Morning Wire XX
[0] A school district in Los Angeles County has become engulfed in controversy over sexual content in the curriculum and LGBT policies, which parents say have no place in their kids' schools.
[1] The controversy hit fever pitch when parents clashed with Antifa activists over the LGBT policies in June.
[2] In this episode of Morning Wire, we do a deep dive into the controversy at one school district and unpack how previously non -political parents are becoming activated over concerns about pervasive, sexual.
[3] content in their children's schools.
[4] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[5] It's July 9th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
[6] Joining us to discuss is Daily Wire Reporter Amanda Prestige Acommo.
[7] So Amanda, over the past few years, school board meetings have become increasingly contentious.
[8] The trend largely began with discontent over COVID policies, but in recent months, the major wedge issue has become transgender -related curriculum and policies, as well as transparency in general about what's being taught, especially regarding sexual content.
[9] So to start, tell us what happened at Glendale Unified.
[10] Hey, Georgia.
[11] Yeah, well, this tracks at Glendale, too.
[12] I spoke to some parents about their experiences within the district, and I was told they started to get more insight into what was being taught to their children during COVID through online learning.
[13] That's when questions were being asked, and parents said they noticed a real lack of transparency.
[14] This was the case for a Glendale parent named Irvin, who has two middle school students in the district.
[15] I'm not a political guy in any way, just a regular dad, but when I started seeing these things pop up locally and people are complaining about it, decided to go to a couple of school board meetings, and see what the fuss is about.
[16] And, you know, we learned quite a few things that happened.
[17] You know, this all kind of got kicked off, in my opinion, when COVID happened, and some parents discovered what was being told to the students, especially the younger ones in elementary school.
[18] Glendale, by the way, is a liberal city.
[19] Registered Democrats, nearly double Republicans in the area, which has a heavy Armenian population.
[20] And a lot of parents I spoke to, like Irvin, didn't consider themselves particularly political, but did feel compelled to speak out.
[21] According to parents, though, nothing was changed after speaking out at school board meetings.
[22] The media started to really pay attention to these issues last month when parents protested an LGBT Pride Day Assembly at Satakoi Elementary School.
[23] The school planned to teach children about, quote, LGBTQ plus identities.
[24] Some parents disagree.
[25] They say they don't want sexuality discussed at school, and many of them kept their children home on the day of the Pride Assembly.
[26] It was reported that only 40 % of the elementary students showed up to school that day.
[27] Here's Irvin again.
[28] do elementary kids need to learn about sexual orientation or who they want to have sex with?
[29] There was also a protest with more than 100 parents outside the elementary school.
[30] They held up signs enchanted things like, leave our kids alone.
[31] There's no pride in grooming and teach our kids math, science, and English.
[32] A physical fight broke out between protesters and counter -protesters, and a small pride flag placed outside an elementary classroom was reportedly burned.
[33] The flag allegedly belonged to a teacher at the school.
[34] who identifies as transgender.
[35] Here's audio from one parent who is protesting the LGBT material at the elementary school, talking about the presence of outside counter -protesters showing up.
[36] I tell them right now, you don't have a child here.
[37] You cannot say what my child should learn or not.
[38] If the parent who has a child here and comes and says, hey, I feel offended, I can talk to him, but they're here to provoke us.
[39] The Glendale parents I spoke to told me there have been issues of transparency, that have been raging for a long time.
[40] We were directed to video of a woman named Marina Vivar.
[41] She complained at a Glendale City Council meeting that her daughter, a ninth grader who was autistic and has a brain injury, was taught about gay sex in class.
[42] Bivar said she opted her daughter out of certain portions of sex education, but that was not followed by the school.
[43] My daughter was taught subjects such as scissoring, which seems to be two females who decide to have sex with each other.
[44] And the good thing is they at least taught you to use female condoms because if you don't use female condoms, then two females can get pregnant, which is not really something that can actually happen.
[45] When my daughter expressed that she should not be in these classes, she was called a bigot by her teacher and her aid.
[46] She was called intolerant.
[47] And she was also called homophobic.
[48] These are all terms that she actually didn't know until yesterday.
[49] They're not part of our vocabulary at home.
[50] And it was definitely not a setting that I wanted her to learn these terms in and especially being called out on it just because she simply expressed that due to her Christian beliefs, this goes against her morals and this goes against her beliefs.
[51] At that point, a staff member told her to look at her skin color.
[52] I was already upset at the fact that she was even in these classes, but more so I was upset about her being called out on her skin color and her being called these things.
[53] terms that obviously we see on TV every single day and a child should not be exposed to that type of language.
[54] We were not paying teachers for their opinions or to share their opinions or to push their opinions or agendas on children.
