Teacher faces ‘personal attack’ on social media over gender/sexuality vocabulary lesson

BY LEIGH BLANDER

Veterans School Principal Matt Fox sent an email to parents on June 13 alerting them to what he called a “personal attack” on a teacher who was named and tagged in an anonymous post on a local social media page over a lesson on gender and sexuality identity.

“This post and many very hurtful comments were linked directly to the teacher’s social media accounts and included her name within many of the comments, too,” Fox wrote. “This, in my opinion, crossed a serious line from a public debate on state and national standards, to a personal attack.”

The social media post read, “Are there any other MVMS parents that are concerned about this quiz given to the kids in [teacher’s name] ‘wellness’ class? Do parents have a right or our schools an obligation to let families opt out by letting them know in advance? The terminology for male and female in our classrooms has been entirely switched to ‘male assigned at birth’ and ‘female assigned at birth.’”

The post continued: “Has all of society reached an absolute consensus that there is no such thing as biological male and female any longer, such that

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we are having to explain all of this to our middle school and younger students?”

The post has since been edited to remove the teacher’s name.

The anonymous person included a photo of a “sexuality vocabulary” worksheet identifying terms including transgender, cisgender, queer and LGBTQ+.

“As part of our health curriculum, we notify parents of sensitive topics and provide them with the opportunity to