California school district's LGBTQ+ guide raises parental concerns over content and intent

WASHINGTON (TNND) — The San Francisco United School District sent students home with a guide over the Winter break that has sparked concerns.

The school district's "Out of School Survival Guide" claims it offers families insight into LGBTQ+ matters, such as how to offer support to LGBTQ+ youth during the school break.

President of Parents Defending Education, Nicole Neily, joined The National News Desk to discuss her concern about the resource guide that the school district claims is for students feeling stressed because they don't feel supported.

"Well, I think first is just the framing that this is kind of assuming that families are going to be hostile to children's gender identity, period, which is not the case in most of the country and certainly not in San Francisco. So to really start to throw up those artificial barriers and imply, your parents might not love you if and that there are conditions on a parent's love. This is something that will last far beyond a child graduating from high school," Neily said.

Neily also has issues with the resources that the guide directs students to.

She claims one place listed in the guide is a clinic that provides hormones to children. Her other issue is a section in the guide that she says "encourages children to run away."

A separate topic of discussion during Friday's interview was about the "Parents' Bill of Rights" on its way to the desk of the Ohio governor. The bill would notify parents if their child desires to identify as another gender at school and prohibits instruction of sexual materials for grades K-12.

Neily is cautiously optimistic that Republican Michael Governor DeWine will sign the bill

"He has vetoed some bills in the past that has caused some conservative activists some consternation. But I am cautiously optimistic, even though activists are trying to frame this as a Ron DeSantis "Don't Say Gay" bill, Neily said.

"Let's remember, in sexual instruction for children, K to 3 is that ages 5 to 8 years old, and children at that age don't really know what sex is, much less do they need to know anything really explicit about that," added Neily.

Neily and TNND's Angela Brown also discussed disciplinary practices reform that's taking place in Illinois.

The state Board of Education has urged lawmakers to find other ways to address student disciplinary action, instead of ticketing students for truancy or referring students for disciplinary action to local police departments.

You can hear that part of the discussion in the video below: