With the recent ruling by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, parents were issued a warning shot: GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF HERE.
That first came when the attorney for the school district told the New Hampshire Supreme Court Justices that parents can remove their children from the school if they don’t like it. In this court case, a parent was suing Manchester because of the school policy that denied sharing information about a child with their parent. The Manchester Union Leader reported that here.
CONCORD — A dispute over parental and transgender rights moved to the state Supreme Court on Thursday, where a lawyer for the Manchester School District said parents can pull their children out of city schools if they disagree with the district’s policy on transgender students.
Lawyer Meghan Glynn said a parent’s constitutional rights can’t be violated if parents have a “safety valve” they can exercise, such as home-schooling their children or sending them to private schools.
With the availability of parents to access other schools for their children, many people have warned that this anti-parent policy would lead families to remove their children from Manchester schools. In this specific court case, the parent has already removed her child and sent her to another school where she is thriving. Who knows what would have happened to a normal pre-teen who was being influenced by the transgender craze had the parent left everything to the school district?
Fast forward a couple of years later, and the child is in another school, not questioning her gender, and is happy and thriving. Based on what we’ve heard from de-transitioners, the mistakes they made have had life-altering surgeries that have taken a horrible toll on some of these girls. Who wants to risk their child becoming the next victim in this transition craze thrust upon children who are experiencing pre-teen and teenage issues?
Where will this lead Manchester, now that their staff cannot be trusted with your children? After all, if another adult told me that they were going to keep these kinds of secrets from me about my child, I’d never trust them again.
Look no further than Seattle where parents were told something similar. If you don’t like what they are doing in the school, get out. What did the parents do? They left.
Here are the enrollment numbers for Manchester, so one would think the school board would be concerned. Instead it seems like they are in the business of driving families out of their public school:
As of October 2023, the enrollment in Manchester, New Hampshire’s public schools was 11,851 students, which is a 4.3% decrease from 2020–2021.
2020-2021 12,380
2016-2017 Enrollment: 13,887
2015-2016 Enrollment 14,318
2014-2015 Enrollment 14,718
https://my.doe.nh.gov/iPlatform/Report/Report?path=/BDMQ/iPlatform%20Reports/Enrollment%20Data/Enrollment%20Reports/District%20Fall%20Enrollments&name=District%20Fall%20Enrollment&categoryName=Enrollment%20Reports&categoryId=9
How is this any measure of success? It’s not.
How does the district respond? They praised the court decision that tells parents that they should go somewhere else if they don’t like the policy that seeks to cut them out of their child’s life.
Like Seattle, some people never learn. Manchester school officials will blame school choice initiatives that help families seek education alternatives instead of looking inward. They will try their best to force children to remain in a school that is failing them instead of work towards education reforms that would uplift all of the children in the district. And I suspect, we will continue to watch the enrollment numbers going down.
