Parents in a California school district are demanding answers — and action — after an elementary-school teacher secretly recruited students for his LGBTQ club.
According to the California Family Council (CFC), earlier this school year, Daniel Bishop, a third-grade teacher at Elk Grove Unified School District’s (EGUSD) Pleasant Grove Elementary School,
was allowed to personally invite all the 3rd through 6th-grade classes to a new LGBTQ club he was starting. The “UBU Club” as he called it, was for “boys who crush on boys” and “girls who crush on girls,” but anyone could come, the kids were told. Yet parents weren’t told anything about the club. No notification in the school newsletter and no permission slips were required for attendance, despite one being necessary to belong to the school’s garden club.
There can be little doubt that Bishop knew exactly what he was doing. In August, he posted on Facebook a picture of a T-shirt reading “I’m the teacher Fox News warns you about” — and quipped, “I think I found my back to school shirt.”
He would have gotten away with his scheme, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.
At the March 5 EGUSD school-board meeting, Mary Congdon testified that “she found out about the club from her 4th-grade son, who came home confused and full of questions after” Bishop’s presentation, wrote CFC.
“I immediately reached out to his teacher, bewildered why we the parents had no recollection of hearing about this new club,” Congdon said. “Her response was that it was because ‘it’s a safe place for students to go and discuss their sexuality without having to come out to their parents.’”
“I’m not sure when Mr. Bishop began paying for my son’s clothes, housing, meals; when has he taken my son to his doctor’s appointments, sports games, church or tucked my son in at night,” she added. “He is not the parent. I reminded my son and his younger, second-grade brother that night: We are your safe place. We are your parents.”
Congdon said she contacted Pleasant Grove Principal Deidra Wood, asking her why students didn’t need permission slips to participate in the club.
“Because we fear there will be parents that say no,” Wood allegedly told her.
CFC reported:
Within days of finding out [about the club], 30 upset parents crowded into a meeting room with [Wood] and a district administrator to get some answers. They were told LGBTQ clubs had already been started in 5 to 10 other elementary schools. They also discovered school officials weren’t sure students needed parent permission to attend an LGBTQ club. But the UBU club was put on hold until the school officials got legal advice. That was on January 29. Tired of waiting for answers, parents took their complaints and questions to the Elk Grove Unified School Board at [its March 5] meeting.
Curiously, despite the near-certainty that parents would broach the subject at the meeting, the board had no plans to address it — but it was “set to vote on recognizing March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility,” noted Sacramento’s CBS13.
“Pleasant Grove Elementary School staff betrayed the trust of parents when they held this UBU club during lunch time and did not notify parents or require permission slips for the club,” Heidi Moore, whose children attend EGUSD schools, told the board.
“It’s also alarming that the district has ignored concerned parents for weeks but recently sent a flier to all district teachers, inviting them to a training on how to respond to resistance from parents against LGBTQ clubs,” she continued. “The only response the district did give parents was that their legal counsel was weighing in on the situation. It seems like that is something they should have done before implementing this secret lunchtime club.”
A legal expert told CBS13 that “the UBU club will need to abide by the same rules as all the other school clubs, and if the district notifies parents about other clubs, it would need to do the same in this case.” Did EGUSD choose not to consult its lawyers before starting the club for fear of receiving the same advice?
Or was it simply a matter of following the California Teachers Association’s (CTA) advice, which officials preferred? As The New American previously reported, the CTA was caught on leaked video instructing members how to start in-school LGBTQ clubs without parents’ knowledge. Blaire Wyatt, a first-grade teacher, explicitly stated, “It’s best to hold meetings for gender identity clubs during lunchtime, so the parents never know.”
EGUSD might, however, want to consider what happened to the Spreckels Union School District when two of its teachers, who also appeared in the CTA video, socially transitioned an 11-year-old female student into a pretend male without telling her mother. The girl’s mother sued the district, which settled the lawsuit for $100,000.
Dean Broyles, constitutional attorney and president of the National Center for Law and Policy, told CFC EGUSD could face similar consequences.
“Elk Grove Unified School District is flagrantly violating and dishonoring the rights of parents by setting up secretive school sexuality clubs without parental knowledge or consent where rogue teachers with extreme agendas affirm sensitive and controversial viewpoints with very young vulnerable children, while concealing the existence and purpose of these meetings,” he said. “We demand transparency from the district. We are investigating these clubs and are seriously considering taking legal action to stop them.”
