Parents in Massachusetts say school officials aided their children in transitioning to the opposite gender without their knowledge or consent, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri allege that Ludlow Public Schools had a “protocol and practice of concealing from parents information related to their children’s gender identity and efforts to affirm a discordant student gender identity” during the time that their children attended Baird Middle School, according to the suit filed last week in a Massachusetts federal district court.
The suit also alleges that Foote and Silvestri’s 11-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son were undergoing “social transitions,” meaning school officials referred to their children by a different name and pronouns other than those matching the child’s biological sex, without the parents’ knowledge or consent. The parents had been unaware of the transitions until their daughter’s teacher, Bonnie Manchester, forwarded an email to them.
The parents attempted to hold a virtual meeting on March 18, 2021, with Baird Middle School principal Stacy Monette to discuss what the suit described as “disregard of the Plaintiffs’ parental rights.” Foote and Silvestri allege that officials ignored “specific instructions that the school staff not engage with their children” who were being treated by a “mental health professional” who was addressing the gender issues their children were dealing with.
Foote and Silvestri claim that Monette cancelled the meeting and placed Manchester on administrative leave the next day. Manchester was later fired by Monette.
A second couple, Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron joined the suit, claiming that they are “deliberately hindered from ascertaining whether their children are being secretly counseled.”
The suit also allegedes that during a meeting, Todd Gazda who at the time was superintendent of Ludlow Public Schools, called objections to the secret transitions “intolerance of LGBTQ people” that was disguised as claims about “parental rights.”
“For many students school is their only safe place, and that safety evaporates when they leave the confines of our buildings,” Gazda said, according to the suit.
“School officials are making decisions about the lives of children that they are not qualified or authorized to make and doing it without telling, and often deceiving, parents,” Vernadette Broyles of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign said in a statement.
