School Counselor Targeted for Fighting Education Quackery

OPINION

Share information with parents about their child’s sexual preferences, and suddenly you’re "mischaracterizing" and "spreading misinformation" about school transgender policies.

School counselor Christina Barton from Rochester, Minnesota, is getting a firsthand experience as the target of propaganda from the education establishment because she dared express concern about the school’s deceptive transgender guidelines.

The union and the administration it controls insist that Barton and all other employees keep secrets from parents so that small children struggling with gender confusion (which was heaped onto them by union activists) will be easier to manipulate.

This is repulsive to Barton and parents everywhere, so she spoke out in defense of families.

The union that claims to represent her chastised and expelled her.

Then the Rochester School District and its board voted not to renew her contract.

Now Barton is running for a seat on the school board that disdained her.

May Barton and her community win and relieve themselves of administrators and union bosses who seem to delight in destroying kids and families.

And if you think these assaults on families are specific to Minnesota, think again.

The Marxist unions are on the march to implement similar crazy, radical policies nationwide. In California they just passed a law requiring all school employees to lie to parents about their child’s gender identity, and organizations like SIECUS (Sex Ed for Social Change) are working hard to promote the sexualization of children in schools nationwide.

Now adults with lousy judgment win over impressionable children for a sexual agenda while keeping parents in the dark. This is an attack on parental rights.

That’s what Barton was addressing when she publicly expressed her concerns to the board.

What she said was too much for the union, which sent Barton an expulsion letter that included this statement: " . . . you are free to hold whatever viewpoints you wish regarding LGBTQ+ students or any other matter, but viewpoints are not free of consequences. . . "

Nice of the union to accord Barton the right to hold "viewpoints."

But consider, what other entities throughout history — say, Pol Pot with the Cambodian "intellectuals," or Mao during what he called the Cultural Revolution — have arrogated to themselves the power to punish someone and destroy her livelihood for holding a particular “viewpoint.”

Among the consequences Barton withstood were "countless retaliatory responses that are unprofessional, inaccurate, and very hurtful to me as a person as well as a concerned counselor and parent."

Barton has lengthy experience in the field, is a parent and district employee. She simply argued that parents had a right to know if their child is having second thoughts about gender.

Why the hatred?

Barton isn’t representing some political party or special interest group.

She’s just a community member representing regular people wanting to care for their children. Parents know that not even half of their child’s peers can read or do math at grade level. And they know it’s not getting better.

Now this.

But you’d think this is mainly a partisan political issue, judging by the volume of invective from the biggest players on the left.

They stop at nothing, including bringing lawsuits, harassing dedicated teachers and counselors, pushing school board recalls, and engineering media blitzes to ensure critical information is withheld from parents.

And anybody who stands in the gap for the kids is demonized, dehumanized, threatened and ostracized.

That’s why we all need to stand together for parental rights and against the radicals shoving these policies down our throats.

And that’s why our organization, For Kids and Country, is part of a coalition of thousands staging our first annual March for Kids on the National Mall on Aug. 31.

We hope you’ll join us so educators and parents like Christina Barton never have to stand alone again.

Another question to ask yourself:

• Why is the left fighting so viciously against parents?
• Who benefits if parents are kept in the dark?

Over the past several decades, government schools have become playgrounds for people tinkering with educational practices, most of which are outright quackery.

Today’s power brokers in public education are those hard-left legislators, like-minded media adherents, sympathetic administrators and leaders of the so-called teachers union — the edu-stablishment — who have derived great wealth and considerable political power from exploiting teachers, casting parents aside, and treating children like petri-dish specimens.

Here’s the sort of thing Barton says that so enraged the union and administrators:

"How would a parent know how to request such information if they aren’t aware their child is struggling with gender dysphoria?" she asked at a public meeting.

"How would a parent be able to care for and support their student if the school never reached out to them?"

Wow. What a radical.

Rebecca Friedrichs is the founder of For Kids and Country, the author of "Standing Up to Goliath" and a 28-year public school teacher who was lead plaintiff in Friedrichs v. CTA. Roger Ruvolo is a longtime newspaper editor and a contributor to For Kids & Country.