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Exclusive: 57 Maine School Districts Hide Kids’ Gender Dysphoria From Parents
The Federalist ^ | 02/25/2025 | Breccan F. Thies

Posted on 02/26/2025 8:15:05 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Democrat Maine Gov. Janet Mills is attempting to thwart federal civil rights law to allow the grooming of children in schools.

In Maine, where gender and queer theories reign supreme, at least 57 of its 192 school districts have policies that exclude parents from knowing whether their children start identifying as transgender.

According to documents reviewed by The Federalist and obtained by Parents Defending Education through public records requests, a significant portion of Maine’s public school districts — including its most populous ones — hide students’ critical medical and social information from parents if they are unwilling to allow their child to “transition” genders.

The school districts are potentially putting at risk the lives of their students — and at the very least their mental and physical health — by hiding the information from the parents, as allowing children to pursue such delusions is a dangerous experiment pushed only by the most radical predators and not backed by medical science.

“Maine is a state that has gone all in on gender ideology in K-12 schools,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for PDE, told The Federalist. “We see it in these policies to knowingly withhold information from parents about their own child’s gender identity at school and we see it in the governor’s insistence that males be allowed to participate and compete in girls’ sports. It’s all indefensible as well as wildly unpopular among voters, regardless of their political party.”

The districts’ policies add to the hot water Maine has recently found itself in, as intransigent behavior by the state’s Democrat governor, Janet Mills, has resulted in a federal civil rights investigation over the state allowing boys to compete against girls in sports. The state could lose $250 million in federal education funding if it is found to be violating civil rights law.

That investigation came on the heels of Trump administration guidance directing school districts to get rid of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, including those based on radical gender theory. Maine’s parental exclusion policies appear to violate an executive order signed by President Donald Trump reestablishing the importance of parental oversight over their children in schools after significant damage had been done during the Biden administration.

The order, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling,” explicitly mentions school districts encouraging children to pursue so-called “gender transition” and hide that information from their parents: “For example, steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and sex-based equality and opportunity, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX).”

The order directs federal agencies to “prevent or rescind” federal funding to schools that “directly or indirectly support or subsidize the social transition of a minor student, including through school staff or teachers or through deliberately concealing the minor’s social transition from the minor’s parents.”

Maine school district policies designed to conceal this information from parents appear to be in direct contravention of Trump’s order.

Portland Public Schools, the state’s largest district, has a “Transgender and Gender Expansive Students” policy that directs school staff to hide any abnormal “gender identity” information from parents who might not allow their children to pursue social or medical “transition.”

“In the event that a student and their parent or legal guardian do not agree with regard to the student’s gender identity or gender expression, the school shall abide by the wishes of the student with regard to their gender identity and gender expression while at school,” the policy states. “School staff shall comply with the student’s wishes regarding disclosure of their transgender status to others, including but not limited to parents or guardians, students, volunteers or other school staff, unless the student has explicitly authorized the disclosure or unless legally required to do so.”

The students who claim to be transgender can also use restrooms and locker rooms that match their new “identity” — girls can be forced to use the restroom with boys and undress in front of them as well. Staff and students are forced to use the “preferred pronouns” of the students who make the “gender identity” claims.

Other major school districts in Maine, including Lewiston, Bangor, Auburn, and many others have nearly identical policies. Part of the reason for that is the policy was created by the Maine School Boards Association and proliferated among many of the districts.

Many of the districts also have teacher and staff training programs that tell them to encourage children to identify as different genders and create classroom environments where “gender expansive” students are given special treatment.

Bangor, for example, had a 2022 presentation called “LGBTQ+ 101: Understanding and Supporting all those letters within your school community.” The presentation used common gender ideology propaganda tools like the “Genderbread Person,” which is used to convince children that gender is on a spectrum.

Staff are also told to “neutralize language in classrooms” and dehumanize the family unit by using terms such as “significant other” and “partner” instead of “husband,” “wife,” “boyfriend,” and “girlfriend.” It also tells them to start a relationship with students by first referring to singular students with “they/them” pronouns “if unsure.”

While Maine School Unit 29, another district, has not explicitly adopted the parental exclusion policy of the other 57 districts, it has had groomer training from an organization that pushed LGBT indoctrination on children.

