Parents in Pennsylvania have uncovered documents through a public records request that expose how school employees have been pushing gender ideology to middle school students as young as 11 years old through a “Gender & Sexuality Alliance” (GSA) club without the knowledge or consent of parents.
However, what the parents had discovered was that during the 2021-2022 school year, two Charles F. Patton Middle School (CFPMS) employees—sixth-grade school counselor Cara Malone and seventh-grade English teacher Colleen O'Neill—aggressively advertised a Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club to students, soliciting kids as young as 11 to join. This was done without the knowledge or consent of parents but with the approval of the school district. CFPMS is part of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District (UCFSD) in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
DiGregorio said one of her students had answered a question on an assignment and mentioned her sexuality.
According to DiGregorio, the student wrote, “I want a boyfriend or girlfriend when I am older. I am pansexual meaning I have the ability to like all genders.” DiGregorio wrote that she wanted to make sure the necessary supports were in place for the student, and also asked if there was “anything else I should do other than thank them for their honesty and helping me to get to know them better.” (The email did not indicate the question on the assignment that prompted this answer.)
DiGregorio wants to start a GSA club at CFPMS or make it possible for middle school students to attend the high school GSA club meetings. Malone also indicates she had “spoken with Steve and he would like the need to be student-generated.” So, she said she planned to attend the next Unionville High School (UHS) GSA meeting to “get some feedback from the high school students” they already solicited to join the club they had created on their own.
Tired of having their emails ignored, parents started attending school board meetings to ask for answers directly. But Fishbein said their requests were quickly met with “the same attitude of arrogance and belittling” that other parents across the country have been receiving from school board members when they dare to question the district’s authority.
“They’ve been getting a lot of the communications between teachers and counselors and school board members, and the more information they uncovered, the more they were horrified,” Fishbein said. “One of the issues they focused on was the sexualization of the children.”
“If you are emailing home, it may be best to use she/her when referring to [redacted],” Saletta wrote.
In a Feb. 16, 2022 email from UHS Counseling Secretary Jennifer Smith (leader of the high school GSA club) to UHS Guidance Counselor Maribeth Lyles, Smith announces that O'Neill, the co-founder of the CFPMS GSA, would speak to a group of students about her graduate studies in “Transformative Education and Social Change, with a focus on LGBTQ youth.” Smith made sure to note that the link to the first virtual meeting, held Nov. 18, 2021, had only been shared with “current members” of the GSA club, who were instructed “not to pass it out, but instead to tell any interested kids, that they can get the link either from” her or Lyles.
“This is the fight we are engaged in,” Fishbein said. “The essence of what is happening is parents had blind trust, unconditional trust in the school system. It’s like the way a parent has unconditional love for their child, we had unconditional faith in the school system. We didn’t question them or their commitment to our children and that they have the best interests of our children in mind.”
However, through discovering various forms of sexual indoctrination being implemented in grades K–12, Fishbein said parents are now realizing that school officials and staff do not necessarily have the best interests of children in mind.
“They think, for whatever reason, that they have authority over our children once we put them in the school, that they can do whatever they want with them,” Fishbein said.
Statements given by teachers and school officials from across the country, and even by President Joe Biden, support Fishbein’s claim.
In February 2022, Wisconsin state Rep. Lee Snodgrass, a Democrat, posted on social media that “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.” After immediate backlash, Snodgrass deleted the post, following it up with a series of posts attempting to walk the statement back by saying her initial post “was lacking in nuance and easily misinterpreted.”
In January 2022, the Michigan Democratic Party insisted on social media that parents are “not the clients” of the schools and their children are taught what “society needs them to know.”“Not sure where this ‘parents-should-control-what-is-taught-in-schools-because-they-are-our-kids’ is originating, but parents do have the option to send their kids to a hand-selected private school at their own expense if this is what they desire,” the now-deleted Facebook post read.
One of the UCFSD parents involved in the search for answers, who spoke to The Epoch Times under the condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by district officials and to protect his children from retaliation, said he tried multiple times to address the harm they believe the district’s policies have inflicted on his children. He said the establishment of the GSA club in a middle school by school staff, without parental knowledge, is just another example of the district’s long history of abusing its powers.
The parent found out about the club through his daughter after she saw a post on social media. He was further disturbed to find out that on April 5, a schoolwide email was sent only to students by Malone, soliciting their participation in group or individual counseling sessions in a new Social Emotional Learning program. Again, the only way he found out was because his daughter disclosed the email. The email explains that the students will meet once per week for six weeks to “discuss topics such as friendships, emotions, problem-solving and other things.” Because the “meeting times will rotate,” students will “miss a different class each time.”
“On its own, this would be inappropriate behavior,” the father insisted. “But when it’s the same person who’s pushing gender ideology and soliciting kids to participate in the middle school GSA club, this is inappropriate behavior and it has to be addressed by the school district.”
Fishbein said many public school educators believe they can brainwash children with any idea they want.
“They believe that their woke view is more important than what the parents think,” she said. Then again, Fishbein conceded that many parents hadn’t been paying attention to this shift in education. “We trusted them. We didn’t think they were going to cause any harm to our children.”
“The conduct and behavior of the adults who are organizing these things is the same everywhere,” the father said. “It can’t be a coincidence. It’s as if they’re being instructed in how to organize and indoctrinate these kids.”
Fishbein said the fight over indoctrination in schools is getting serious.
“They are doubling down, tripling down, and quadrupling down,” she said, referring to those who advocate for the teaching gender, sexuality, and critical race theory to students. “They did not expect this kind of fight. I think they thought it was going to be a walk in the park because they have control over social media and mainstream media.”
But Fishbein said those ideas are not mainstream, and instead, the parents who are fighting back are in the mainstream.
“They have the resources we don’t have, but we have the people,” she said. “At this point, if there was any level of trust that remained between parents and the school system, it was shredded.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Unionville-Chadds Ford School District Superintendent John Sanville and school board President Jeff Hellrung, as well as Saletta, Davis, Smith, Lyles, O'Neill, and Dissinger.
None of them responded to requests for comment.
