Vicky Arias, FISM News
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Washington D.C. public schools recently launched a survey asking students to identify their sexual preference and transgender status. The survey has been a yearly occurrence in recent years.
District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) sent an email to parents on Tuesday informing them that a survey will be administered to “students in grades 6-12 [asking them] about their gender and sexual identity.”
The email explains that the survey is used to gauge students’ “social [and] emotional learning” and that there is a section that poses questions about “gender and sexual identity.” Parents may opt their child out of the survey by contacting the school, according to the email.
Over 20,000 students, grades 6-12, were enrolled in District of Columbia schools in the 2021-2022 school year, 8,362 of which were in grades 6-8.
The questionnaire asks the students to choose what best fits their “sexual identity.” They can answer with “heterosexual,” “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual,” “questioning/not sure,” or “other.”
The students are then asked to identify their gender.
“Some people describe themselves as transgender when their sex at birth does not match the way they think or feel about their gender. Are you transgender?” the survey reads. The students can answer yes, no, or that they aren’t sure.
The survey is distributed by Panorama Education, a company co-founded by U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland’s son-in-law, Alexander Tanner.
The education company is coming under fire for the survey, as parents across the country have become more vocal in their opposition of the school systems promoting progressive ideologies.
The push of transgenderism by the White House, activists, children’s hospitals, and school systems has resulted in an exponential spike in gender confusion and irreversible gender surgeries among children. The Journal of the American Medical Association released a report last week showing that the number of chest reconstruction surgeries performed on minors increased from about 100 in 2016 to 489 in 2019, a 389% increase in just three years.
This is not the first time the company has faced controversy for its liberal leanings either.
According to ABC News, Tanner and Garland received backlash in 2021 about Panorama after “Garland directed the FBI to investigate alleged threats against school boards from parents opposed to implementing critical race theory (CRT) in schools, [since] Panorama [had] previously held workshops on CRT-related ideas.”
Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) criticized Garland’s decision to involve the FBI in school board protests in a letter stating that Garland’s directive “appears intended to intimidate parents across the country into silence.”
According to Forbes, “school districts in Texas, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, Rhode Island, Oregon, Iowa, Utah, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Georgia, New Mexico, Illinois, Wyoming, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maine, Virginia, and Ohio all hired Panorama Education for training and/or surveys…[the company] sells surveys to school districts across the country that focus on the local ‘social and emotion[al] climate’ [and] are then used as justification for new curriculum from other providers that some parents call critical race theory and find objectionable.”
From 2017 – 2020, Panorama Education earned nearly $15 million from California, New York and Illinois school districts alone and raised $60 million in 2021 “to expand tools for educators to effectively support every student.”