If your child attends public school in NYC, you may have heard of the brutal human rights battle happening in the District 2 Community Education Council meetings.

In 2019, the New York City Department of Education passed a set of Guidelines on Gender. These guidelines mean that in NYC school policy,  self-declared “gender identity” supplants biological sex.

For example, if a boy declares he is a girl, the 2019 Gender Guidelines say he must be allowed into girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Except for wrestling and mixed competition, he also must be allowed onto girls’ sports teams. This includes contact sports.

And if a girl says “I don’t feel comfortable with that boy in my locker room,” that girl must be immediately reported for student-on-student harassment under Chancellor’s Regulation A-832. Once a boy declares himself a girl, any acknowledgment that he’s not a girl becomes bullying, and the girl can be punished for correctly pointing out his sex.

Obviously, the needs of girls were not taken into account when these guidelines were written, nor does this policy help boys as it simply ignores their biological reality.  Notably, segregating sports by sex does not exclude any students from participating.

The District 2 Community Education Council (CEC D2) tried to address this in March of 2024 by passing a reasonable resolution. They asked for a committee to be formed to review the 2019 Gender Guidelines using a more complete body of evidence. That is, since the original guidelines did not consider how replacing sex with “gender identity” would harm girls, who have been historically discriminated against in education on the basis of their sex, they wanted to form a review committee that included advocates for girls.

The parents who passed this resolution did not expect what happened next.

Pro-gender activists showed up in droves to protest the resolution, scaring away parents, cursing out elected officials, grandstanding for hours, and drawing national media attention. The New York Times decided to ignore polling that 66% of New Yorkers believe sports teams should be segregated by sex, not “gender identity,” and took the side of the disruptive activists.

Opponents of letting “gender identity” subsume sex acknowledge the importance of female-only spaces and sports for girls. We are also concerned that teaching children in public schools that it is possible to be “born in the wrong body” can push distressed children into harmful and unnecessary chemical and surgical treatments.

The Cass Review, a recent high-profile review commissioned by England’s National Health Service, found that there was not enough evidence these treatments help distressed children at all. Meanwhile, prescribing these unproven treatments to children is a multimillion-dollar industry, with 1,151 children receiving wrong-sex hormones, puberty blockers, or surgery in New York State alone. Over 600 of those children had surgery to change their sex characteristics while they were still minors. These procedures can lead to sterility, complications with sexual function, and mental distress.

The legacy media is not helping us. The legacy organizations are not helping us. The activist groups who want kids to grow up believing in “gender identity” are shutting parents out. If we want these anti-science, anti-reality, child-endangering policies to end, we have to oppose them ourselves.

ROAR has been holding the line at the CEC D2 meetings in order to create space for parents who think the 2019 Gender Guidelines need to be reviewed, or who just want to talk about educational policy without having to face down an activist mob.

We started a petition to tell the NYC Public School Chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos, how many New Yorkers want a review of the 2019 Gender Guidelines.Your name will not be made public if you sign the petition. However, if you opt in to receive updates, ROAR will provide you with extra support to speak up. Whether you need updates, resources, or a friendly face in the crowd, we’re committed to making sure NYC public school parents can finally have their voices heard.