At least 5,904 US public schools have policies to allow educators to keep students’ gender identity secret from parents

Over 3 million US public school students attend schools that have policies in place preventing teachers from informing parents if their child adopts a transgender identity, according to a new report published by Parents Defending Education.

On the list, there are 5,904 schools spanning 168 school districts that currently have “Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies” openly stating that district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents. The total number of students covered by such policies amounts to 3,268,752, but the list is not comprehensive meaning the number is certain to be higher.

The list contains school districts of all sorts, from wealthy to poor, urban and rural, red and blue.

“Over the past year, we've received a number of tips from parents across the country who've found these policies in their districts and were justifiably troubled by them; in fact, PDE has an active lawsuit in federal court right now challenging one of these policies in Iowa,” Nicole Neily, president and founder of Parents Defending Education told The Post Millennial.

“We realized this was an incredibly widespread phenomenon, and wanted to put all of this information in one place so parents could see whether their children were subject to one of these policies.”

Neily said it was important that parents recognize that “this is only the tip of the iceberg - there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of other districts that engage in similar practices.”

“When public schools have these policies on the books, families in those districts are having their tax dollars weaponized against them, gutting their parental rights. We encourage everyone to let us know whether this is taking place in their backyard so we can add it to our list,” Neily concluded.

The New York Post gave a breakdown of the districts appearing on the list, reporting that two of the largest districts in the country, Chicago Public School District and Los Angeles Unified School District were included.

Also, there are three New York school districts: Buffalo City; Brighton, outside Rochester, and Lake George in the Adirondacks.

11 districts in red Idaho are also included.

“Living in a red state doesn’t mean that families are automatically shielded from this issue,” Neily told the New York Post.

Last year, the Post Millennial reported on the 2016 American School Counselor Association (ASCA) guidelines on “Transgender/Gender-nonconforming Youth,” which state that preferred pronouns must be respected, that school records should be changed in line with the student’s wishes, and that parents only need be engaged in this process “as appropriate.”

The ASCA encourages the creation of Gender and Sexuality Alliance programs, which some critics argue do little more than indoctrinate children with gender identity ideology and contribute to the social contagion of gender dysphoria among young people.

Dr. Erica Anderson, a trans-identified male clinical psychologist with decades of experience working with children and adolescents with gender issues, was recently called as an expert witness by the Wisconsin parents suing their daughter’s school district for allowing her to adopt a male name and male pronouns without their consent or knowledge.

In an affidavit, Anderson called social transition a powerful psychotherapeutic intervention that “has the potential to increase the likelihood of persistence of gender incongruence.”

“No professional medical association that I am aware of recommends social transition of children and adolescents with a careful assessment and treatment plan,” said Anderson.

Anderson went on to say that parental involvement is necessary in order to obtain professional assistance for a child or adolescent experiencing gender-related distress, to provide an accurate diagnosis, and to treat any co-existing conditions.

Anderson says that “social transition often leads to other medical interventions later in life, some of which are irreversible,” meaning that all the young people attending schools in the districts appearing on the PDE list could be set on a pathway to a medical sex change without parental knowledge or consent.