membership,” Morabito told Crisis in the classroom.

The vast majority of parents support laws that would require parental consent for a school to support a child to change their gender identity, including pronoun use, according to a national poll conducted in March.

Where does FCPS stand on this?

Three of the newly elected board members – Dean Rose, Rae Gallagher, and Karen Yoho – align with the union’s thinking. Only Nancy Allen does not. As a group, six of the seven board members are on record stating they support the policies on gender that are in place today and that align with the union’s positions.  

Read the full Daily Wire article here.