Use your voice and your vote
It is time to hold NZ schools to account for pushing gender ideology.
Elections for school Boards of Trustees are due to take place between the 3rd to 19th September. Thank you to those sex realist parents who have put your names forward for these important positions.
Even if you are not able to serve on a board, there are many other things you can do to influence your school’s policies and practices around gender identity:
We hear that, in quite a few schools, not enough parents were nominated to fill the board vacancies. If this applies to your school, please consider volunteering to be appointed as a board member.
Where there are enough nominations to prompt an election, how much information are parents being given about the candidates? Ask your Returning Officer to organise a ‘meet the candidates’ evening or provide their answers to specific questions. (See below for some questions you might ask.)
Approach a candidate in person or via email to ask the questions that will help you to allocate your vote. One worthwhile question is:
“Would you vote in favour of hearing a 15 minute presentation from parents who are concerned about the school’s policies regarding gender identity?”
After the new Board is in place, ask to be given a time slot to talk to them about your concerns. Or meet with a candidate individually to discuss the issues. (See below for a link to a new Power Point presentation for this purpose.)
Talk to other parents about the school’s gender identity policies and how they impinge on the rights of other students, parents, and staff. Until we start openly discussing the conflicts inherent in gender ideology, it will continue to hold sway in our schools because of the silent or unaware majority.
Make sure you vote! Remember that someone genuinely unfamiliar with the issues is persuadable and would be a better choice for the Board than someone who disingenuously dodges your questions.
Tools for your conversations
Effective communication depends on having a good understanding of how gender identity ideology affects us all and the laws we already have that can protect us from its worst excesses.
Questions to ask
Are you familiar with the Human Rights Act that protects single-sex spaces and the Bill of Rights Act that protects the right to hold and express beliefs without fear of censure?
Do you understand the legal rights of parents to make decisions about their children?
Do you agree that schools should not preference any particular beliefs and should remain as neutral spaces that respect the range of views held by families?
Are you familiar with the Cass Review and how its findings apply to education?
How will you reconcile the Teaching Council Code of Professional Responsibility 2.1- promoting the wellbeing of learners and protecting them from harm - with a school policy that encourages body dysmorphia and body dissociation?
Will you protect the right of children to go through a natural puberty by voting to sign the international Memorandum of Understanding on the Role of Puberty published by Genspect?
Will you agree to meet with a group of parents to discuss concerns about (X) school policy?
Are you concerned about the books in our school library that present gender identity beliefs as fact?
Power Point presentation to a BOT
People who serve on school Boards and the staff in a school (bar a few extremists) are usually motivated by wanting to do the best for the children in their care. Your job is to explain to your Board that what is best for children is:
being accepted and nurtured as unique individuals in the sex that they are.
being able to go through a natural puberty and having it presented as an important stage of development, not something to fear.
having practices that truly do model and uphold a partnership between school and families.
not preferencing any set of beliefs over others. Modelling how to respect and care for others without having to agree with all of their beliefs.
having school policies that protect the rights, dignity, and safety of all the students and staff in a school. Accommodations made for individual students should not impinge on the rights of other people.
putting into practice the school’s responsibilities to respect diversity under the Teaching Code of Professional Responsibility.
meeting the requirements of the Bill of Rights, the Human Rights Act and Care of Children Act.
Note: The Human Rights Commission confirms, in an amendment at the bottom of this press statement, that the Act does not include ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic. However, the HRC has chosen to treat ‘gender identity’ as if it is protected and all its advice to schools is based on that presumption, which is an interpretation, not the law.
Be well prepared by becoming familiar with all of the reference documents linked above and below. Search your school’s policies for mentions of ‘gender identity’ and ask for those policies to be altered so that they are based on verifiable sex.
When presenting to a Board, keep in mind that calm and reasoned arguments are more likely to influence them than angry confrontation.
Click this link for our new 12-slide Power Point presentation that covers the important points to make to Boards in a 15 minute time slot, with time allowed for questions.
Reference documents
Cass on Education - critical findings of the Cass Review in relation to education.
When kindness becomes cruelty - why using ‘preferred pronouns’ is unworkable in schools.
The Responsibilities of BOTs - guidelines for maintaining impartiality in schools.
By Fern Hickson
Thanks, those suggestions are very helpful and I will include them in something coming up.
What an excellent resource you have created for parents and schools in New Zealand!
I would only add one more suggestion, which is what to say when you are told that we need to "be kind" to trans children as we need to prioritize "inclusion". My suggestion is to ask how it is kind to lie to children about something as fundamental as their sex and who is responsible for creating children who are born "wrong"? And no child should be excluded from childhood, which is what happens once the complicated process of creating a fictional life begins.
As you point out, it does not just affect individual children, it affects the entire school, every member of whom (students, teachers and other staff, and every other family) will be expected to join in the performance, lest they risk penalties for not doing so.