Unit 29 reached out to OUT Maine, a gay and transgender youth programming organization in the state with the stated mission “to change the very systems that serve diverse queer youth in all of their intersectional identities.”

According to documents obtained by PDE, OUT Maine suggested implementing gay and transgender ideology into school curriculums, such as “displaying LGBTQ+ role models in educational materials” and “developing STRONG policies, procedures, and inclusive curriculum.”

The organization said staff should “feel confident, and understand the proper terminology to use when talking to LGBTQ+ youth,” while students “should receive regular training” to “learn about equity” and “understand what is expected of them.”

The other districts with parental exclusion policies are: Maine School Administrative District 15, Sunrise County, Easton, East Millinocket, District 45, Millinocket, Wiscasset, District 20, Alternative Organizational Structure 98, Unit 23, Camden Rockport, Unit 24, Unit 26, Unit 67, Kittery, Unit 68, District 55, Unit 3, District 72, Unit 38, Unit 39, Unit 4, Lisbon, Hermon, Cape Elizabeth, York, Brewer, Waterville, Yarmouth, District 1, Unit 1, Unit 10, Unit 40, Kennebec Intra-District Schools, Unit 19, District 11, District 52, Falmouth, Unit 5, District 35, District 51, Mt. Blue, Unit 22, Biddeford, Brunswick, Unit 21, Gorham, Saco, Scarborough, District 60, South Portland, Sanford, and District 6.


Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Maine
KEYWORDS: education; gender; lgbt; maine
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1 posted on 02/26/2025 8:15:05 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
"57 Maine School Districts Hide Kids’ Gender Dysphoria From Parents"

Flogging needs to be brought back as punishment for school district officials convicted of doing this.

2 posted on 02/26/2025 8:17:53 AM PST by Carl Vehse (Make Austin Texas Again!)
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To: SeekAndFind; metmom

Ping!.................


3 posted on 02/26/2025 8:18:47 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: SeekAndFind

The best thing about COVID was public school teachers being exposed.
The majority are vile and disgusting.


4 posted on 02/26/2025 8:21:53 AM PST by rrrod (6)
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To: SeekAndFind
57 Maine School Districts Hide Kids’ Gender Dysphoria From Parents

In a sane Nation, Maine parents would be hiding their Kids from 57 Maine School Districts.

5 posted on 02/26/2025 8:23:27 AM PST by Navy Patriot (President Trump Decisively Won Popular & E.C., Celebrate Recivilization!)
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To: Carl Vehse

And Millstones.


6 posted on 02/26/2025 8:23:28 AM PST by The Spirit Of Allegiance (Public Employees: Honor Your Oaths! Defend the Constitution from Enemies--Foreign and Domestic!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Stinkin’ democrats.

Most of this comes from CD1, aka “North Massachusetts,” in southeast Maine.

CD1 is 20% of Maine’s land mass, but it screws up the entire state.

No wonder home schooling is growing by leaps and bounds.


7 posted on 02/26/2025 8:25:34 AM PST by july4thfreedomfoundation (Russia? China? Democrats and RINOs are the biggest threat to the survival of America.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Every single one fo these school board members needs to be fired, and then taken to court for aiding/abetting child molestation, etc. Use RAT lawfare tactics to knock em into financial oblivion...


8 posted on 02/26/2025 8:25:47 AM PST by lgjhn23 ("On the 8th day, Satan created the progressive liberal to destroy all the good that God created...")
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To: Navy Patriot

Class action lawsuit for openers and sue the individuals who were responsible. Sue them into bankruptcy.


9 posted on 02/26/2025 8:29:34 AM PST by gibsonguy
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To: SeekAndFind

There is no such thing as Gender Dysporia. It’s just another phony disorder invented out of thin air by shrinks.


10 posted on 02/26/2025 8:30:37 AM PST by Seruzawa ("The Political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence" - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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To: Carl Vehse

EVERY WORD OF THIS CRAP MAKES ME EVEN MORE GRATEFUL I WENT TO A ONE ROOM GRADE SCHOOL. AND A SMALL HIGH SCHOOL


11 posted on 02/26/2025 8:34:03 AM PST by ridesthemiles (not giving up on TRUMP---EVER)
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To: The Spirit Of Allegiance

Pronto.


