Parents demand answers after school assigned 11-year-old daughter to share bed with trans-identified boy
Two Christian parents in Colorado are demanding answers from their public school district after claiming their fifth-grade daughter was assigned to share a bed with a trans-identifying boy on a school trip last summer.
Legal counsel for Joe and Serena Wailes also asked Jefferson County School Board and Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) Superintendent Tracy Dorland to clarify the district's overnight rooming policy by Dec. 18, according a copy of the letter sent to them Monday by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
The Wailes' daughter — whom the letter refers to as "D.W." — was reportedly assigned to sleep alongside a trans-identifying boy dubbed "K.E.M.," despite assurances from the school that boys and girls on the cross-country trip to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., would have separate sleeping arrangements and even be placed on separate floors.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The letter notes that Serena Wailes was present on the trip despite not being a chaperone, and claims her daughter was distressed to learn one of the three people she was assigned to room with was a biological male, who happened to tell her about his transgender identity on the first night of the trip.
After her daughter called her in distress from the bathroom of her hotel room, Serena complained to the school chaperone, who asked the girl if she would be willing to simply move beds instead of rooms, which she reluctantly agreed to do for one night, ADF said.
JCPS did not immediately return The Christian Post's request for comment.
ADF also alleges that school officials also lied to the other girls in the room about the situation and expected D.W. to do the same.
"It then took the girl and her parents multiple requests to get her moved to another room. And even then, chaperones told the girl to lie about the reason for her move because of the district’s overnight rooming policy — a policy that violates parental rights and student privacy by rooming students based on gender identity while hiding that information from other parents and students," the letter explained.
Serena Wailes told The Daily Signal that she was "really upset" by her daughter's situation, and that she didn't think it was appropriate for an 11-year-old girl to be faced with it.
"One, I was really upset that she was put in that situation at 11 years old — I don’t feel that is fair to put kids in that kind of situation — and two, that we were not even given the information that this was a possibility before the trip," she told the outlet.
"The whole time they’re saying, ‘Girls on one floor, boys on another, they’re not going to be in each other’s rooms unless it is pre-approved.’ So we’re going through this whole process, not even recognizing that this is a possibility," she continued.
Serena's husband, Joe, told the outlet that he felt "helpless" when he learned about the ordeal, noting that he was 2,000 miles away and could do nothing about it at the time.
The letter from ADF concludes by urging school officials to respond to clarification on its overnight sleeping policy by Dec. 18, noting that the Wailes have two fourth-grade twins who are slated to go on the same cross-country trip next year and want to avoid a repeat of their daughter's ordeal.
JCPS made headlines earlier this year for having a system in place by which school officials are able to hide a student's self-declared gender identity from parents and to use their gender identity to determine where they sleep on overnight trips, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital.
