Parent dressed as Easter bunny distributed condoms to elementary school students in Texas
A Texas elementary school has distanced itself from a parent who dressed up as the Easter bunny and passed out condoms to students last week.
Tammy Thompson, the principal of Gullett Elementary School in Austin, Texas, sent a letter to parents informing them that a parent dressed as an Easter bunny passed out condoms to children during dismissal time Thursday.
Fox 7 Austin obtained the letter, which read: “This afternoon during dismissal, a Gullett parent visited campus dressed as the Easter Bunny and handed out plastic eggs. Some of those eggs contained candy, and some students were also given unopened condoms.”
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“Please know that this was not a planned event, nor sanctioned by the school, and we have spoken with the parent about the inappropriate nature of their activity," Thompson added. "We value parent participation and always request that you work with campus staff to best support our students."
Located in northwest Austin, Gullett Elementary School serves more than 500 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, according to the Austin Independent School District website.
A school district spokesperson told local news outlet KXAN that the district is "working to review our safety protocols to ensure this does not happen again." The spokesperson characterized the occurrence as “an incredibly careless and inappropriate action of a parent.”
Although the parent was told to leave the school campus, the individual continued to give out the Easter eggs on a nearby public sidewalk.
While Austin Independent School District maintains that the distribution of condoms was an accident, other school districts in large U.S. cities have strived to make condoms available to young children as part of sex education.
In 2020, the Chicago Public Schools’ Board of Education passed a policy requiring schools to make condoms accessible to students as young as fifth grade.
Under the policy, all but a dozen of the district’s 600 schools would have condoms on campus, including several that educate small children.
Conservative groups criticized the policy in Illinois’ largest city.
Maryanne Mosaz of the sexual risk avoidance advocacy group Ascend stressed that “children are not cognitively, emotionally or physically ready to handle these kinds of acts."
Meg Kilgannon of the Family Research Council agreed that children “can never meaningfully consent to sex acts.”
In addition to Austin ISD, a much smaller school district made headlines for what it asserted was the accidental exposure of young children to condoms.
In 2019, Sullivan County Schools in Tennessee sent a flyer advertising a three-day clinic providing “free birth control including implants, IUDs, pills, condoms, and more” home with second-grade students.
The school district assured concerned parents that it did not realize that the flyer, which advertised free dental, medical and vision services on the other side of the sheet, contained a second page promoting free birth control.
The distribution of Easter eggs containing unopened condoms to elementary school students comes when some public schools in the U.S. face intense pushback for embracing sexual education curricula that some parents feel are inappropriate for young children.
Austin Independent School District is not immune to the controversy.
Earlier this year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to Austin ISD contending that district violated state law by holding a “Pride Week” encouraging schools to “plan activities that ‘engage, educate and inspire’ students concerning ‘LGBTQIA+’ issues.”
Paxton wrote that Texas law requires that “[b]efore a student may be provided with human sexuality instruction, a school district must obtain the written consent of the student’s parent.”
Today, I sent a letter to @AustinISD for their curriculum and lesson plans that constitute “human sexuality instruction” governed by state law.
— Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) March 22, 2022
The Texas Legislature has made it clear that when it comes to sex education, parents—not school districts—are in charge. pic.twitter.com/pVZ4Sj8GMF
“By hosting ‘Pride Week,’ your district has, at best, undertaken a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent,” he maintained. “Or worse, your district is cynically pushing a week-long indoctrination of your students that not only fails to obtain parental consent, but subtly cuts parents out of the loop. Either way, you are breaking state law.”
In response to Paxton’s letter, AISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde posted a message on Twitter stating, “I want all our LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks.” Throughout the week, the district added several pictures of elementary schools participating in “Pride Week” festivities to its Twitter feed.
I want all our LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks. https://t.co/fNGiaoNM3q
— Dr. Stephanie S. Elizalde (@AustinISDsupt) March 23, 2022
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
