How Gender Ideology Captured Public Education in Washington
Parents have been sidelined as an inconvenient obstacle
If your child attends public school in Washington, particularly in very progressive districts, you’ve likely noticed an increase in LGBTQAI2S+ messaging woven into the classroom. From oversized flags and endless pins to posters, books, pronoun declaration, and themed celebrations, the emphasis on gender and sexuality is everywhere. Students are so saturated with the repeated exposure, that most will uncritically accept the message.
Perhaps this is the point.
Trojan horse
If you think the systematic inclusion of gender ideology into the classroom is the organic result of an “inclusion” movement, you have missed the intentionality behind embedding a belief system into children’s education.
Legislation signed between two governors, in conjunction with a dogmatic Superintendent of Public Instruction, teacher unions, school boards, counselors, and educators have all played a part in cementing this agenda into every classroom.
What is gender ideology?
If you Google it, you’ll be told that this is a pejorative term used by “religious” and “conservative” groups to dismantle trans rights.
In reality, it is a set of beliefs which operate under the premise that sex is a social construct and thus assigned at birth arbitrarily. The belief holds that one has a “gender identity” and can be born in the wrong body which can be altered to correct the mismatch. True gender, which can be a fluid term, is determined solely by the individual based on inner feelings—which cannot be questioned, only affirmed. These feelings may change at any point from childhood to adulthood.
Here come the laws
Senate Bill 5395 was passed in 2020 and ushered in a plethora of changes to sex ed curriculum. The new changes included:
Sex ed now begins in kindergarten
The terms “male/female” and “boys/girls” have largely been replaced with “persons with a uterus/persons with a penis”
Biological and physical differences between males and females have been downplayed, when not removed all together
Hormone treatment, including puberty blockers are included in the 4th grade curriculum
Chromosomal abnormalities or “intersex” individuals are presented as proof of a sex spectrum, rather than the male/female syndromes they actually represent
Sex is “assigned” at birth rather than observed and recorded
Gender identity is defined as an internal sense of being female, male, both, non-binary, gender expansive, or other
Classroom lessons
Parents of Lincoln Elementary students in Olympia found out after the fact that Teen Council (Planned Parenthood) was invited to give a puberty lesson to their children’s 4th grade classroom.
A pamphlet found in one student’s backpack revealed a “basic” puberty lesson for nine-year-olds.
Among a dozen graphic drawings of genitalia (including one with pubic hair shaved to look like a cat’s face), there was a page that presented puberty blockers as a basic supply, like deodorant and tampons.
Also included in the lesson was a “Gender Wheel”, clearly meant to give children the idea that they can change their gender by spinning a wheel, like a game.
When parents raised concerns, the principal of the school said the educators “went off script”.
But it wasn’t off script at all.
Everything taught is completely in line with Washington State curriculum standards which teach that gender identity refers to one’s deeply felt internal sense of being female, male, both, non-binary, gender-expansive, or other, regardless of gender “assigned” at birth.
In other words, yes, spinning a wheel is perfectly acceptable if that is what one chooses.
Puberty blocking hormones are also clearly presented in the FLASH curriculum for grades 4-6.
“Some people decide, with the help of their doctor, to take medicine or hormones to change puberty on purpose to better match their gender. They might take medicine that interferes with hormones so puberty changes don’t happen at all. Or, they might take medicine made of hormones so they have specific changes.”
Gender Inclusive School policies across the State adopted language from gender ideology such as “assigned sex at birth”, “cisgender”, “gender expansive”, etc…
Teacher training
North Thurston SD teacher training for Gender Inclusive Schools begins with placing the responsibility on the teacher to be cognizant of a student’s gender status, pronouns, and whether or not this student wants their parents to know. School staff, like all educators in Washington State, are not permitted to share this information with parents regardless of the child’s age or lack of any evidence of abuse that would warrant such secrecy.