[55] Principal Benjamin Wolfe, according to reporting from the post -millennial, told Vivar that her daughter was mistaken that this incident never happened.
[56] He also told her that parents are not allowed to specifically opt out of LGBTQ plus content for their children.
[57] Though interestingly, he did say that the first form Vivar filled out was, quote, in need of updating.
[58] Then how did my daughter come home, explaining to me what scissoring was, and asking me how two females can have sex and must use protection, or else they can get pregnant?
[59] How else would my daughter come home, knowing the word transphobic?
[60] That's what I would like to know.
[61] Vivar also said that her daughter's aid in school is a woman who now identifies as a man and uses male pronouns.
[62] Her daughter didn't understand this due to her special needs.
[63] and was allegedly being sent to an office repeatedly and disciplined for messing up these preferred pronouns.
[64] Here's her daughter speaking to Glendell City Council about being punished for misgendering her teacher.
[65] I got in trouble for it because I wasn't exactly sure.
[66] I never knew what it was.
[67] My teacher said, I used the wrong pronouns.
[68] It is not what they identify us.
[69] I said, I'm not exactly sure if they had.
[70] have breath and ovaries in a vagina.
[71] And I wasn't exactly sure.
[72] I'm sure they have short hair and that's what they identify as and their pronouns.
[73] I got in trouble for it many times, either through adult or student.
[74] She was told over and over that her aid is now a man. Bivar said the school kept these incidents from.
[75] hurt and she found out weeks later.
[76] Other LGBT -related matters have also become an issue in the district.
[77] Video has resurfaced of assistant superintendent Kelly King discussing how locker rooms should be handled.
[78] At one point, she states that some of the most significant resistance has been from male teachers and coaches who don't want female students changing in front of them.
[79] We have male coaches who are horrified at the thought of having a biological girl changing clothes in front of them.
[80] You know, the stigma attached to, you know, abuse and, you know, just having a male teacher around any female student in that circumstance is just scary for them.
[81] And, you know, it's one thing for me to keep saying, it's not a girl, it's not a girl, it's not a girl, it's arrive, you know, until they experience it and realize, oh, I only have boys in the locker room.
[82] Then that helps.
[83] Now, it's interesting to note, this video is now about six years old.
[84] Is this still the district's policy?
[85] Yes, it is.
[86] The district superintendent confirmed that last month.
[87] She claimed the district is merely following California law.
[88] And by the way, King is still assistant superintendent at the district, and when I asked her about the video, I was directed to a general statement from the district that said there is, quote, disinformation circulating about LGBTQIA plus curriculum, sex education, and the support of transgender and gender nonconforming youth.
[89] Now, this wasn't the only resurface video to gain parents' attention.
[90] A middle school teacher from the Glendale District Issues Conference.
[91] She directs other teachers about how they can start a gay, straight alliance club.
[92] This is also known as a gender sexuality alliance club or a GSA.
[93] During the presentation, Rosemont Middle School English teacher Lisa Avery described starting a GSA without permission from the school principal, who told Avery that the children were too young for such a club.
[94] So by the time school started again in the fall, we were done asking for permission.
[95] We went to our administration said, by the way, we're starting a GSA, just so you know, this is what's happening.
[96] So we couldn't ask for permission.
[97] We had to just say that that was what was happening.
[98] Avery also described how her husband, who was then the school's mental health counselor, used colorful language with the principal when they were receiving pushback about the GSA.
[99] So right before we wanted to take our club public, she wanted to pull it out and be like, nope, we can't do it.
[100] She totally got cold feet.
[101] And my husband had a little conversation with her in the parking lot where he used some really choice four -letter words and basically said to her, these are the kids on campus that are looked down on by everyone else.
[102] Are you willing to do that too?
[103] And we're not going to tell them.
[104] So if you want to make the club stop, you can show up to our next meeting and you can tell them yourself.
[105] One of the most notorious portions of the presentation, though, came when Avery said that she, quote, poached the school's most unstable children for the GSA.
[106] Avery's husband's work as the school's mental health counselor was seemingly exploited here.
[107] Keep in mind, middle schoolers are typically just 11 to 14 years old, and it seems parents weren't talked to at all during this process.
[108] Our leaders were unreliable.
[109] Remember, we had poached them from the counseling office, right?
[110] They were not the most emotionally stable students on campus.
[111] Actually, they were the least emotionally stable students on campus, right?
[112] Avery also boasted about these young students coming to the Gender Sexuality Alliance Club to find an escape from their parents' values.
[113] And some students even called her mom.
[114] You will find you need to counsel students.
[115] Like in my example, with a girl who sat in my classroom crying, right?
[116] That was not an isolated incident.
[117] I have a fundamentally different relationship to my students now that I run a GSA than I did five years ago.
[118] Right?
[119] Some of them call me mom, right?
