Salem-Keizer We Stand Together (SKWST) founder and president and Marion County Republican Linda Farrington wrote a heartfelt but scathing letter to the school board recently, following up on testimony submitted at their "public" (virtual) meeting on 14 June. By permission it is largely reprinted below. It has been edited slightly. Links are provided to attachments she submitted with the letter; images included here were part of the letter or attachments, as well. Finally, unless otherwise noted, all emphasis (bold, italics, underline) was part of the original letter.

This is a follow up letter to my comments at the school board meeting.

There were big proclamations of "Success" this year that included many diverse populations — yet the school district isn't even measuring how much students learn in core subjects anymore. The District report card is simply a demographic report and reruns 2019 statistics.

1. It would be more helpful more inclusive, and more welcoming if you would simply say, Welcome everyone, in your opening monologue. By trying to name every small sector of the community you are actually leaving out that many more communities which sets up resentment unnecessarily. We need to identify as Salem Keizer- and celebrate our unique backgrounds. Not the other way around.
2. There really is no justification not to hold in-person meetings. You have made very little time available to talk to you. Yet school boards are supposed to be representative of the people.
3. Along with that, if Chair Avila cannot handle the job as Chair by himself he should step down. Two vice chairs when you won't even include other ELECTED board members in the decision making is highly disrespectful to our community who VOTED for them.
4. It is also highly disrespectful of you to box out Dr Satya Chandragiri from making comments. He has bent over backward to find common ground with you.
   Chair Avila, how could you not give him one committee assignment? He is your senior with a lifetime of experience with children, people, and multicultural worlds. By muzzling him, you have muzzled an entire zone of the Salem Keizer school district. It is neither right nor just!
5. I support reinstating SRO's and I believe it is more respectful to hold students accountable to a high standard of behavior. I expect more out of every student because I believe they can do it!
6. I do not support the LGBTQ+ pride proclamation because I think that you are focusing on matters that are private and don't belong at school. There is a finite amount of time in the day and you are neglecting core school subjects-- and it shows. Public education in our district holds very little value. We've been told that some students are 2-3 years behind and private schools won't take them because the gap is too great.

In June, the school district celebrates the LGBTQ+ community: people who are two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, pansexual, asexual, gender-fluid, nonbinary, intersex, and many other identities... .

I am trying to figure out WHY we are celebrating sexual preferences at school? Why? This is school and you are failing at giving our children a quality education. There is a finite amount of time to teach and you are spending precious moments on the wrong agenda. I'm not "hating" on the LGBTQ community. I'm not transphobic. I just don't think it belongs at school! Rainbows are everywhere, yet I remember when my kids couldn't even wear their feeder school's tee shirt because of the understanding that schools are for school only — not a public-rights campaign for special interest groups.

You talk about respect [PDF] and authentic expression, yet you are introducing to five-year-olds the possibility that they are born in the wrong body. How disrespectful is that? Why, for the life of me, are you affirming a child's imagination? We have always known that childhood and adolescence are the most unstable times in a person's life. How could you buy the lie that ignoring biology, the scientific fact that each cell in our body tells us whether we are a boy or a girl? That never changes, no matter how much cosmetic surgery or hormones we take.

The Welcoming Schools page says

"When students feel safe to express their identities across the gender spectrum, they will be more prepared to learn and thrive in your school."

I would like to see the evidence on this because I strongly disagree! I think the outcomes seen at schools this year show that CSE and Transformative Justice policies — all under the Equity Lens — are creating more problems, more chaos, more unwelcome and unsafe classrooms; adding to the already normal confusion that fills a child's mind as one grows up. I think that if you had put all your efforts the last couple years into getting students up to speed, you could have solved most of the students' mental health needs, because we are born to contribute and be productive. That is the real cure for depression, not cry rooms.

All kids are looking to belong. And we want all kids to belong. But you don't get there by dividing them by race and then teaching them to have better sex! You are robbing children of their childhoods by pushing this ideology and destroying their innocence. And you are robbing them of their futures because you are attacking and messing with their core — their sense of identity — at the most vulnerable time in their lives.

