U.S. House committee reviewing whether CPS policies that support transgender students violate federal law
The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce is demanding Chicago Public Schools turn over a long list of documents, including complaints from parents and coaches about policies that support transgender students, as Republican members of Congress continue to look into whether the school district’s policies violate federal law.
In a letter sent Thursday to Supt. Macquline King, U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg says the committee is reviewing “how CPS policies affect the safety, privacy, and well-being of children, and whether parents are excluded from major decisions involving their children.” He gave CPS until Sept. 11 to comply.
Walberg, who chairs the committee, wrote that the committee will evaluate whether CPS is violating the federal law that gives parents the right to review their child’s education records.
He also wants to see evidence that CPS has changed its policies to comply with a Supreme Court decision that found teachers shouldn’t be prevented from disclosing information to parents if their child is transitioning their gender identity at school, such as by asking to be called by a different name.
CPS officials confirmed that they have received the letter, but offered no other statement.
The inquiry is one of several initiated by President Donald Trump’s administration into CPS policies, but so far not much has come from these investigations.
In one high-profile example, Trump officials withheld some grant money from CPS because they said the district’s Black Student Success Plan violated the civil rights of students who aren’t Black. CPS sued and, according to reporting in Bloomberg Law, the Department of Education agreed to release the funds in a recent settlement.
Walberg did not threaten the district’s funding in his Thursday letter, but rather said the committee is looking into whether laws need to be changed. But the Education Department said Wednesday that school districts could lose federal funding if they failed to disclose plans or other information about a child’s gender identity to a parent who requests to see it.
Walberg’s letter comes a few months after King was forced to testify in June before the House committee, where she faced numerous questions about CPS’ policies aimed at protecting transgender students.
Walberg references that testimony in Thursday’s letter. He wrote that King responded to a question about CPS “socially transitioning children without parental knowledge or consent” by saying that CPS does “not hide information from parents.”
But he wrote that “several of CPS’s policies and resources suggest otherwise.”
Walberg pointed to interim guidelines and a district “toolkit” that says teachers don’t need parental consent to use students’ “affirmed names and pronouns” and directs staff not to disclose a student’s “preferred name, pronoun or other confidential information pertaining to the student’s transgender or gender nonconforming status without the student’s permission.”
Walberg also takes her to task for not directly answering a question about whether CPS changed its policy to align with a recent Supreme Court ruling.
“CPS’s policies appear to undermine the authority of parents and guardians,” he writes, noting the Supreme Court has stated parents “have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.’”
Walberg requests that CPS send the committee red-lined copies of guidelines that show how they’ve changed their policies following the Supreme Court decision, as well as a description of training provided to staff “on the topics of gender and sexuality, including transgender, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and LGBTQ+.”
CPS was one of the first districts to implement specific policies supporting “gender diversity.” In Chicago, those policies have not drawn much controversy. Students and parents have advocated for them when they were up for debate, rather than complaining about them.