Proof
We’re concerned.
The images on this page were all captured from the hallways, classrooms and school grounds of the Canandaigua City School District. These pictures and examples show the school’s promotion of controversial sexual and gender ideologies.We believe this one-sided promotion at school can cause premature sexualization of children, much to their detriment. There’s an ever-increasing population of young Canandaigua students who are confused about, experimenting with, and declaring their identities as homosexual or as gender fluid/transgender.
June 2021
June 2024
Middle school and Academy parents were emailed about “Spirit Week,” encouraging families to dress their children in celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month.
Yearly celebrations of LGBTQ “Pride Month” in the middle school.
Pictured above are some of the signs posted around the drop-off loop. Left, a flip-card display with terms and explanations about many sexual orientations and gender identities, is hung year after year in the hallway by the counseling offices. (The superintendent denied parents access to this display to read the definitions written beneath the terms.)
Not pictured is a very large Pride flag hung in the main entrance, hallways plastered with Pride rainbow flags including every type of sexual orientation flag with its meaning, and hallway display cases honoring authors and other intellectuals simply because of their sexual preference.
The library displays many book choices to middle schoolers in the main entry display cases highlighting LGBTQ characters and themes.
The Library
Hangs posters, called “Toilet Papers,” each month in middle school students’ restroom stalls. These posters are not visible to parents or visitors like posters hung in hallways. Sometimes these Toilet Papers highlight LGBTQ themes, as shown here.
Free pronoun pins were offered to middle schoolers by librarians.
Closeup of quote below
Bi Visibility “Day”
“Bi Visibility Day” was celebrated with posters hung September through November 2021. See many more posters like these HERE that were displayed throughout the middle school hallways.
GSA
The Middle School GSA (Gender & Sexuality Alliance) Club displays their messaging and beliefs throughout the school year, oftentimes inside the main entryway display case and in the middle school hallways.
Year ‘Round
A sampling of signs, stickers and flags displayed year-round from outside and inside middle school classrooms. Many teachers and administrators display Pride stickers in or around their classrooms, on their laptops, etc. to announce they and their room are a “safe place” for homosexual or transgender children.
At the Academy
However, the sexual messaging doesn’t end at the signage.
Children are increasingly made to learn about historical figures’ sexual ideologies. For instance, a middle school science teacher thought it important for the class to learn that astronaut Sally Ride was a lesbian. This information was asked on a quiz.
- At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, some teachers asked children which gender pronouns they preferred to be called.
In winter of 2022 the middle school ran a middle school Community Reads program, required for grades 6-8. Students picked one of four preselected (and school board approved) books. One of those books is Totally Joe by James Howe.
• The entirety of this book focuses on a boy who realizes he’s gay, gains his first boyfriend and then goes through the process of coming out to his supportive family and friends.
• Students are then grouped together by book to discuss it by teacher facilitation.
Some kindergarteners in 2021 were made to read the picture book, “Love Makes a Family” which featured a gay male couple in bed together.
If a child approaches a school counselor about gender or sexual orientation confusion, Canandaigua K-12 counselors primarily utilize the Gender Spectrum website, resources and training.
• Gender Spectrum encourages liberal sexual and gender ideologies and does not appear to consider possible underlying familial or emotional reasons for a child’s confusion, nor does it encourage children to wait to self-label. It also does not consider that children may be confused simply due to their normal changing hormones.
• School counselors don’t always inform a child’s parents about these conversations as there’s no school policy in place that requires them to report them to parents. They “take the lead of the student and what they need” stated one school counselor to a group member.
- Additionally, School Board President Jeanie Grimm responded in an email to a group member on May 25, 2022 to the member’s question:
Q: What is the district’s policy regarding keeping sensitive information about minor children hidden from their parents (e.g., pronouns, gender identity)? [emphasis added]
Mrs. Grimm’s answer:
“This is actually not a policy, but instead, law. See here, the Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students Guidance from the New York State Education Department: Document. Within the document is a link to a PDF called Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Guidance and it provides details and sample guidance/situations. Administrators have undergone comprehensive training with legal counsel in regard to how to navigate these sensitive situations. When a student confides something of this nature to us, as a staff, we are not permitted to tell the parents but our counseling staff works with the student to develop a plan and timeline for telling their parents. We recognize the importance of parents being informed and involved and thus, we make the extra effort to help the student with this conversation even though it is not something we are required to do.” [emphases added]
- This answer should be startling and concerning to every parent in the district.
