To the members of the North Hampton School Board: Thank you for your thoughtful consideration on the important matter of the Seacoast Outright training for teachers in SAU21.
Since I was unable to present all of my testimony because of the time limit, I am enclosing the full testimony as I mentioned tonight.
To Ms. Belanger, I am unsure of the reasoning for your comment that you were “all set” when I said I would send this email so you could read the rest of what I wanted to share during public comments. I speak before many governmental bodies, including the House and Senate Education Committees in Concord.
These committees are made up of elected officials from both political parties. No one has ever commented that they were “all set” when a member of the public was unable to complete their testimony and then offered to email the committee members the full text. I will not assume your reasoning, but I have to be honest, your response to me, a constituent and taxpayer in the district where you are supposed to serve as our representative on the school board, came across as rude and condescending. I hope you will reconsider how you respond to people who come to offer public comments from this point forward.
I kindly request that the testimony below be reflected in the School Board minutes.
August 4th : Testimony to the SAU21 North Hampton School Board:
Good evening, my name is Ann Marie Banfield. I am a resident of SAU21 and currently reside in North Hampton. Thank you for your service to our community.
I presented testimony to the SAU21 school board a few weeks ago regarding the upcoming training session in September for teachers in SAU21 by Seacoast Outright. As someone who is active in New Hampshire supporting academic excellence in public education, I urged the board members to reconsider this decision and cancel the training session.
Today I’m here to make that request of the North Hampton school board.
Seacoast Outright is a political organization with a political agenda. We should all be asking why a political organization will be presenting training to school personnel in an effort to filter their political viewpoint down to the children in this district.
What if some of the teachers or families have a different worldview? How will that be handled? How is it inclusive to those families who may not share these political views? Why is this training exclusive of diverse viewpoints? How does this respect the diversified families in North Hampton?
While Seacoast Outright does not offer medical advice, they do include links to various websites that do.
For instance, they provide a list of resources on their website that students and teachers would be able to access.
These resources include information on top surgeries, bottom surgeries, and hormonal therapy for children who are experiencing gender dysphoria.
Seacoast Outright tries to relieve itself of any responsibility when offering children medical advice, but by putting links on their website directing children to biased medical resources, they are directing families to resources that share their political viewpoint.
Let’s start with the hormonal therapy that was listed as services offered by their medical resources.
Puberty blockers now come with a warning label from the Food and Drug Administration. The warning was issued after six minors (ages 5-12) experienced severe symptoms.
The minors were all biological females, and suffered from symptoms such as; tumor-like masses in the brain, seeing bright lights that aren’t there, headache or vomiting, swelling of the optic nerve, increased blood pressure, and eye paralysis.
At the 2021 conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 80% of the members supported a resolution calling for “more debate and discussion of the risks, benefits, and uncertainties inherent in the practice of medically transitioning minors.” Pediatric medical professionals are still wading through all of the medical issues impacting children with gender dysphoria.
Seacoast Outright published nothing about the warning from the FDA on their website, but includes resources that provide puberty blockers for children.
In May of 2021, the Swedish Karolinska University Hospital, chose to stop administering hormone blockers to children with transgender issues due to its controversial nature, potential side effects, and the lack of scientific support for the treatment’s efficacy.
In one particularly shocking case, a girl who wanted to become a boy began taking hormone-blocking drugs at just 11 years old. Almost five years after the treatment began, the puberty-pausing drugs induced osteoporosis and permanently damaged the teen’s vertebrae, severely limiting the teen’s mobility.
The chief physician and pediatric endocrinologist who treats children suffering from gender dysphoria slammed the use of hormone-blocking drugs, and called it “chemical castration.”
Who will take responsibility if one of the children in our district suffers from these severe and sometimes life-long medical problems? Seacoast Outright? The administrators? The School Board?
What about top surgeries and bottom surgeries? There is no information that I could find on the Seacoast Outright website that explains how some children are now publicly sharing their feelings of regret after removing their breasts and testicles.
This is the danger when political organizations become the “experts” instead of actual unbiased medical experts who are not tied to any political organization.
But one must ask, how does any of this help the teachers in the classroom when it comes to improving academic outcomes?
With some students not meeting proficiency in the core classes, shouldn’t that be the focus in our school district? When we are spending about $30k/student, how do you reconcile the money spent for teacher training in this way? Children need their teachers in the classroom, and many teachers will complain privately that these training sessions are a waste of time and precious resources.
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Massachusetts’s schools focused on academic achievement. Part of that included teacher training that was focused on helping them understand the core subject content. They put a plan in place to focus on making their public schools the best in the country, and they succeed.
Teachers were given basic math tests, and many of them failed. This wasn’t a time to bash teachers but the time to support teachers in the best ways possible. Helping the teachers to know and understand the academic content helped them to better educate the children in the public schools.
The children in Massachusetts ranked at the top on the national tests and scored well on the TIMSS international test in math and science. Massachusetts children were able to compete with students in countries like Singapore.
This kind of training is supported by the community and will help improve the public schools.
If we have families that decide to remove their children from the school because they see more politicization taking place in their school, we also lose some of our government funding.
These sensitive topics are about medical and mental health care that no one in this district has expertise in.
If administrators are going to engage with individuals in New Hampshire on this topic, then they should be speaking directly to medical and mental health professionals who have no political bias, and focus primarily on what’s best for children experiencing gender dysphoria.
All viewpoints should be presented, not just one. That’s exclusive not inclusive.
While I fully respect and can appreciate any political organizations advocating for their issues, I do not believe this is a wise use of taxpayers dollars, nor do I believe that turning the district into a political battleground is good for the school or community.
You can watch this testimony here (Begin at about 7 min), and please watch the family right after.
