Step right up, moms and dads. If you’d like to coparent with public school teachers, counselors, and administrators, then Northern Virginia’s Gender-Bender Five-Ring Circus is just the place for your children. 

On July 25, with good reason, the United States Department of Education found five Northern Virginia public school districts in violation of Title IX, as they are still allowing opposite-sex students into what are supposed to be single-sex, intimate facilities on the basis of so-called “gender identity.” 

Despite their federal funding being under threat, leaders in these districts continue to defy federal law, all while shirking their responsibilities to students and parents.

In Alexandria City Public Schools, for example, a middle school teacher gave her students an invasive questionnaire last week regarding their gender identity and preferred pronouns without their parents’ knowledge or consent.  In addition to asking 12-year-olds their preferred names and pronouns during the first week of class, which is ridiculous enough to begin with, the survey actively pits students against their parents by asking:

• “May I use your class name when I contact caregivers?”
•  “May I use these pronouns when I contact caregivers?”
•  “If you answered NO to any of the above, which pronouns should I use instead?”
•  ”If you answered NO to any of the above, what name should I use instead?”

The subtext of such survey questions, which are common in school districts around the country, is simple to understand. The Alexandria City Public Schools teacher, alleged to be Daiga Cers, is overtly facilitating the social “gender” transition of impressionable young children, giving them the tacit message that she is willing to keep secrets from their parents if they ask her to. 

This would be bad enough if it were just a handful of teachers desecrating parental rights and the teaching profession. The deeper problem, however, is that secret-keeping and gender ideology fervor are endemic and institutionalized throughout Northern Virginia’s public schools.

As I previously reported in IWFeatures, teachers in Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest district in Virginia, are forced to undergo an annual “Gender Expansive and Transgender Students” training that encourages hiding children’s in-school social transitions from their parents. The training states, “Prior to notification of any parent or guardian regarding the transition process, school staff should work closely with the student to assess the degree to which, if any, the parent or guardian will be involved in the process and must consider the health, well-being, and safety of the transitioning student.” In other words, they think parental involvement is optional.

The training also suggests that teachers should model their own preferred pronouns. And many teachers do. In Irving Middle School, for example, seventh-grade science teacher Carly Engle allegedly told her students last week that she is non-binary, and that students can choose either to use the pronouns she/her or xe/xem to address her. What a truly ironic introduction these 12-year-olds had to “science” in their first week of school.

A post on X reveals that another activist seventh-grade teacher, this time in Arlington County Public Schools at Gunston Middle School, subjected the class to the pervasive get-to-know-you pronouns survey in the first week of the 2025-2026 academic year.

When did this become the new normal? If a teacher is truly trying to understand students in a class, it’s completely absurd that preferred pronouns would be the leading question—or a question at all, for that matter. Rather, this is leftist political bias in the classroom, a way for activist-teachers to indoctrinate their students into district-sanctioned—indeed district-mandated—gender ideology fanaticism.  

This pattern is repeating itself in Prince William County Public Schools. Just as in the other districts, bathroom and locker room use are based on proclaimed gender identity, in violation of Title IX, rather than sex, as Title IX mandates. Teachers and administrators are not required to notify parents if their children are socially transitioning at school.  As Jen Wall, a district school board member who opposes the current policy,  said, “Children who are struggling with their gender deserve our compassion and our attention and our help. But policies that cut parents out of the discussion are not pro-child.”

Meanwhile, Loudoun County Public Schools, never to be outdone by their other dysfunctional cousins in Northern Virginia, has twisted Title IX unrecognizably from its original meaning. The school district leaders have charged two boys with Title IX violations and recently suspended them for vocalizing their discomfort with a girl being in the boys’ locker room. The girl, who identifies as transgender, was illegally filming them at the time. If there’s ever doubt that Northern Virginia is a five-ring circus, just consider that district leaders take issue with boys vocalizing their discomfort when a girl is videoing them in the boys’ locker room, rather than with the fact that there is a girl in that locker room or that she is recording the boys in what should be their intimate space.

The public school district leaders and teachers pushing a damaging gender ideology and placing a wedge between children and their parents are either wolves in sheep’s skin, or stupid sheep. But whether they are evil or merely dumb is irrelevant: they have proven themselves incapable of leadership, and should not be in charge of educating America’s children.