[120] So it sounds like there were a variety of scandals and concerns that ultimately led to this parent protest on June 6th.
[121] when things really seemed to come to a head.
[122] Tell us what happened then.
[123] Yeah, that's right.
[124] So this happened days after that first protest we mentioned at the top of the segment, and it was much larger.
[125] There were reportedly 500 people outside the board meeting on June 6th.
[126] Here's some audio from these protesters captured by a local Fox affiliate.
[127] They need to stop asking little children what they sexually identify as.
[128] Anybody could come to the principal and say, you know what, I'm transgender and walk in the girls' bathroom.
[129] There were physical altercations at this protest.
[130] I spoke to a couple of the parents who were in attendance, and they told me they were being agitated by outsiders.
[131] They said they have no problem with parents who disagree with them counter -protesting, but they claimed those who started trouble had no connection to the school, and some of them were dressed in riot gear.
[132] Now, it's been widely reported that members of Antifa, a left -wing group known for its violence, showed up to the protest.
[133] Where were they two weeks ago?
[134] Where were they four weeks to go?
[135] where were they six weeks ago?
[136] Why is it that they showed up on June 6th?
[137] Were they there to antagonize people?
[138] And that's exactly what happened.
[139] We had a peaceful protest going on, talking about parental rights, having transparency, stopping this nonsense as far as pushing this ideology, this gendered dysphoria on our children.
[140] And then all of a sudden you have this opposing side pushing buttons, pushing buttons constantly.
[141] And then, I mean, you could poke the where so many times, eventually it could have striked back.
[142] Weeks later on June 20th, parents gathered to protest outside the last board meeting of the school year.
[143] That culminated in one arrest when protesters and counter protesters again clashed.
[144] Almost immediately following that board meeting, Glendale's superintendent, Dr. Vivian Eckchain, announced her retirement.
[145] That was effective on June 30th.
[146] Eckchain made no reference to the ongoing disputes between parents and administration on her way out, But she did say that the, quote, transformative work being done throughout the district would continue.
[147] And that wasn't the only high -profile departure.
[148] Ray Shelton, a longtime fifth grade teacher with decades of teaching experience, also left over the transgender policies.
[149] He went viral in April when he spoke out at a Glendale school board meeting.
[150] Here's some audio of that.
[151] Two plus two equals four.
[152] The world is not flat.
[153] Boys have penises.
[154] Girls have vaginas.
[155] Gender is binary and cannot be changed.
[156] Biology is not bigotry.
[157] Heterosexuality is not hate.
[158] Gender confusion and gender delusion are deep psychological disorders.
[159] No caring profession or loving parent would ever support the chemical poisoning or surgical mutilation of a child's genitalia.
[160] Transgender ideology is anti -gay.
[161] It is anti -woman and it is anti -human.
[162] It wants to take away women's sports, women's rights, women's achievements.
[163] It is misogyny writ large.
[164] And I can say this also as a gay man. Shelton was subsequently suspended from his teaching position.
[165] Hours after that viral moment, another teacher named Alicia Harris filed a complaint against Shelton, suggesting Shelton was pro -Nazi.
[166] Shelton at the board meeting showed an image of a popular meme connecting transgender ideology with fascism.
[167] The image shows four so -called progress pride flags arranged in the shape of a swastika.
[168] A lawyer for Shelton says he's suing the district over the suspension.
[169] So where are we now with the district?
[170] Have there been any changes made to the policies after all this?
[171] Well, this all transpired at the final school board meeting of the school year, so we have yet to see if any of these changes will be made.
[172] Parents are continuing to speak out, and as I mentioned earlier, the superintendent is on her way out, and we don't yet know who will replace X -Chain.
[173] One issue that parents are concerned about is a bill currently working its way through the California legislature that could chill future attempts to speak up at school board meetings or even on social media.
[174] The bill would criminalize, quote, harassment or threats towards school employees after school hours.
[175] But the bill doesn't specify what counts as.
[176] harassment.
[177] Convictions could carry up to a year behind bars and a $1 ,000 fine.
[178] The bill claims to protect school employees from parents, but parents say the bill is designed to silence them.
[179] That said, the issue has galvanized parents in an unprecedented way.
[180] Like I said, I'm not some huge political guy, but now I'm going to be, right?
[181] Now I'm going to get more involved.
[182] I'm going to protest or, you know, like I say, I've been activated now.
[183] Nobody wants to be an activist.
[184] It's a, you know, pain in the ass.
[185] But if we're dragged into it, we're forced into it, we will be.
[186] Well, parents as a political coalition is one of the most significant trends of the past decade, it seems like.
[187] I don't think that's going anywhere.
[188] Amanda, thanks for reporting.
[189] Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Press to Giacomo.
[190] And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.