The mother of an 11-year-old student who received a financial settlement after her daughter’s school tried to secretly transition the daughter said she “needed to fight” for her child.
The Spreckels Union School District in California paid Jessica Konen $100,000 as part of a settlement after Konen accused officials of secretly recruiting her daughter Alicia into an after-school club, then helping Alicia conceal a social transition from her parents. School officials allegedly called Child Protective Services on Jessica Konen after she objected to the transition during a meeting, according to videos from a school board meeting where Konen and her husband spoke. (RELATED: Parents Allege Middle School Carried Out Secret Gender Transitions)
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“I knew that I needed to fight for her. I needed to be able to provide that parental, you know, that parental guidance that she needed,” Jessica Konen said on “Fox and Friends.” “I decided to go forward with the story because I wanted to protect her and I wanted to be there for her.”
Parents sued school districts over efforts to transition children socially without the parents’ knowledge in Florida and Wisconsin, while legislation protecting parental rights in Florida became a flashpoint. A 12-year-old girl reportedly attempted suicide in Florida while administrators were carrying out a social transition, in which the child went by a new name and was referred to by different pronouns without informing her parents, Fox News reported.
“I feel that parents should be involved throughout their complete children – you know their elementary, their middle school, whatever – anything that the child goes through, I think a parent should be involved,” Konen told “Fox and Friends” guest host Rachel Campos-Duffy. “I absolutely would have put a note. It’s up to me, you know, to be able to guide her in that direction. That’s what my parental right is. I would, you know, suggest as my advice to stop doing this. Stop putting secrecy into parents in general. It creates division within families. It kind of stops the bond you make with your children.”
Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta of California sued the Chino Valley Unified School District over a policy requiring school officials to inform parents of children who wished to transition. A judge in New Jersey ordered three school districts not to implement similar policies following a lawsuit by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin.
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