Sex is for adults not children. Sex Ed is supposed to be age appropriate and medically necessary. yet, Comprehensive Sex Ed (CSE) and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) that you have implemented this year — without consulting parents — goes way beyond that. CSE and SEL remove all social standards for behavior and are grooming children. You are over-informing them and setting them up to be potential pornography addicts forever. Do you know how difficult it is for young adolescents to have real relationships when they are addicted to porn? Why is this information necessary? And why can't you be honest and transparent with parents and the community?

SKPS EVIDENCE

1. The school libraries have inappropriate books available for children: Gender Queer — a comic book teaching gay men how to pleasure one another; doing a blow job and various ways that they masturbate
2. My Future-My Choice and Amaze videos are included in SKPS curriculum: This material destroys traditional social norms and is promoting sexual freedom. 
3. The surveys you insist on giving students introduce them to subjects that they have no business knowing about such as sexual situations that involve anal sex, gay sex, masturbation, bisexual information,
4. Grade schools are promoting books praising transgenderism in young children. Children, mind you! Who shouldn't even be worried about anything sexual. Why are you destroying their innocence? Something they can't ever get back.
   
   Lesson Plan: CALVIN: Time To Be Me! Calvin has always been a boy, even if the world sees him as a girl. He knows who he is in his heart and in his mind, but he hasn't yet told his family. Finally, he can wait no longer. [K - 2]
   Lesson Plan: I Am Jazz: Understanding Transgender Children: This picture book, I Am Jazz, based on the life of Jazz Jennings, can help start a conversation with students on what it means to be transgender. Listen to Jazz Jennings read I Am Jazz. [K - 5]
5. You are passing out gender pronouns — that include they/them, bun/bunself, dog/dogself, cat/catself! Really? Some teachers gave out two at a time because not only is it possible that they are in the wrong body, it's possible to be something different every day, because "gender identity is fluid". Our identities are not fluid. Our personalities and moods might be fluid, but not WHO we are.
6. SEICUS — who seems to be driving the sexual agenda in our district, had a conference in March this year, Sex Ed for Social Change: Exploring the road of porn literacy in sex ed. This is totally inappropriate!/
7. CSE and SEL coach kids how to have better sex under the right to pleasure. You are titillating an already sexually-charged child and adolescent and then wonder why the kids are having sex at school and why STDs are rising alarmingly? (County data will confirm)

In 2012, the Future of Sex Education Initiative, of which Advocates for Youth is a founding member, along with Answer, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), created the National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12.

Our school district aligns closely with ODE, which, in turn, aligns closely with the National Sexuality Education Standards, i.e. Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). CSE advocates are quite open about their goal: To change society by changing sexual and gender norms and teaching youth to advocate for their sexual rights [Bold added]. Most CSE programs promote acceptance of diverse sexual identities and orientations and enlist youth in combating "homophobia" and "heterosexism".

Dr. Miriam Grossman, one of the foremost experts in the United States on sexuality education, quoted the International Guidelines on Sexuality Education (UNESCO): "One of the learning objectives [of sexuality education] is to 'change social norms.' She says, "I've discovered that the vision of groups such as Planned Parenthood and SIECUS — the groups at the helm of sexuality education in the U.S. — is not sexual health. It is sexual freedom. They tacitly endorse early sexual activity and multiple partners as well as sexual experimentation, which are the very behaviors that fuel the epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, abortion, and emotional distress. The people who practice the lifestyles endorsed by these groups have more doctors' appointments, not less."

Recently, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) was introduced. Originally, the goal of SEL was to promote morally-neutral soft skills such as self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and goal setting. However, there has now been a shift to "Transformative SEL" [PDF], which places sexuality into CSE in an effort to create a rights-based, sex-positive approach. These concepts are being drilled into young minds with no way to shield or protect themselves. CSE and SEL remove all social standards for behavior and are grooming children.

