California Teacher Fired for Saying She Would Tell Parents About Gender Transition of Their Child

A sign outside restrooms in Chattanooga, Tenn. on Jan. 13, 2023, seems to indicate that women and men should use separate facilities. Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times

California gym teacher Jessica Tapia said she would tell parents if their children started secret gender transitions.

Tapia said she never notified a parent of a child’s transgenderism or prevented a boy from entering the girls’ locker room because these situations never came up.

But saying she would not obey school rules in these hypothetical cases was enough to get her fired, said Tapia.

“These are really all hypotheticals. Our directive was for hypothetical situations that I had never been in,” she said.

Jessica Tapia, a gym teacher who refused to lie to parents if their children assumed a new gender identity. Tapia worked at Jurupa Unified School District in California before the district fired her. Courtesy of Jessica Tapia

Tapia said she plans to sue Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD). The district told Tapia she had a choice; be willing to lie to parents or lose her job.

If a child at JUSD school identifies as transgender, it’s school policy to hide that fact from parents, Tapia told The Epoch Times.

“I had to make that decision. Do I let the district know I’m not okay with these expectations?” she said.

Tapia told the school she couldn’t follow its policy because her Christian faith demanded she tells the truth.

“I’m obedient to the Lord, and what he has called me to do, and the way he has called me to live,” she said.

“What this means for the future of public education is that legitimate, practicing Christians cannot be public education teachers,” she said.

Not Promising to Lie

The school told Tapia that California law demands she tells lies.

“The district provided you with a verbal directive to refrain from disclosing the gender identity of a student who is transgender to a parent who does not know the student’s gender identity,” reads a Feb. 21, 2023, email to Tapia from the school.

Tapia told the school that young children shouldn’t change genders without their parent’s knowledge. She added that she wouldn’t obey the school’s demands to let boys into the girls’ locker room.

“I want to let you know, I will not be allowing biological males into the female locker room,” Tapia recalls telling school officials.

“Well, we have a whole other issue, then, because you have to. That would be discrimination,” she recalls the officials replying.

Put On Paid Leave

Tapia’s fight with JUSD started in May of 2022 when students found Tapia on social media and found she disagrees with transgenderism, she said.

Occasionally, her social media posts included Bible verses. Other posts said she opposed putting young children in LGBT pride shirts.

The students reported her to JUSD for these posts, she said.

“They had certain feelings about some of the things that I’ve posted and decided to send in screenshots and videos to the school district,” she said.

For her social media posts, the school put her on paid leave and investigated her, she said.

“The school district put me off on paid administrative leave and investigated all of that,” she said.

When Tapia came through the investigation, administrators said she would remain under “close watch” for misbehavior, she said.

A screenshot of an email from California's Jurupa Unified School District firing Jessica Tapia for refusing to lie to parents. Courtesy of Jessica Tapia

“This was at the end of my sixth year of teaching. I’ve never behaved in any sort of way that needed to be changed,” said Tapia.

Then Tapia told JUSD she wouldn’t lie to parents about a child’s transgenderism or let boys into the girls’ locker room.

“Teachers are required to allow a student that thinks they are the opposite sex into a locker room that they don’t belong in,” she said.

“It would be discriminating if I didn’t,” she added.

The school told Tapia they couldn’t accommodate her faith-based opposition to lying to parents about a child’s mental state.

“Based on your religious beliefs, you cannot be dishonest with parents. If asked about a student’s gender identity by a parent, you cannot refer the parent to a counselor, defer the inquiry and suggest they speak with a student ... or otherwise deflect the parent’s inquiry,” said a letter to Tapia signed by the assistant superintendent of human resources Daniel Brooks.

A high school classroom in Gorham High School with a prominently-displayed LGBT flag. Courtesy of HB

“Consequentially, the district will release you from your employment effective at the end of the day on Jan. 31, 2023,” the letter reads.

Although Tapia lost her job working for the school, she said she has no regrets about following her faith.

“God is using me to make changes, and to protect children, and protect parental rights,” she said. “So no. No regret. Not for a second. And I don’t foresee it ever in the future, either.”

