{"id":4450,"date":"2023-07-26T17:32:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T17:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4450"},"modified":"2023-07-26T18:11:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T18:11:24","slug":"eau-claire-schools-sued-over-transition-statement-to-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4450","title":{"rendered":"Eau Claire Schools Sued Over Transition Statement to Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/eau-claire-schools-sued-over-transition-statement-to-kids\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Eau<\/p>\n

There are new questions for school leaders in Eau Claire after a parent requested to see the statement read to her kids about a teacher\u2019s transition from a man to a woman.<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on Tuesday said it is asking a judge to force the Eau Claire Area School District to hand over the statement read to students on the second to last day of school.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll orchestra students at Northstar Middle School were required to report to the orchestra room during homeroom. Once there, they found orchestra teacher Jacob Puccio, a school counselor, and the District\u2019s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion director, Dang Yang,\u201d WILL said in announcing its lawsuit against the district. \u201cStudents were told that Puccio would be undergoing a gender transition from male to female. In addition, a scripted statement was read to multiple classes of elementary and high school music students in the district, including North High School and at least three elementary schools (Sam Davey Elementary, Locust Lane Elementary, and Northwoods Elementary). The statement was crafted by the District specifically to ensure that students received information in a particular way, but to date, parents have no details about what their children were told.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those parents, Leah Buchman, said she doesn\u2019t like being in the dark about this kind of a conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I am asking is for the school district to provide what was told to my children and their peers in the classroom,\u201d Buchman explained. \u201cAs a parent, it\u2019s my responsibility to help my kids understand all that life throws their way, and I do not understand why it has taken the school district so long to update parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

WILL\u2019s lead attorney on the case, Cory Brewer, told The Center Square the issue here is not the teacher\u2019s transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic schools are government entities subject to open records laws. A scripted statement read aloud to students in multiple classes is exactly the kind of record that should be disclosed to the public\u201d Brewer explained.<\/p>\n

Eau Claire Schools said it cannot release the statement because there\u2019s now an internal investigation into the announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the events of June 5 and the inquiries received from certain parents, it was decided that there should be a formal investigation of the events of that day (and the planning that preceded that day) to determine if there were any missteps under school district policy,\u201d Eau Claire Schools said in a statement. \u201cWith the summer season upon us, the investigation has encountered some issues with witness\/employee availability. Work on the investigation is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Brewer said there was no investigation when the statement was written or delivered to the kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchool districts shouldn\u2019t be hiding anything from parents, but that is how the District chose to handle this,\u201d Brewer added.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time WILL has gone to court against Eau Claire\u2019s school district over a case that deals with the school\u2019s trans policy.<\/p>\n

WILL sued the ECASD last year over the district\u2019s policy of not telling parents about their children\u2019s gender transition in school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/eau-claire-schools-sued-over-transition-statement-to-kids\/ There are new questions for school leaders in Eau…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":4452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4453,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions\/4453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}