Ogden School District has guidance mandating that parents be involved with their children on transgender issues

Parents Defending Education submitted a public records request to the Ogden School District seeking any transgender guidance used for students. The school district provided PDE with two documents titled “Restroom Access and Transgender Students in Utah” and “Utah Public Schools Gender Guidance Resource.”

The document “Utah Public Schools Gender Guidance Resource” estimates that approximately 1,400 students in Utah identify as transgender. This is 0.3 percent of the number of students in Utah. This document supports parental involvement if students identify as transgender: “School staff is required to notify parents if a student expresses a desire to identify as transgender, change his or her name, or use pronouns at school that don’t correspond to their biological sex on their birth certificate.” The document also adds: “Teachers and administrators should not require, coerce, or compel others to use certain pronouns.”

This document appears to explain that social media and peer pressure are a leading cause of students identifying as transgender:

2018 study by Lisa Littman, Public Library of Science (PLOS One) showed that the increasing numbers of transgender-identified individuals are correlated to access to transgender-promoting information, overuse of YouTube, Social media outlets (reddit, tumblr, TikTok, Facebook), as well as their social network or friends identifying as transgender

PDE submitted a second public records request asking where the language of this document originated. The district explained that it was created by “Ogden School District’s former director of equity and Title IX programs.”