We need to have a policy in place so teachers cannot share personal information with our students. According to the IL state code of conduct for educators, teachers are required to maintain a professional relationship with students. Right now, teachers are able to share their marital status, personal hobbies, etc... which leads to the ability to share their sexual preferences!  The only way to prevent this is to make it so they share nothing personal at all to avoid any type of discrimination. Please let me be clear, this isn't about a person's right to live their life as they desire, I'm all for that. My question is, do our children need to know how you live your life sexually? Do they need that information to have the ability to learn from their teachers? The answer is no.

My child was in Art class and the teacher told the class that she was married and identified as pansexual. My question to the superintendent was, "Why couldn't she just end it at she's married?"  His response was along the lines of,  if we let them share that they're married and they see a picture of their partner, sexual orientation is introduced by the picture. I understood that and said, "Then don't let them share personal details at all".  For that, I have to petition the board of education of District 100.  Do our children really need to know anything personal about their teachers to learn from them? Their job is to show up, teach the curriculum and aid in learning, that's it.  Our children should not be exposed, without consent, to different sexual orientations by their teachers. Please join me in e-mailing our board members, boe@district100.com, and let them know that we would like the policy changed that allows our teachers to introduce anything personal to our students to avoid conversations of sexual preference in the school. Think about this...we have to consent for our children to be present for sex education but at any time, a teacher can let our children know what their sexual preferences are, without consent. Every teacher is not trained to introduce details about sex.  These days, this can lead to confusion for our students because they don't know what these terms mean and it leads to conversations that we may not be ready to have with our young children.  The past few years, many sexual preferences and pronouns have been brought forward.  We, as parents, don't always know what some of these terms mean so how can we expect our young children to absorb this information?  I hope parents will get involved and act on this very important subject to prevent our children from learning things they're not ready for and their parents do not consent to.