- A Connecticut school district curriculum team deemed a book about a transgender boy appropriate for second graders amid backlash from parents.
- The book “Julian Is A Mermaid” is about a young boy who wants to dress up like the mermaids he saw and then reveals his gender identity to his grandmother.
- “Including a book specifically designed to introduce gender identity and drag and then telling us it is categorically not, that is unacceptable. [I am] disappointed in the administration’s response. They are being dishonest and disingenuous,” Jackie Lenich, a parent of a second grader within the school district, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
A Connecticut school district approved a book about a young boy who wants to become transgender for second graders, despite backlash from parents.
The Darien Public School District’s Curriculum Team said “Julian Is A Mermaid,” a book about a boy, who wants to be like the women he saw dressed up as mermaids and eventually reveals his change in gender identity to his grandmother, is appropriate and will remain in the school for second graders, according to an email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Superintendent Alan Addley said the book is important to the school’s social and emotional learning curriculum, but parents told the DCNF they are displeased with the district’s handling of the situation. (RELATED: Here’s The New Left-Wing Theory Parents Are Fighting In Schools)
“Here we have a group of people who are essentially controlling the entire curriculum, and if something comes up, it falls back into [the administration’s] lap,” Megan Watros, a parent of a second grade student in the district, told the DCNF. “Their attitudes towards the control over the curriculum, they think they own our children. It’s a very scary thing that’s going on. I don’t understand it. I hold strong to my point that this is inappropriate for my seven year old daughter. It’s not right.”
The book was first brought to the attention of the district’s Board of Education on Oct. 25 and the book was approved internally by the Darien Public School District’s Curriculum Team on Nov. 23, Watros told the DCNF. Watros said she first learned about the book in the district during a conversation with her daughter after school.
“We’re at the dinner table talking and she kept telling me about the story,” Watros told the DCNF. “She starts saying things to me that she’s never ever said before. The comment she made, it was clear there was a gender discussion. She asked her little brother questions about his [gender] and I just want to tell you my stomach just dropped. I could not believe my ears.”
Addley said the book will stay in the district in order “to support the acceptance and unconditional love of differences” because it falls within the social-emotional curriculum, according to the Darien Times.
Social-emotional learning curriculums, which focuses on students learning skills to address their emotional well-being, have been criticized for laying the groundwork for Critical Race Theory in the classroom.
A kindergarten class socially distances while preparing to leave their classroom at Stark Elementary School on October 21, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. Stamford Public Schools is continuing the fall semester with a hybrid model of in-class and distance learning, occasionally quarantining individual classes when a student or faculty member tests positive for COVID-19. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Several parents had emailed the board voicing disapproval of the book in the second grade curriculum, Jackie Lenich, a parent of a second grader within the school district told the DCNF.
“Including a book specifically designed to introduce gender identity and drag and then telling us it is categorically not, that is unacceptable,” Lenich told the DCNF. “[I am] disappointed in the administration’s response. They are being dishonest and disingenuous.”
Watros told the DCNF that while the community is divided on the issue she just wants the opportunity to opt her student out of the curriculum that teaches the book.
“We support the LGBTQ plus community and my opposition to this gender identity lesson does not negate my support for the LGBTQ plus community and I want to make that absolutely clear,” Watros told the DCNF. “There’s a lot of parents in town who support this. And you know what I say to that? ‘It’s okay if you want to teach your child that, we should be able to opt out, you keep your child in.'”
Addley and the Darien School District did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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