This might explain the steep and sudden climb in children identifying as LGBTQ+ and transgender. A climb that matches the time when the schools decided to embrace the LGBTQ agenda. Healthy Teen Surveys indicated there were about 3-5% in 2019 who identified as LGBTQ and now you say 30% of students claim to be LGBTQ. Recent studies actually confirm evidence of a social contagion, not biology, that is more likely creating the transgender/LGBTQ craze. SEE: The Gender Agenda (https://vimeo.com/362859674/795b2832cf)

RECENT TESTIMONIALS AT SKPS Board meetings:

1. "My son goes to Straub said this am in advisory they made them watch a Pride month video , it's ok to be gay and something about a day for or about black people 6/17"
2. "..at one point McNary was teaching kids what facial expressions meant "consensual" sex while having anal sex… So they are teaching this in schools"
3. "My son was in his 6^th-grade math class when his teacher was introducing herself. She then proceeded to tell them she was a safe person to talk with about anything because she was bisexual. My son learned a new word that day because when he came home he asked me what bisexual meant. I feel that teaching these kids these words at a young age is totally inappropriate and should be the job of the parent. I know a few of the other parents at the school emailed the principal about this. Not sure if she did anything about it."
4. "My son in fourth grade was told by his teacher to the whole class how her daughter transitioned to a boy"

OUTCOMES (Marion County Website)

1. Marion County's rates for Chlamydia, Syphilis and Gonorrhea are well above the state average for the number of reported cases, and growing. This only accounts for REPORTED cases, meaning that there are likely many more people infected with STDs who don't know it,
2. Congenital Syphilis (CS) cases have increased significantly in Oregon in recent years. In 2013, no cases of CS were reported to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA). By contrast, in 2020 there were 19 reported CS cases. In 2019, Oregon ranked 11^th-highest in the nation for CS cases with a rate of 43 cases per 100,000 live births. Congenital syphilis is deadly. Five of the 69 (7%) CS cases were stillborn and 2 (3%) were characterized by neonatal death for an overall case fatality rate of 10%. Concurrently, the rate of early syphilis, including primary, secondary, and early non- primary non-secondary syphilis (formerly early latent), among people assigned female at birth increased over 900% from 2013 to 2020.
3. April 2022 — The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) STD Program recently issued a HAN Alert regarding year-over- year increases in syphilis diagnoses among pregnant people and infants in Oregon. There were 28 cases of congenital syphilis in 2021 (preliminary data as of 12/30/2021), an increase from 19 cases in 2020. Oregon counties that have never seen a case of congenital syphilis are now receiving reports of babies born with syphilis.
4. Marion County generally has over 2,000 teenage pregnancies (p.14) each year. And over 3,000 Marion County women become single mothers each year, and the percentage of women who are the head of the households is increasing.
   https://www.co.marion.or.us/. . .makingthedifferencefinal1.pdf [PDF]

The recently revealed transgender policies that the Salem Keizer School District put into place behind parents backs [Bold added] show continued disrespect for parents and students. By favoring one small identity group you are again dividing students and overlooking the real civil rights violations to other students. You are supposed to be partnering with parents, Superintendent Perry. At the very least you should be working with the school board. Yet you didn't even have plans to inform them of these drastic and controversial changes. That is how little you respect them and the parents.

In addition:

1. These policies put the child in the drivers seat. They put children starting in kindergarten in charge of their own health care. What a burden that must be for the child! I remember how much pressure it was to figure out what I wanted to be at age 18, let alone in elementary school.
2. They can, in fact, transition genders without telling the parent — at age 5 — according to your policies.
3. Boys can also walk into girls' locker rooms unannounced under the concept of gender fluidity. If any man can simply announce that he's a woman, then what is a woman?
4. A student's perceived gender identity must be affirmed over which bathroom one can use and which bedroom students share on overnight trips. What a self-centered point of view.
5. Library books affirming LGBTQ/transgenderism distributed without thought to age-appropriateness.

Studies show that most gender-confused kids are already troubled and most have a mental illness diagnosis already. And yet you trust them to be in charge of permanent health care decisions, when an adult in their situation wouldn't be permitted to sign a consent form? This blind allegiance to the "Trans" agenda is unbelievable! Schools still can't give out an aspirin without parental permission. Or go on a field trip. But gender affirming surgery? Genital tucking? Hormone therapy? Double mastectomy? All perfectly fine — without parental knowledge.

