Jessica Konen, a mom in California, won a $100,000 settlement from Spreckels Union School District, after pushing back against their progressive agenda. Konen became aware that her child’s middle school, Buena Vista Middle School, had tried to socially transition her 11-year-old, Alicia, without her knowledge or consent. She eventually sued and succeeded.
Hopefully, this school district’s actions, including the massive settlement, will be a double-edged sword: a warning to other school districts and their administration not to operate behind parent’s backs, and also encouragement to other parents to be involved in their children’s schools and stand firm against harmful progressive agendas.
Teachers obsessed with sexuality and equality targeted Alicia and kept her struggles with sexuality and gender a secret. At the beginning of Alicia’s sixth-grade year, a friend invited her to the school’s Equality Club, which two seventh-grade teachers -- Lois Caldeira and Kelly Baraki -- spearheaded. The teachers informed Alicia she was bisexual and then transexual.
According to the legal complaint, the teachers sought students for the Equality Club “based on comments students made to them, comments that they overheard students make to others, and their own observations of students in the classroom setting, and otherwise. Once they identified students for the club, Caldeira and Baraki would invite them to participate.” A leaked recording from a 2021 California Teachers Association conference shows these teachers zeroed in on kids who might be struggling with sex or gender online.
The secret club worked hand in hand with Spreckels Union School District’s “Parental Secrecy Policy,” that let staff legally “conceal from parents that their minor children had articulated confusion about their gender identity, evinced a desire to change their gender identity, or assumed or expressed a new gender identity, unless the student expressly authorized the parents to be informed.”
Spreckels Union would go so far as to help students “transition” socially by using different names and pronouns with the children at school but then intentionally deceive parents by not telling them this was happening nor letting the kids tell them what was happening at school. Between the Equality Club and the school’s policy, Alicia — a struggling kid already — was trapped and believed she must be struggling with her gender.
During the pandemic, Alicia began to change her mind, accepted her biological gender, and eventually went to counseling. It’s been five years since this happened and finally, Alicia and her mother have justice for what happened, thanks to the settlement.
Currently the California state Assembly is considering a number of bills that could reinforce a progressive agenda in schools and against families with traditional beliefs. Per a bill that cleared the state Senate Wednesday, California could soon require judges to consider whether a parent affirms their child’s gender identity when making custody and visitation decisions. Voting fell on party lines, with Republicans suggesting such a bill interferes too much with citizen’s everyday lives.
A judge in San Bernardino, California, has temporarily blocked a school district policy that requires parents to be notified when their child asks to be recognized by a different gender identity or pronoun than they were assigned at birth. The very policy Spreckels Union School District instituted that resulted in them paying out a $100,000 settlement and wreaked havoc on at least one child’s life.
Superior Court Judge Thomas S. Garza issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday against part of the Chino Valley Unified School District’s new policy. “The concern is, how do we safeguard these students that identify as LGBTQ?” Garza said in court. “And in my view, it’s a situation that is singling out a class of protected individuals differently than the rest of the students.”
Last month California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the school district over the policy, calling it a “forced outing policy.”
Some school districts have come to believe that policies condoning or even mandating secrecy between parents and children must exist to protect children who might have parents who disapprove of the concept of gender fluidity. That’s a presumption rooted in the belief that the state is a child’s ultimate parent, not the parent. The state or state schools have no business and no right to interfere with parental authority, provided abuse is not in the picture.
California is teetering on the edge of a progressive breakdown. They think these policies will enlighten their citizens and provide a utopia of liberalism, but in reality they will destroy the family unit, destroy trust in government, and usher in a progressive apocalypse that heralds government as God, and puts Democrat lawmakers before parents. Parents must remain vigilant, involved, and if necessary, intervene.
