Teachers and staff from Texas to Florida are blowing the whistle on school districts training them to keep a children’s transgender identity a secret from parents.

In Texas, past and present teachers at Conroe Independent School District (ISD) said they were told by training staff to affirm a student’s gender identity by using preferred pronouns and names. They also were instructed to withhold that information from parents.

Rena Beadle, an intermediate school teacher, said parents must understand that districts tell teachers to keep a child’s transgender identity a secret—even in conservative states like Texas. She knew it could put her job at risk to speak out.

But “I want our children protected,” she said.

Two other teachers in the district, who quit after the fall 2021 training, corroborated Beadle’s account.

In Florida, a school counselor who didn’t wish to be named said counselors have been told to affirm a student’s transgender identity. And they’re told not to “out” trans students to their parents.

The American School Counselor Association Code of Ethics takes the position that telling parents about a student’s transgender identity is unethical, the counselor told The Epoch Times.

Secrecy surrounding a student’s gender transition has prompted Texas state Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican, to plan legislation for a Parent Bill of Rights during the 2023 Texas legislative session. It would be modeled on Florida’s law.

Toth took the unusual step of publicly slamming the Conroe ISD board of trustees on parental rights issues—which prompted a strong denial from the school board president, who’s also a Republican.

In a press release issued on Oct. 18, Toth accused trustees in one of the most conservative areas in Texas of not being transparent with parents on transgender issues.

He also blasted them for allowing Critical Race Theory (CRT) into schools and for having school library books with inappropriate content, such as illustrations of two men kissing on a bed.

Toth said teachers should be required to alert parents when students question their gender, not help youngsters hide their uncertainty.

“At no time have they reversed their policy,” Toth told The Epoch Times. “You don’t have the right to withhold this information from Texas parents.”

Skeeter Hubert, Conroe ISD school board president, told The Epoch Times that Toth’s accusations were false.

He said the district’s policy is to alert parents through a counselor if a child wants to change genders. Trustees reject CRT,  he said.

And while the board may not like the content of the library books, they must follow the law on what’s permissible in school libraries or risk lawsuits.

“We are not woke,” Hubert said.

Hubert acknowledged an issue in 2021 concerning a training slide presented by a counselor. The slide suggested keeping a child’s transgender identity from parents. The counselor and the administration were retrained on how to handle a situation like that, he said.

“That was wrong,” he said. “We want parents to know.”

Sarah Blakelock, communications director for Conroe ISD, added via email the incident was merely a misunderstanding.

“Several employees, who no longer work in the district, were confused about a presentation made at a campus over a year ago,” she said.

Beadle, a Christian mother of five sons, said she noticed less talk about LGBT issues this school year after Toth got involved.

The focus started to shift toward LGBT activism in 2020, she said. That’s when the morning announcements featured gay actor Neil Patrick Harris, star of Doogie Howser, M.D., for his accomplishments as a member of the LGBT community.

Beadle recalled that children at her school—which serves 5th and 6th Graders—started asking questions and wanted to start an LGBT club. Students began conversations with her on gay and transgender issues.

She felt those topics needed to be addressed by parents, instead of teachers.

“I would always say, ‘hey, what do your parents feel?’”

Keeping Secrets

Then during the fall 2021 training, teachers were told to affirm a child’s transgender identity, but withhold that information from parents.

“That’s when we were told on a Zoom meeting that if George wanted to be called Susie, we had to call him Susie. However, we could not tell George’s parents anything about it, nor could we address him as Susie, if we called them,” she said.

Students had privacy rights, teachers were told in the training, and they should address the child by his or her birth name when talking to parents.

The idea of concealing a critical piece of information from parents on an issue that could have lifelong consequences for children hit Beadle like a gut punch, she said.

“I was so stunned. I couldn’t sleep. There’s no way I, as a mother, would want something like that kept from me.”

She shared her concerns with an administrator, who told her the school checked with the district about the training and was told it was correct.

Her conscience wouldn’t let her follow that directive, Beadle told her boss. Thankfully, no one gave her grief about her decision, she said.

But the activity concerning gender continued to pop up. At the end of the 2021-2022 school year, a survey was given to children, asking about their preferred pronouns, she said.

“It just keeps growing if nobody says anything. The teachers can be really morally upright people, but they’re being told what to do. And they’re afraid to say ‘no.’”

Around May, the school superintendent announced at a board meeting that Title IX did not say gender information had to be kept private from parents, Beadle said.

“What’s happening is parents are starting to go to the school board meetings,” she said. “And they’re starting to stand up. And they’re saying enough is enough.”