- Also, the “law” document Mrs. Grimm refers to is, in fact, not law but simply New York State guidance. Each school district in the state has the authority to determine how to apply what is state law: DASA (the Dignity for All Students Act).
- The actual language of the laws can be found at EDN § 3201-a and EDN § 11. To summarize those laws, discrimination, bullying, and harassment of any student regardless of perceived gender or sexuality are prohibited. We are, as well, strongly opposed to any child being subjected to discrimination, bullying or harassment.
In June 2022, an 8th grade health teacher handed out the ungraded test (below) to all of the class students for completion. Some of these questions were later asked on a graded test, but the teacher stated afterward that those particular questions on the test were not graded.
CCSD Plans to Increase Messaging
You should also know that CCSD plans to INCREASE its messaging. It’s not enough that students at CCSD be educated and prepared to enter the working world, they must be “transformed.” One of the school’s taglines is “One Community, Transforming Lives.”
On the school website, they have published their Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) plans for the student body. Note their concerning language in the introduction:
“…[W]e have all carried the burden of these challenges, we as a nation have lived through events that have brought into stark relief our nation’s long history of racism, bigotry, and bias. We have become increasingly aware of the ways in which we, as a school community, can (and unknowingly do) perpetuate inequality, divisiveness, and hurt, or actively work to create a school community in which all students feel loved, valued, and included. We know that as a community we are not exempt from this troubling history, and to ignore it is to deny our students a true understanding of the world they live in and the opportunity to learn to use their voices to create the world they wish to see.”
In the document’s “Potential Areas for Growth,” they are concerned with “student experiences” such as (quoted below):
Increase supports for BIPOC, LGTBQ, and other students from marginalized or underrepresented groups, including formal and informal mentorship programs and affinity groups
Evaluate and address the representation of diverse groups in our school spaces – in murals, in other artwork, in student work displayed on the walls
Establish clear and accessible processes for students to report incidents of bias in a supportive atmosphere
Move beyond “months” [like Pride Month] as a way to incorporate the histories of traditionally underrepresented or marginalized groups and individuals
Examine and address the presence of bias, implicit bias, and microaggressions in all educational spaces.
You can read CCSD’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion plans for the student body HERE
CCSD is happy to elevate the New York State Education Department’s controversial beliefs and suggestions. Read below a snippet from the Education Department’s website, explaining the creation and adoption of their “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework.” It reads, in part:
The CR-S framework helps educators create student-centered learning environments that affirm racial, linguistic and cultural identities; prepare students for rigor and independent learning, develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference; elevate historically marginalized voices; and empower students as agents of social change.
For more than a century, education providers throughout the United States have strived and struggled to meet the diverse needs of American children and families. A complex system of biases and structural inequities is at play, deeply rooted in our country’s history, culture, and institutions. This system of inequity — which routinely confers advantage and disadvantage based on linguistic background, gender, skin color, and other characteristics — must be clearly understood, directly challenged, and fundamentally transformed. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has come to understand that the results we seek for all our children can never be fully achieved without incorporating an equity and inclusion lens in every facet of our work (see also New York State’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Plan). This understanding has created an urgency around promoting equitable opportunities that help all children thrive. New York State understands that the responsibility of education is not only to prevent the exclusion of historically silenced, erased, and disenfranchised groups, but also to assist in the promotion and perpetuation of cultures, languages and ways of knowing that have been devalued, suppressed, and imperiled by years of educational, social, political, economic neglect and other forms of oppression.
We can interpret from this quote that the State Education Department believes that our American history, culture and Judeo-Christian heritage are deeply flawed, bigoted and racist. They therefore must create students to be activists for change- “fundamentally transform[ing]” our culture and beliefs. They aim to promote controversial racial and sexual ideologies and if we don’t believe as they do, we are oppressors.
CCSD has clearly adopted the same line of thinking.