Frustration trumps candor during Congressional hearing on abuse of parental rights

Before a single witness said a word in the June 10 hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce, Chairman Tim Walberg (R–MI) laid out the case. He explained how Chicago Public Schools introduce gender identity to children in first grade and puberty blockers by fifth grade. The Chicago schools also help kids change their names, pronouns, and which locker room they use, often without telling parents. Chicago and Loudoun County (Virginia) both allow biological boys, case by case, to share a room with biological girls on overnight trips. Condoms are handed to twelve-year-olds in Chicago. The district’s website reminds minors that Illinois requires no parental notice for an abortion.

Then Congressman Walberg told the story that should have set the tone for the whole morning. In 2021, at Stonebridge High in Loudoun County, a boy in a skirt walked into a girls’ bathroom and sexually assaulted a fifteen-year-old. The only person police were called to interdict was the victim’s father, who had committed the crime of showing up at the school and demanding answers. It was a strong opening for the hearing. Specific, documented, impossible to wave away.

And it was all downhill from there.

One congressman asked Dr. Macquline King a simple question: Is it appropriate to teach a ten-year-old about puberty blockers?

King is the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, with more than 300,000 children in her care and a budget of more than $10 billion. She has spent decades in education and is happy to remind you about it. She is also a mother.

And she could not answer plainly, not as a superintendent and not even as a parent. The closest she came was that she “would want to have that conversation.” A grown woman in charge of a city’s children could not give a “yes” or a “no” on whether fifth graders should be taught about drugs that halt puberty, the same drugs the United Kingdom has banned for treating gender dysphoria in minors.

That is how the whole hearing went: three superintendents, but rarely a straight answer.

The House Education and Workforce Committee brought the three school officials to Washington. King came under subpoena. Dr. Aaron Spence of Loudoun County, Virginia, and Dr. Maria Su of San Francisco Unified came voluntarily. The hearing was titled “Breaking Trust: Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools.” Parents across the country say they cannot find out what their schools are doing to their kids, so Congress decided to ask on their behalf.

The whole point was supposed to be transparency with straightforward answers to straightforward questions. But whenever a question was clearly asked, the same answer kept rolling in from these three district leaders. “We are in compliance with state law.” “We follow state and federal law.” “We welcome all our students as they are.”

I spent the majority of my career teaching in California public schools. I can tell you that when a principal asks you a direct question about your classroom procedures, “I follow district policy” is not an answer that keeps your job. Yet somehow, it is the answer that runs at least three big American school districts.

When one congressman asked whether biological males belong in girls’ locker rooms, Spence said yes. He said “federal law requires it,” and later pointed to a Fourth U.S. Circuit ruling, Grimm v. Gloucester. Pretty convenient that the law can compel school policies that left-leaning school district leaders already want.

When asked whether teachers ever lie to parents about the name and pronouns a child uses at school, each superintendent was suddenly “not aware” of any such instance. But secrecy is the whole point of the policy. In a district where hiding the information is the written rule, no one ever has to confess to hiding it.

And when a congresswoman walked Spence through a 2025 case in Loudoun, where three boys were filmed in their own locker room, and the boys who objected were reportedly punished more harshly than the trans student doing the filming, Spence vanished into one sentence and stayed there. “We would not discipline students absent a violation of our policies.” The question was asked four more times in four different ways, generating the same answer all five times. The congresswoman rightly called the responses pathetic.

A Loudoun mother asked to review certain curriculum and was told it was proprietary, protected by the vendor’s site license. A licensing agreement now outranks a parent’s right to know what her child reads. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court affirmed that parents can opt their kids out of LGBTQ instruction for religious reasons. When asked whether Chicago had updated its public materials to tell parents that the right exists, King recited her line about Illinois law.

Just a reminder of what this hearing was for. In Chicago, children meet gender identity in first grade and puberty blockers by fifth grade. Condoms are available to twelve-year-olds. The district’s website reminds minors that Illinois requires no parental notice for an abortion. These are not fringe accusations. They are the official, published positions of the people who could not bring themselves to defend them under oath. And when pressed to answer, the same canned answer kept coming up. Frustrating to say the least.

When a Florida congressman held up an actual permission slip stating that Chicago students would “engage in political advocacy,” and a photo of a CPS student on a taxpayer-funded bus to a union-led protest carrying a sign comparing the president to Hitler, then the answer became clear, even though Superintendent King had just called that day “not a politically slated event.” Confronted with the document, she agreed to investigate.

That is what one prepared lawmaker with one piece of paper accomplished. More of this needed to happen at the hearing.

The rest of the committee mostly gave speeches and lobbed generic questions a press secretary could swat away half asleep. The chairman proved in his opening statement, in about five minutes, that the evidence is out there. There are named incidents, real documents, and specific lessons in every one of these districts. Members should have walked in armed with them and refused to let go.

The top comment under the hearing video asked whether anyone on the committee actually prepared. I hate to say it, but that viewer was watching more closely than half the people asking the questions. The hearing was supposed to give parents answers. Instead, they got hypothetical questions, very few straight answers, and three superintendents walking out patting themselves on the back for keeping the lights off on what happens in our schools.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/frustration-trumps-candor-during-congressional-hearing-on-abuse-of-parental-rights/