Teachers Diana Martinez and David Hosler, who also taught 5th and 6th Grades at Conroe ISD, corroborated Beadle’s account of the training.

As a mother of a pre-teen, Martinez was tormented and heartbroken, she said, at the prospect of not telling parents critical information about their children.

“What if my child is going through these concerns and needs help, and I’m not being told?” she mused. “So that, to me, was my breaking point.”

As an ex-military man, Hosler knew that institutions followed the rules. So he emailed the counselor, asking to see the school’s policy on withholding information from parents about their children’s gender identity.

After several emails, Hosler eventually was told, simply, that the district doesn’t discriminate based on race, color, sex, and other protected classes, referring to Title VI, Title VII, and Title IX laws.

Both teachers said they eventually had to deal with students who identified as transgender.

A 6th Grade girl in one of Martinez’s classes cut her hair and said she wanted to go by a male name. Martinez told the student she would need to inform her parents. But the student knew the school policy and told her she was supposed to keep it a secret from her parents.

The girl’s mother noticed changes in her daughter at home and repeatedly called Martinez concerned.

In the end, Martinez told the mother her daughter was questioning her sexuality, and teachers had been told not to talk to parents about it. She told the parent she would have to contact the administration directly to further the conversation.

The parent came to school the next day and withdrew her daughter, Martinez said. After the incident, administrators visited her classroom more frequently, she said. She decided to quit teaching in December 2021 but finished out the school year.

Hosler faced a similar situation with a young girl who wanted to be a boy.

“I told her, ‘Hey, listen, you can cut your hair, you can change your clothes and all these things. But on the inside, you’re still a girl,” he recalled.

That seemed to satisfy the little girl. She confessed that her mother had told her the same thing.

“In classic child-like fashion, she said, ‘OK, Coach, I gotta go draw a picture now,’ and she skips off,” he recalled.

Toth said there is a concerted effort to push schools to accept the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX as law.

Biden’s new regulation changed the Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination based on sex to sexual orientation and gender identity.

The current Title IX regulation does not address the rights of transgender students.

Part of the problem lies with the trustees, who don’t question what they’re told, Toth said.

Training Pushed on Districts

Julie Pickren, a former school board trustee for Alvin ISD and a candidate for Texas State Board of Education District 7, agreed that training was being pushed upon school districts.

She told The Epoch Times said she received information that two other Texas districts in the Houston area offered training earlier this year advising teachers and staff to hide a child’s gender identity from parents.

“Parents are the primary decision-makers for their children,” Pickren said. “There is no legal or ethical justification for the government to make life-changing health care decisions for our children.”

Counselors face similar predicaments with transgender students, the Florida counselor said.

According to the American School Counselor Association Code of Ethics, there’s no age exception, meaning counselors can’t tell parents about a child’s gender confusion at any grade level, including elementary school children.

The counselor, a Christian who works in the Palm Beach, Florida area, said he thought teaching in a mainly conservative area would insulate him from the issue.

But after attending a counselor training in 2018 presented by Equality Florida, an LGBT rights organization hired by school districts, he realized there was no escaping the issue.

Counselors were told students had a legal right to go by different pronouns, and parents didn’t have to agree or know. Trainers said it was important not to tell parents, because it could put a student in an “unsafe situation,” he recalled.

Transgender Support Plan

They were introduced to a seven-page transgender support plan, which directs counselors to fill out a form with students who want to change their gender and send it to all their teachers with their new names and pronouns.

The Florida counselor said he began researching these support plans and found them being used nationwide.

It was no surprise to see them in San Diego Unified School District and Stockton Unified School District in California, or Chicago Public Schools. But he also found them in the Clark County School District in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Las Vegas, Nevada, schools.

The counselor said schools that use these policies are putting staff in an impossible position.

“My biggest issue is that we were cutting the parents out,” he said. “We were forcing staff, kind of against their will, to cut parents out and participate in this.”

Like the teachers in Texas, he faced the issue when a girl came to him and wanted to change genders.

The girl also had a long history of mental health issues, he said, so he notified his school administrators. When district administrators got involved, they contacted Equality Florida for help dealing with the student.

“Instead of calling the parent, you have people calling an LGBT activist organization to try to solve the problem for them,” he said. “It’s pretty crazy.”

Ultimately, he was told to handle the student’s request. And teachers at the school refused to call the child’s parents out of fear they would say the wrong thing and get sued, he said.

“This started happening around the state,” he said.

Lawmakers in the Republican-led Florida Legislature got word of the trend and started working on parental rights legislation that passed in 2021.

“So now it’s illegal, which I’m very thankful for,” he said.

Jackson Elliott contributed to this story