School stops enSchool stops enforcing Obama’s trans bathroom policy after parents pulled kids out
A Michigan school district has stopped the
practice of allowing members of one biological sex to use the restrooms of the
opposite sex after parents pulled their two sons out of elementary school over
the issue.
Last week, Matt Stewart's nine-year-old son
told him, "There was a girl in
the boys’ bathroom" with him and other male
elementary kids. When Stewart called the school, the principal told him
the Obama administration's federal guidance on transgender students forced them
to allow transgender students in the bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers of
their chosen gender, and not their biological sex. Violating the policy means
losing federal funding.
Stewart talked it over with his wife, and they
decided to take their sons out of Southwest Elementary School in Howell,
Michigan.
Now, after publicly complaining that parents
should have been consulted, Stewart says, "over the last few days they
have actually changed their positions.”
Howell Public Schools Superintendent Eric
McGregor issued a statement saying, "At this time, we do not currently
have any students using a restroom other than that designated for their
biological gender, or requesting to do so.”
The school district refused to say whether the
elementary girl in the boys' room left the school district, or is now using the
bathroom of her actual, biological gender.
"We are pausing on the federal guidance
issued to all school districts across the nation...while we work to...gather
feedback on this matter,” Superintendent McGregor wrote.
Stewart has since sent his sons back to
school.
Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer told
LifeSiteNews that Stewart's concerned –and public – action shows the way
parents should respond to school districts that follow the controversial
federal rules.
"Parents should join hands and respond by
telling their local schools that if they surrender to these demands, they will
take their children out of that local school and find another alternative to
educate them," Bauer said.
Bauer, who is the president of American Values
and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, said that parents who follow
this family’s lead "will accomplish two things: reminding local school
officials they work for you, and, teaching your children that fighting back
against big government is as old as the American Revolution."
"The Obama Administration is bullying low
income, disadvantaged students by threatening to withhold their education
dollars if the school district doesn't cave into Obama's demands," Bauer
told LifeSiteNews.
In Howell, school administrators appear to
have gotten the message.
WXYZ reports,
"Sources at the school district say the school board plans to meet with
attorneys on Monday to discuss options. The school board has a meeting
scheduled for June 13."
Stewart concluded that school decisions as
intimate as these "should involve the parents and should involve our
community. These are our schools."
