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The hiring of a transgender elementary school teacher has put Wake County in the national spotlight.
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School board meetings now include multiple speakers — pro and con — talking about the summer hiring of a new teacher at Middle Creek Elementary School in Apex. The story has been amplified on conservative websites and social media accounts that have called on the Trump administration to investigate the school system.
Others have rallied behind the teacher, saying the quality of the instruction should count and not the person’s gender identity.
Here’s a look at what we know about the situation:
The issue first got widespread attention in late July when Republican state Rep. Erin Paré posted online about “the hiring of a transgender biological male, who dresses as a woman music teacher, in one of our local elementary schools.” Paré floated the idea of “requiring gender-appropriate professional attire for public school employees.”
Some speakers at school board meetings have accused Paré of using the teacher to promote her political campaign. She is running for reelection against Democrat Winn Decker, whom she repeatedly has called a “transgender activist.”
Paré didn’t name the teacher, but she encouraged people to contact Middle Creek’s principal if they had concerns. Since then, multiple conservative websites and social media accounts have posted the name and photos of the teacher.
The News & Observer is not naming the teacher, who has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
The story has received national attention over the past six weeks.
Multiple conservative outlets such as Fox News, Breitbart and Newsmax have reported and criticized the teacher’s hiring.
Moms for Liberty and Libs of Tiktok have been among the conservative outlets that have posted video clips of speakers criticizing the teacher’s hiring at the school board meetings.
The latest video to get widespread attention shows a 4th-grade Middle Creek student asking the school board to “protect” her because the transgender teacher “scares” her and confuses her. Her mother has spoken at the last few board meetings criticizing the hiring of the teacher.
Critics of the teacher’s hiring have become the majority of the speakers at the last two board meetings. But some Middle Creek parents and community members have come to the teacher’s defense.
Some Middle Creek parents have said the new teacher is already well liked by the students.
“The true confusion our kids are experiencing isn’t coming from a teacher who’s asking to be called miss instead of mister,” Cal Foshee, a Middle Creek parent, told the board. “It’s coming from the blatant hypocrisy of the adults in their lives.
“They’re confused because they’ve been raised to respect their teachers, yet they watch those same adults denigrate a caring educator.”
The school district has said it’s no longer commenting on the hiring of the teacher.
Under board meeting rules, school board members don’t directly respond to comments by speakers.
But several board members have come to the teacher’s defense. For instance, board member Jennifer Job accused critics of being “willing to sacrifice this person’s love for their job for their culture war.”
Members of the LGBTQ+ community have defended the teacher at board meetings.
“I join my voice with many parents you’ve heard tonight standing for diversity, standing for people who actually care about our students rather than fearmonger and misrepresentation,” said Eliazar Posada-Orozco, the executive director of Equality NC, the state’s oldest LGBTQ+ rights group.
Some Middle Creek parents have asked that their children be allowed to opt out of the teacher’s music class. They say their requests have been rejected by the school.
Parents and Moms for Liberty have cited a state law that allows students to cite religious exemptions for opting out of assignments. Those speakers say it’s “compelled speech” to require students to use female pronouns for the music teacher.
The principal has not responded to requests for comment and the district has not publicly confirmed if the opt-out requests are being rejected. Instead, Wake has referred questions about the opt-out requests to its policy on class assignments.
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“The principal shall balance any individual request for assignment or reassignment within the school against the welfare of other students and the efficient operation of the school,” Wake’s policy says.
One of the potential difficulties of letting students opt out is that Middle Creek only has one music teacher.
Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, had predicted that the hiring of the trans teacher “will surely cause mass exodus from the school.”
Wake says it can’t say if any students have left Middle Creek or are attending the school because of the teacher. But the district says Middle Creek has 584 students, which is higher than its projected enrollment of 559. Middle Creek is located in a growing part of the county.
This year’s enrollment is lower than the 610 students Middle Creek had at the same time last school year. But the district says Middle Creek’s enrollment was expected to be smaller this year because students were reassigned to make way for future growth.
Aaron Driver, leader of the group Middle Creek Parental Rights, has publicly called on the Trump administration to investigate Wake. He called the hiring of the teacher an attempt to circumvent the North Carolina Parents’ Bill of Rights law that bans instruction on gender identity in kindergarten through fourth grade.
“I believe the school board is totally illegitimate and completely rogue,” Driver told the board. “If you want to show the country what far-left ideological capture of public education looks like and what accountability looks like afterwards, start with Wake County.”
The Trump administration has launched multiple investigations into school districts over allowing transgender students to use the school restroom that matches their gender identity. Wake could draw attention because it’s the largest school system in North Carolina and the 14th-largest in the nation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon was asked by Newsmax last week if she would investigate Wake. In response, Dhillon pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The United States Supreme Court in the Bostock case ruled that employees like this teacher have employment rights,” Dhillon told Newsmax.
But Dhillon said the Supreme Court also ruled that a Maryland school district must allow parents to opt their elementary school children out of instruction using LGBTQ+-inclusive storybooks. Dhillon said the Middle Creek teacher “cannot cross over into indoctrinating students.”
Dhillon said she would need to know more about the details of the Middle Creek case.
Some critics of the teacher’s hiring have called being transgender a mental illness.
But the American Psychiatric Association stopped labeling being transgender as a mental disorder in 2013.
The American Psychological Association calls it a “scientifically discredited belief that being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness that should be cured.”
The American Medical Association says any assumption that gender nonconformity is a mental disorder “is not based on medical or scientific evidence.”
In 2018, the AMA opposed the first Trump administration’s effort to narrow the definition of gender to either male or female.
“Sex and gender are more complex than previously assumed,” said AMA Board Member William E. Kobler, a physician. “It is essential to acknowledge that an individual’s gender identity may not align with the sex assigned to them at birth. A narrow limit on the definition of sex would have public health consequences for the transgender population and individuals born with differences in sexual differentiation, also known as intersex traits.”
The AMA said it would “work to preserve access to quality health care by educating state and federal policymakers to ensure they have a fundamental understanding of the scientific nature of a person’s sex.”
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