A few other teachers at JUSD have told her they agree with her choice, she said.

Secrets and Shared Bathrooms

Although JUSD’s policies on bathrooms and gender transitions sound shocking, they are common nationwide.

Policies allowing men and women to change together aren’t unique to California schools. As previously reported, California law allows any man who isn’t a sex offender to shower naked next to women.

“Could you knowingly send an underage girl into a room where there was a naked male and say that she was not in danger? That she was safe? Or more importantly, that this was right?” said Rebecca Phillips, a California teen who discovered a naked man was in her YMCA’s women’s locker room.

New Jersey also allows men into women’s bathrooms and changing rooms in schools, as previously reported.

Secret school-supported gender transitions are also a nationwide issue.

Maine parent Amber Lavigne learned that school officials started to gender transition her daughter without her knowledge. The photo was taken at Biscay Pond, Maine, on June 27, 2022. Courtesy of Amber Lavigne

In Maine, a school counselor gender-transitioned Amber Lavigne’s 13-year-old daughter without her mother’s knowledge, as previously reported.

“She’s a minor child—my minor child!” Lavigne said, fighting tears at a school board meeting. “And under no circumstances should she have been provided a chest binder without the knowledge of the parents.”

Transgender group The Transition Closet offers school-age children closets where they can change into opposite-sex clothes for school, as previously reported.

The group has also provided “transition closets” to schools in California and Colorado.

Secret Right to Gender Transition

Secrecy about child gender transitions and other radical actions often marks the activities of the radical gender movement.

This commitment to stealth ranges from secret gender transitions to deceptively-labeled curriculum to secretly inserted LGBT messaging in libraries, as previously reported.

Groups like the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) or American Library Association (ALA) often use their nationwide influence to push the cause of gender transition.

Often, school employees don’t agree with secret sex changes but keep silent. The ASCA exerts a strong influence on how states credential school counselors, according to its website.

Cutting Parents Out

“It isn’t the school counselor’s role to ‘out’ students, but to listen, support, and provide unconditional positive regard,” ASCA’s website states.

Tom, an anonymous school counselor in Florida, told The Epoch Times he opposed secret school-supported sex changes but feared losing his job if he made his opposition public.

“The biggest problem I had was that we were cutting the parents out,” Tom said. “And we were forcing staff, kind of against their will, to cut parents out and participate in this.”

Besides transgenderism and abuse at home, he said there’s no case where a child can make a significant mental health decision without counselors telling parents.

“This is the only situation that I’ve ever been told, ‘Don’t call the parent’ and ‘Deceive the parent,’” Tom said.

School-Supported Gender Transition

Tom said he is also a Christian and that for years, he nervously awaited the day when a transgender-identifying child walked into his office and put him in a situation where he would have to confront ASCA rules.

One day, it happened.

Tom said he passed the decision up the chain of command to school leaders. Without his consent, the leaders designated him as a “safe person” for the transgender-identifying teenage girl to talk with.

“I was like, ‘Are you serious? You’re gonna throw me into this?’” he said.

School leaders said if he didn’t hide the girl’s male identity from parents, he could face a federal lawsuit, Tom said.

The school hid the girl’s choices from her parents for three months, he said.

FCPS Pride rally to support Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) pro-transgender policy outside of the Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church, Va., on June 16, 2022. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

“You would talk to the kid outside, calling them by this different name. You‘d walk into the conference with the parents, and you’d tell them to call them by the other name,” he said.

Finally, the school got tired of keeping the lies straight and told the parents the truth, Tom said. But they left out the part about the months of secrecy.

“They didn’t interpret it that way,” Tom said of the parents. “But that’s what it was.”

Even outside liberal states, schools are committed to the secret gender transition of children, Tom said.

“Just because you move from New York to Florida, or New Jersey to Florida, or California to Idaho, or Washington to Montana, doesn’t mean this is not going to happen,” he said.

The Epoch Times called JUSD for comment, but they didn’t respond by publication time.