Where is the Line Between Education and Parenting? Vitsaxaki v. Skaneateles Central School District

  Parents and teachers can all agree that children should feel safe at school. They should be welcomed no matter what their background is, and when they are struggling they should have a support system. The boundaries and methods in how this is done are often called into question, as in the case of Mrs. Vitsaxaki and her child.

    In Vitsaxaki v. Skaneateles, the Skaneateles Central School District instituted The Student Gender Identity Policy, in which students who wished to be referred to with names and pronouns other than their legal ones could do so without the school notifying the parents. In this particular case, a 7th grade student identified as Jane Doe, was raised in Greece until she was 9 years old. After moving to New York and starting in a public school, she faced difficulties adjusting to the new environment and new language, which led to the development of anxiety. Her problems persisted even after working with the school counselor to create coping mechanisms. Eventually, with the help of the school’s guidance counselor, Christopher Viggiano, school’s psychologist, Vicky Powers, and the school’s social worker, Michele Rogala, a Gender Support Plan was implemented when Doe decided she would like to change her name and pronouns. The plan explicitly avoided the inclusion of Doe’s parents to avoid “outing” her before she was ready. During this time, Rogala would also host an “LGBTQ lunch” for students that Doe participated in, in which they discussed “concepts of socially and medically transitioning one’s gender” and were given information on “local resources such as counselors, pediatricians, surgeons, and a nearby gender clinic.”

    Doe’s grades began to worsen and when her mother, Mrs. Jennifer Vitsaxaki, asked the school if there was anything she should know that could be impacting her daughter’s grades, she was told “nothing out of the ordinary was happening.” In May of 2021, the school principal, Michael Caraccio, called Mrs. Vitsaxaki to inform her of her daughter’s change in name of pronouns, without informing her that Doe was in the room listening to the phone call. At that point Mrs. Vitsaxaki attempted to console her daughter before requesting a separate phone call. After that, Doe was switched to online schooling, during which she continued with school employees to discuss gender identity, without the knowledge of her parents. When her mother tried to talk to school employees to find out more information about what her daughter was going through, they were hesitant or refused to answer her, and later she moved her daughter to a private school. There her “demeanor, morale, health, and outlook” have been observed by her mother to have improved, and there has been an absence of desire to change her name or pronouns. However, there is a dramatic increase in financial burden, with the private school costing over $12,000 a year.

    Parents maintain the right to raise their children as their religious views see fit under their right to Free Exercise. According to Mrs. Vatsaxaki, her free exercise was violated when the school system referred to her daughter with a different name and pronouns without her consent; her free exercise was also burdened when her ability to raise her child was impacted by the school actively teaching her daughter about gender in a way that went against her religious beliefs. This case shows a conflict in public schools supporting a child’s personal decisions and her family’s religious freedom: is it constitutional for the school to hide a child’s social transition from a family whose religious beliefs do not support gender transitions?

    It is one thing for schools to allow children to go by different names and pronouns in general, it is another to encourage children to pursue those decisions while actively hiding those life-changing decisions from the parents. One article revealed that the principal only called Mrs. Vatsaxaki at the urging of a concerned teacher. While schools should want to help children who are having a hard time, this support system should include the parents, and a child should not be expected to make major life decisions on their own without their parents. A public school’s primary responsibility is the general education of its students, other fields breach the realm of parenting, which is a role parents do not relinquish to teachers when they decide to send their children to public school.

    The Supreme Court has been known to overturn cases that have shown schools overstepping their roles in ways that have impacted religious parenting, such as in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette in which it was decided the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses no longer had to salute the flag since it went against their families’ beliefs. Some may argue that gender identity is not a religious issue, but rather a social or health one, which would go against other precedents set by the Court that determined the government does not have the authority to validate particular beliefs and whether or not they are truly religious, such as in Cantwell v. Connecticut. 

    To encourage the transition for Jane Doe, while hiding it from her parents, shows a support of a particular viewpoint of gender identity, and a condemnation of how her mother would choose to raise her. Parents, who are required by law to have their children in the education system, should not then be forced to wonder what the state is doing with their children. It is both an establishment of religion in that case, as well as a violation of free exercise on the part of the mother.