12 posted on 02/26/2025 8:37:08 AM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: Seruzawa

That’s right.


13 posted on 02/26/2025 8:37:22 AM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: SeekAndFind

Homeschool is the best school.


14 posted on 02/26/2025 8:44:07 AM PST by Bulwyf
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To: SeekAndFind

There is no dysphoria. That is a figment in the imagination of child groomers.
Of the supposed millions of trannys, mebbe 0.0001% are truly disphoric. The rest are like addicts allowed the die on the street while everyone shakes their heads sadly. Re-classify dysphoria as a mental illness. This was a corrupt re-definition like what CDC did to re-defining a vaccine to exclude immunity.


15 posted on 02/26/2025 8:52:26 AM PST by bobbo666
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To: SeekAndFind

By definition, those are some incompetent parents.


16 posted on 02/26/2025 9:01:42 AM PST by Captainpaintball (America needs a Conservative DICTATOR if it hopes to survive. )
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To: SeekAndFind; july4thfreedomfoundation; Carl Vehse; rrrod; Navy Patriot; lgjhn23; ridesthemiles; ...
Here are some books and kinks I found of value

Bad Theory by Abigail Shrier

Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier

Gender Ideology Run Amok by Abigail Shrier

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/gender-ideology-run-amok/

For nearly 100 years of diagnostic history, gender dysphoria typically began in early childhood, between the ages of two and four, and usually involved a boy who insisted that he was not a boy but a girl. Children afflicted are insistent, consistent, and persistent in the feeling that they are in the wrong body. It is by all accounts excruciating—I’ve talked to many transgender adults, most of them biological males, who describe the relentless chafe of a body that feels all wrong.

Historically, this has been the classic presentation of gender dysphoria. When these children were left alone—when no one intervened medically or encouraged what we today call “social transition”—over 70 percent of them naturally outgrew their gender dysphoria. Most of those who outgrew it became gay men. Those who did not outgrow it became what used to be known as transsexuals. They did not believe they were women, but they felt most comfortable presenting themselves as females.

The common thread running through these topics is that the truth is being obscured by gender ideology. Lies are told about the risks of the transition treatments administered to young children, both to play down the dangers of those treatments and to exaggerate the degree to which those treatments are known to be helpful. Lies are told about the researchers and journalists who attempt to report on the crisis of social contagion among teenage girls undergoing transition treatments. And lies are told about the movement to eradicate women’s protective spaces.

The gender ideology behind these lies is a sibling of critical race theory. While critical race activists are teaching kids that they are largely defined by their skin color, gender activists are teaching kids that there are a great many genders, and that only they know their true gender. And just as families who object to racial indoctrination in schools are told that their denials of racism are proof of racism, young women who object to biological males participating in girls’ sports are told that their objections are proof of transphobic bigotry.

Inside the Transgender Empire

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/inside-the-transgender-empire/

The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.” And despite frequent claims to the contrary, this is not a temporary or reversible process. Of the children who begin puberty blockers, the medical literature suggests that approximately 95 percent move on to cross-sex hormones, and that 50 percent of the females who begin cross-sex hormone treatments move on to “trans-affirming” surgeries.

It is clear from this and from other transgender scholarship that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. In a collection of essays titled Transgender Marxism, activist writer Rosa Lee argues that trans people can serve as the new vanguard of the proletariat, promising to abolish heteronormativity in the same way that orthodox Marxism promised to abolish capitalism.

17 posted on 02/26/2025 9:37:12 AM PST by Retain Mike ( Sat Cong)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bookmark


18 posted on 02/26/2025 9:42:41 AM PST by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you i9s how they. control you. )
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To: july4thfreedomfoundation

This garbage affects all 50 States to some degree. Teachers are brainwashed with psych based propaganda in college. Even the most conservative areas are awash in the gender bending insanity in their schools.


19 posted on 02/26/2025 10:43:21 AM PST by Seruzawa ("The Political left is the Garden of Eden of incompetence" - Marx the Smarter (Groucho))
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To: Red Badger

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)

The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.

Maine has really gone off the rails.

To be fair to actual, true Mainers, ME has a huge MA contingent that owns second homes in the state and I'll bet they vote in both states.

20 posted on 02/26/2025 10:58:34 AM PST by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus)
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