It was just about 2 years ago that a fury ran through the Mesa Public Schools community over a controversial document that had gone largely unnoticed. That document is titled “Support Plan for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students” (also called “Guidelines for Support of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students.”) This plan allows a student who “consistently asserts at school a gender identity that is different from the student’s sex assigned at birth” to “participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity.” (Notice there’s no mention of a parental consent requirement.) This means restrooms, locker rooms, and showers.
There were multiple concerns raised to district leadership regarding the plan. How would non-transgender students be protected and affirmed when someone of the opposite biological sex is now allowed to enter their private spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers?
Numerous stories surfaced reporting females were not eating or drinking during the day to avoid having to use the restrooms, which they were now compelled to share with biological boys. Why was their “safe space” suddenly being violated? Why were they suddenly denied any expectation of privacy that matched their values? Why is there allowance in the document for the district to conceal a student’s transgender ideation and the district’s course of action affirming that ideation from their parents? Does this concealment violate ARS 1-601, Parents Rights Protected? Does this plan amount to providing behavioral health services as defined by the Arizona Behavioral Health Board? District leadership has successfully danced around providing clear, unambiguous answers to these questions. Why? What are they trying to hide from parents?
Even though Superintendent Dr. Andi Fourlis issued carefully worded, yet vague assurances to the contrary, there still remains within the plan/guidelines, allowances to NOT notify parents of their child’s transgender ideations as the district personnel provide “gender affirming care” for the child. A Public Records Request in early 2023 exposed a school counselor who was maintaining a spreadsheet of trans students along with notation as to whether parents knew.
This counselor was informing other staff how to avoid “outing” students to parents when speaking with them. The plan originally included a checkbox for the student to indicate if their parents were to be told.
Additionally, the plan expressly states that although changes to the student’s “preferred name/pronouns” may be made in district records, “parental consent is not required.”
At the governing board meeting on May 9, 2023, (begin at 3:35:25), board member Rachel Walden asked leadership, “What is the criteria for a student to be put on this Transgender Support Plan?”
District general counsel, Kasey King, responded “…there’s not specific criteria. It’s a student who’s requesting to use the restroom of their choice or to designate the pronouns or names of their choice. Also, as a tool to help the student and the school process how that information is going to be shared, IF AT ALL!”
It is student-initiated, primarily. Notice the complete absence of any parental involvement or even notification here.
Mrs. King continued, “I’m thinking at the younger grades, it might be a situation where the student simply starts asking for some accommodations. And as a way to make sure everybody is on the same page, their teacher or counselor might suggest they put it into writing.”
Are you following this? A student at the “younger grades” might ask for transgender accommodations from the school, and the teacher or counselor will suggest putting that student on a Transgender Support Plan! No parental consent or notification required. Mrs. Walden continued to press for transparency into what is occurring: “There’s nothing in these guidelines about notifying the parents. Isn’t there an opportunity for parental notification process in this?”
Mrs. King: “Parents always have the right under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) to inspect and review their child’s education records.”
Mrs. Walden responded, “How would they know to ask that?”
Then-board President Marcie Hutchinson chimed in, “I guess they would ‘check in’ with the school.”
So, moms and dads, the only way to know for sure if your child has been placed on a Transgender Support Plan at Mesa Public Schools is for you to “check in with the school.” Since you don’t know the day that this might happen, I suggest you “check in” every day. Don’t expect to be notified otherwise. This is akin to child abuse in many people’s minds, yet the district refuses to make suitable provisions for parental notification, even to this day.
There is, in the old version of the plan/guidelines, a provision for parental notification “if changes are made in Synergy.” But apparently otherwise, mum’s the word.
OLD VERSION
The district has since revised the wording to make sure staff inform students “…that IF they request to change information in Synergy, parent(s) will be notified.”
When I see this, I read “SHHHH! Nobody has to know. Just don’t request a change in Synergy, and it’ll be our secret.”
The other concerning change explicitly states that parental/legal guardian consent “is not required” for a student to request district personnel provide gender affirming care to them.
These changes occurred in July 2024.