Why do you think children live at home? Are they able to hang up their towels and tie their own shoes yet? No! But you want to give them control over something they can't even understand! We know for sure that the neural pathways in their brains aren't equipped to make these decisions until they are at least 25 years old.

FAILURE OF CSE

The Institute for Research & Evaluation conducted a study that found 103 Comprehensive Sexuality Education programs — 60 of which are in the United States — have an 87% failure rate. The study found evidence of positive outcomes for only six (6) of the 103 programs and 16 with negative outcomes (sexual activity, number of partners, oral sex, forced sex, STDs, pregnancy).
"Conclusions: Some of the strongest, most current school-based CSE studies worldwide show very little evidence of real program effectiveness. In the U.S., the evidence, though limited, appeared somewhat better for abstinence education." (Abstract) [Emphasis added]
https://www.institute-research.com/published-cse.php,

Peer-reviewed studies that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relied upon to label 18 school-based CSE programs as "evidence-based" for preventing pregnancy and STDs often didn't even measure outcomes like condom use, STDs, and number of pregnancies.
https://www.ire.org

UNSUPPORTED DATA FOR TREATMENT of TRANSGENDER STUDENTS:

Gender ideologues are deluding young adults into believing that these treatments will take away the anxiety and confusion they feel. But no matter how many procedures one undergoes, no matter how many rounds of hormonal therapy are prescribed, the fact remains that a woman will always be a woman and a man will always be a man. No wonder, then, that gender-confused persons who undergo experimental interventions in the hopes that this reality will have changed are struck by despair and hopelessness when they realize it has not. The effort to deny biological reality is doing irreversible harm to people's bodies and minds. It is not compassionate — it's cruel.
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/BG3712_0.pdf [PDF]

"The transgender intervention literature is wholly observational and almost entirely without controls. It is a miasma of selection bias, unmeasured confounding, and missing data. Many transgender research studies in the past few decades have been conducted by activist researchers who seem deeply committed to "proving" the benefits of transgender interventions, no matter how speculative or tendentious the research question." — "Activist-driven Transgender Research Methods are Reckless and Will Lead to Harms", by Hacsi Horváth, MA, PgCert (Sheffield)
https://stoptransingkids.wordpress.com/2020/07/17/. . .

"Under the affirmative model of care, adolescents and adults are generally enabled to pursue medical interventions right away, seldom being told by their doctors 'No, you are making a mistake'." — Horváth, "The Theatre of the Body: A Detransitioned Epidemiologist Examines Suicidality, Affirmation, and Transgender Identity"
https://4thwavenow.com/2018/12/19/. . .

"1. U.S. policymakers are seeking to make it easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones based on the claim that doing so reduces suicide risk. 2. Studies finding that "gender-affirming" interventions prevent suicide fail to show a causal relationship and have been poorly executed. 3. A superior research design shows that easing access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by minors without parental consent increases suicide rates." (Takeaways) — "Puberty Blockers, Cross-Sex Hormones, and Youth Suicide", by Jay P. Greene, PhD
http://report.heritage.org/bg3712

STUDENT SUCCESS due to PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT: It is parents who determine success more than any other factor in a student's life .
https://www.waterford.org/education/how-parent-involvment-leads-to-student-success/
https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/parental-involvement-is-key-to-student-success

Everyone needs to feel validated! But validating a lie so they might feel better for a minute is not helpful. And we are ANGRY about that.

There is no such thing as a transgender child! Every child is perfect just the way they are! And we should be affirming that. And making sure that every child knows they are precious exactly the way the were born.

We want the sexualizing and labeling and dividing to stop. At a time when kids are already insecure and looking for the boundaries, you take away even the most obvious anchor they could hold on to — their biological anatomy — something they should be able to count on to affirm that they are a boy or a girl. Every single cell in their body tells them whether they are a boy or a girl, no matter what changes are done to the outside.

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