By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
In April 2025, Dustin Gonzalez stood before the Jefferson County school board and told them what had happened to his family. A school-appointed therapist in Lakewood, he said, had affirmed his daughter’s gender transition without his knowledge. His ex-wife initiated proceedings to take his visitation. A court-appointed investigator never accused him of abuse or harm. A judge ruled anyway that his inability to affirm was sufficient grounds to reduce his parenting time — and limited it to every other weekend, Gonzalez shared on X.
“It started in your schools,” Gonzalez told the board. “Your systems made it possible, and your silence made it personal. You never once thought, ‘Shouldn’t the father be involved, too.'”
He described his objection. “I said, ‘I’m not ready to affirm this yet, that’s it.'” Of the school system, he told the board, “You stole my seat at the table, and you made decisions about my daughter without me. They didn’t even ask me. They replaced me.”
The document that explains how that sequence became possible was published a decade earlier by the National Education Association. The NEA describes itself as the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing 3 million members.
The document
Schools in Transition: A Guide for Supporting Transgender Students in K-12 Schools was co-authored in 2015 by the NEA, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Gender Spectrum.
Chapter One establishes the premise. “Everyone has both a gender identity and a sexual orientation.” It states children “typically begin expressing their gender identity between the ages of two and four years old.”
With that framing established, the guide instructs educators on what to do when parents are not on board.
Chapter Three lays the foundation. It states, “Any decision to raise the topic with parents must be made very carefully and in consultation with the student.” In some instances, the guide states, a school “may choose not to bring the subject up if there is a concern that parents or caregivers may react negatively.”
A concern is sufficient. Assessed by a teacher or administrator.
Chapter Four extends the framework. “Processes like enrollment, taking attendance, assigning grades and communicating with parents and caregivers can all easily compromise the student’s privacy and undermine an otherwise supportive school environment.”
On sex-separated spaces, the guide states that “another crucial element in supporting a transitioning student is giving them access to sex-separated facilities, activities or programs based on the student’s gender identity.” It continues, “Restrooms, locker rooms, health and physical education classes, competitive athletics, overnight field trips, homecoming court and prom are just some of the explicitly gendered spaces that tend to be the most controversial.”
Four Jefferson County families are in federal litigation over that policy, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Chapter Five, titled “Complex Issues,” opens with “Unsupportive Parents or Caregivers.” Its instruction to educators says, “the educator or administrator should ask whether the student’s family is accepting in order to avoid inadvertently putting the student at risk of greater harm by discussing with the student’s family.”
Parents are assessed before deciding whether to inform them.
Families that do not affirm can be educated about “the serious consequences of refusing to affirm their child’s gender identity.” A parent’s initial negative reaction, the guide states, “is likely based on inaccurate or incomplete information.”
When parents are in a custody dispute, the guide states that educators may be called to testify in court, and advises that describing the changes school personnel observed “will strengthen the testimony and give the judge a fuller understanding of the child’s needs and what would be in [that] child’s best interests.”
“It is best,” the guide states, “to allow neutral professionals like educators to assess and identify the child’s needs.” School officials, it continues, “give school personnel unique insight into the student’s needs without the biases parents can or are perceived to have.”
“By educating courts about transgender youth and the current standards of care, parents have been increasingly able to demonstrate to judges that supporting and affirming a child’s gender identity is in the child’s best interest,” it adds.
That passage was written in 2015. Dustin Gonzalez partially lost parenting time ten years later.
The Colorado pipeline
The Colorado Education Association is the NEA’s Colorado state affiliate.
One year after Schools in Transition was published, the NEA’s own Colorado affiliate helped lead a coalition of the state’s most powerful education institutions to formalize the same framework into official guidance.
The 2016 document was co-authored by the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Association of School Executives, the Colorado High School Activities Association, the Colorado League of Charter Schools, the Colorado Education Association, and One Colorado. Together these organizations represent the governing boards, executive leadership, athletics administration, charter schools, and union membership of Colorado’s entire public school system.
On notifying parents of a secondary school student’s gender identity, that document states: “In some cases, notifying parents or guardians of the student’s transgender or gender nonconforming status carries risk, such as being kicked out of the home or experiencing rejection from their family. Prior to notification of the family, school staff should work closely with the student and consider the health, well-being, and safety of the student.”
The NEA published the framework in 2015. Within a year, the organizations that govern, administer, and represent Colorado’s public school system had made it their own.
Denver Public Schools reduced it to a staff script.
When a staff member expresses discomfort not disclosing a student’s gender identity to that student’s parents, the prescribed response instructs them not to, on the grounds that parents are not always accepting and that disclosure could put the student in danger.
Jefferson County Public Schools’ own transgender policy was listed as a resource in that CEA 2016 guidance. The district was already operating under the same framework years before four of its families ended up in federal court.
In Jefferson County, sitting board member Erin Kenworthy — whose 2023 campaign was mostly funded by the CEA and JCEA — wrote in a Facebook post this month: “We do not own them. They belong to themselves, which is why the ‘parental rights’ movement is so baffling to me. Are parents really that deeply scared of their impending loss of perceived control and ownership of their kid’s identities that they feel compelled to claim ‘parental rights’?… their kids get closer to the day they can escape ‘parental rights’ rhetoric.”
Parent advocate Lindsay Datko shared the post on X.
Still active
NEA’s framework did not retire in 2015.
The NEA’s 2025 handbook contained Resolution C-12, instructing that “educators must respect” a student’s decision to keep gender identity information confidential “from anyone they choose, including their own parents.”
On January 29, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14190, directing law enforcement to investigate and potentially prosecute educators who facilitate a student’s social transition.
The NEA published guidance on its own website in February 2025 telling educators to continue, stating that “state laws, school policies or professional ethics may require that staff respect the confidentiality of students who seek support.”
Months later, Defending Education preserved the handbook before the NEA quietly removed it without explanation.
Where it ends up
A Lakewood father stood before the Jefferson County school board and described losing parenting time after a school-appointed therapist affirmed his daughter’s transition without his knowledge.
Four Jefferson County families are in federal court over rooming assignments on overnight field trips.
A sitting board member funded by the NEA’s Colorado affiliate network has written publicly that children should escape “parental rights” rhetoric.
Resolution C-12 was still in the NEA’s handbook in 2025. Then the handbook was gone.
The February 2025 guidance telling educators to continue supporting social transition regardless of federal direction remains on the NEA’s website.
The educators and leadership the guide instructed are still doing the work.
If you are someone who has been affected by these policies and would like to share your experience, RMV would like to hear from you. Contact Shaina Cole at [email protected].
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