A pink flyer is going around Santa Fe public schools right now, advertising “Gender Support Plans” to students. To make matters worse, it comes right alongside a form that students are made to fill out, asking them their preferred name and pronouns, asking whether or not their teachers should use their preferred name and pronouns with their parents, and telling them their teachers will keep this information confidential.
This is the same secrecy IW Features reported on in September. Last year, after a transgender-identifying boy was using the girls’ bathroom at a Santa Fe elementary school, parents started asking questions about the district’s gender policy. In August of this year, the district said it revised that policy, Administrative Regulation 330, which is supposed to make it so that parents have to be contacted before a child’s name or gender marker is changed in official records. But this is only about official records, not about what the child is called at school all day and how the child presents—parents are still locked out of those day-to-day moments. Indeed, the policy says that “[s]tudents have a right to keep their transgender status confidential, and may choose who and how this is shared.”
As one mother, Jenna Ortiz, told IW Features, “It was more of a ‘let’s-just-do-this-and-shut-them-up’ situation instead of ‘let’s hear these parents out.’”
These flyers suggest she was right.
As the form shows, the school is aiding students in maintaining one identity at school and another at home, all while keeping parents entirely out of the loop.
“I was signing other forms that required my signature, [and] then I got to this form that didn’t have a spot for me to sign,” one father told IW Features. “[I] read the part where it said, ‘Would you like us to not disclose this or use this [preferred] name with your parents?’ And I thought, ‘Why would they be withholding information about my child from their legal guardian? That doesn’t seem right.’ Matter of fact, it seems like a deliberate green light for kids to keep all kinds of secrets from their legal guardians. That’s not OK with me.”
This goes beyond Santa Fe. Independent Women found eight New Mexico districts with policies that let children socially transition without their parents knowing: Albuquerque, Gadsden, Gallup-McKinley, Las Cruces, Los Alamos, Moriarty-Edgewood, Rio Rancho, and Santa Fe. They operate under HB 7, a 2023 state law requiring public bodies, including schools, to protect access to “gender-affirming” care.
Most New Mexicans are against this. In Independent Women’s polling, 88% disagreed that teachers and school nurses should be able to transition kids without telling parents, and 77% said they were concerned that state law fast-tracks minors toward lifelong medical treatment without parental consent. But most New Mexicans don’t even know the law exists: 54% had never heard of HB 7, and only 15% said they were very familiar with it.
Meanwhile, the actual mission of schools—educating children—is going by the wayside. Only 20% of New Mexico fourth graders are proficient in reading, and 14% of eighth graders are proficient in math. The state also has the worst chronic absenteeism rate in the country. Maybe if the state put in as much effort into teaching children how to read as it does into making flyers teaching children how to keep secrets from their parents, those numbers might improve.
If you’re a Santa Fe parent, ask your kids whether they’ve gotten this form. And if you have a story about New Mexico schools, share it with IW Features.