A Colorado family is speaking out and urging a local school district to change its policy after their 11-year-old daughter was assigned a bed with a biological male who identifies as female during an overnight trip.
The controversy began in the summer of 2023 when the 11-year-old fifth-grade girl went on a cross-country trip to Philadelphia and Washington D.C., where students share rooms (four to a room and two to each bed). Although parents were told that female and male students would be staying on different hotel floors, one of the girls -- known as “D.W.” -- learned on the first night of the trip that she would be sharing a bed with a male student who identifies as transgender. The trans-identifying student, who attended a different school, disclosed the information to her.
D.W. stepped into the bathroom to call her mom, who was on the trip but was not serving as a chaperone. Eventually, the school staff agreed to move D.W. to another room.
D.W. attends school within the Jefferson County Public School District.
D.W.’s parents, Joe and Serena Wailes, should have been notified of the arrangement before the trip. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing them.
Under the current school policy, according to ADF, students who are transgender are “assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity consistently asserted at school.”
“The policy says nothing about a girl being required to share a bed with a boy who identifies as transgender,” ADF said in a letter to the school. “This policy and practice violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of our clients and their children, their parental rights and the parental rights of other parents in your district, and the privacy rights of all students.”
ADF said that D.W. should not have been placed in the same bed or room.
“If a young girl like D.W. is uncomfortable sharing a bed with a male who identifies as a girl, she is likely also to be uncomfortable showering, dressing, and sleeping a few feet away from this student,” the letter said.
Kate Anderson, director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights, said the district has “failed to state whether parents, like our clients Joe and Serena Wailes, can opt their children out of any policy that rooms children by gender identity rather than sex.”
“Such an opt-out can be accomplished in several confidential ways to protect the privacy of all students,” Anderson said. “The Waileses’ troubling experience is not isolated; we’ve spoken with other parents who’ve had similar incidents occur during the school district’s required sixth-grade Outdoor Lab trips. If Jefferson County Public Schools continues placing students of the opposite sex in the same room on overnight trips -- as it confirmed it would -- the district must inform parents of that policy and allow families to opt their children out as they deem best for their family.”
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Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