The Olympia School District has at least one example of a teacher transitioning a ten-year-old student at school, in full secrecy from the child’s parents. That story can be read here: "I was worried your mom interfered."
Black Lives Matter
What does a movement centered around raising awareness about the struggles of black Americans have to do with this? In public schools like Olympia, the two have been deliberately linked.
Each year the school board issues a BLM Proclamation with directors reciting the organization’s core beliefs. Teachers are then instructed to propagate the 13 Principles of BLM.
The curriculum recommended for classrooms, Black Lives Matter at School, goes beyond race, embedding principles like “Trans Affirming” and “Queer Affirming”. Both emphasize dismantling so-called “cisgender privilege” and rejecting the traditional male-female binary as part of a broader vision of liberation. Another Principle calls for “dismantling the western prescribed nuclear family”.
BLM’s foundational statement makes clear why these agendas are linked:
“Our collective is guided by core principles that are grounded in a Black Feminist framework. Political views that have brought us together in doing this work: deep revolutionary transformational politics, opposition to neoliberalism, corporate reforms in education, defend and transform unions, Black queer feminist anti-capitalist politics, abolitionist politics, and approach to restorative and transformative justice”.
Pride
Each year, districts like Olympia that want to go the extra mile, issue a Pride Proclamation. Much like the BLM Proclamation, board directors read aloud a list of Pride-related beliefs for the district. Staff is then directed to advance the goal of creating Gender Inclusive Schools by teaching Pride material.
The proclamation ties directly to the district’s stated outcome goal: “Our students will have the skills, knowledge, and courage to identify and confront personal, systemic, and societal bias.”
Cementing control
While sex ed curriculum provides a quasi-opt out provision, Senate Bill 5462 mandated that LGBTQ history and perspectives be integrated into all K-12 education by 2025—with no opt out available.
The Seattle Public School District issued a formal announcement making no opt outs abundantly clear.
The Olympia School District was way ahead of the curve by announcing there would be no opt outs for Pride related material or celebrations back in 2022.
“Acknowledging and celebrating the variety of backgrounds and families of students and staff aligns with state and federal directives to ensure that we have gender inclusive schools and to provide a safe and non discriminatory environment. To ask students to ask staff to excuse students from those types of activities with her is not only disruptive to the learning environment but an undue burden I would say on staff. But much more importantly, it’s offensive and demeaning to the very students and staff who are protected by the laws I just mentioned above and it’s in direct contrast to providing a safe environment for our learners.” ~OSD Superintendent Patrick Murphy
Parents can’t catch a break
I-2081—known as the “Parental Bill of Rights” was passed into law in 2024 after receiving 400,000 signatures. It solidified a parent’s right to access instructional material, student records, opt out provisions, and notification for medical, safety, and academic issues.
State Superintendent Chris Reykdal issued guidance to school districts not to comply with certain portions of the law citing legal challenges. It was astonishing to watch an elected official openly direct schools to disregard a voter-approved law.
Despite a King County court ruling the initiative was fully constitutional and therefore enforceable, the legislature moved swiftly to dismantle it via HB-1296. The new bill replaced with a “Statement of Student Rights” removed the most important provisions for parental access to their child, including access to medical and mental health records kept by the schools, which now generally require a court order to obtain.
Having watched nearly every House and Senate hearing on the matter, one conclusion became unavoidable: the Parental Bill of Rights could not be allowed to stand if schools intended to continue withholding information about students’ gender identities from parents and embedding gender ideology as a belief system within public education.
The public school exodus continues
It seems futile for individual districts to push back, as they remain bound by a system that legally compels compliance with teaching beliefs rather than academics—under a State Superintendent who has been granted sweeping authority to ensure that non compliance carries the risk of penalties and consequences.
Families are left with hard choices in a public education system no longer defined by neutrality, but by ideology. What was once a place of shared trust has become a battleground, and as more families walk away, the future of public education grows increasingly uncertain.