NEW VERSION
In a further assault on parental rights, the district has modified the guidelines from the verbiage previously, which stated, “Disclosing confidential student information to others may violate privacy laws” to a more intimidating and yet ambiguous, “Disclosing confidential student information to…parents…may violate privacy laws.”
Are teachers or counselors more likely or less likely to notify parents with this threat of violating privacy laws looming over their heads? I say less likely.
OLD VERSION
NEW VERSION
Then, as if that is not sufficient means for the district to usurp parental authority, Dr. Fourlis and Kacey King have now decided that the transgender plan/guidelines, which have for years resided on the Legal Services webpage on the district website, should be moved to a private internal location, away from public/parent access. When I asked the Governing Board President, Courtney Davis, why the district would make such a move as to lessen transparency, her answer allayed no concerns. “It was moved because it is a tool for school personnel to use to work with transgender students.”
It was always that Mrs. Davis! The only difference is, the public, and more importantly parents, no longer have access to documents describing what could potentially be happening to their child at Mesa Public Schools without their knowledge or consent.
After calling them out on this, Dr. Fourlis and Mrs. King have restored the document to the website, with an interesting change in title. They went from “Guidelines” to “Guidance.” Why that subtle change? For the record, contrary to the wording of Dr. Fourlis’ email, I did not request anything. I simply noted that hiding the document from public view was a “terrible decision.” Apparently, she agreed.
Interesting to note, since this document is considered a “guideline,” or now “guidance” and not a policy, it has not gone before the governing board for approval.
In an attempt to restore parental rights as defined under ARS 1-601, board member Sharon Benson proposed a policy at the April 8, 2025 board meeting which would require parental notification anytime a student indicated to a district employee any transgender ideations. During public comment (starts at 1:59:30), dozens of trans activists showed up in protest. Their overarching message was along the lines of, “If you ‘out’ students, they will be victims of abuse from their parents,” and “School personnel are much better equipped to deal with these issues than parents,” and “It’s not necessary for parents to know about their child’s mental distress.” All patently false statements.
Now, self-proclaimed members of the Communist and Socialist parties weighed in, trying to advance the narrative that children belong to the state, not parents (i.e. parents have no need to know about their child’s mental or emotional distress because the school is taking care of it). This is happening in Mesa folks! Are you paying attention?
It’s time to get involved. Attend district governing board meetings and make your voice heard. It’s critical that we stand for students and for parents.
Ed Steele is a husband, father, grandfather, and Mesa resident with a passion for helping the younger generation succeed in education.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and the Radical Left have made it clear that they want to dismantle school choice in our state. Despite getting trounced in November’s election where teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups made it a referendum on educational freedom, Hobbs has doubled down on her same tired and out-of-touch efforts since the start of this year.
Once again, it hasn’t worked. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program continues to grow—with enrollment now over 87,000 students. So, Hobbs and her buddies in the teachers’ unions have resorted to employing one of their favorite tricks: relying on activist reporters in the corporate media to give their anti-school choice messaging an extra boost.
In early March, a coordinated attack was launched against Primavera, an online charter school serving thousands of K-12 students across the state. It began with a story from Craig Harris, a Red4ED activist that calls himself a reporter, who claimed that Primavera received a ‘D’ letter grade from the Arizona Department of Education for the past three years. According to the report, the school failed to meet the minimum academic requirements for a traditional charter school. Harris’ column then went on to complain about the owner of Primavera and how much money he has made while operating the school.
After the story was published, the Arizona Charter School Board convened a hearing to review the allegations against Primavera. In a span of just a few hours, the board imposed the most severe punishment at their disposal, revoking the schools’ charter and setting them up for eventual closure. In effect, Primavera was given the charter school death penalty after one meeting.
On the surface, this might make sense. After all, if a school is failing its students, it deserves proper accountability. But as so often happens with today’s corporate media, an important fact was omitted from this manufactured takedown…
With the new year here and the 2025 legislative session officially underway, Democrats are already proving they can’t learn a lesson. Led by Governor Katie Hobbs, one of their primary targets is once again…you guessed it…Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. Stop us if you’ve heard this before.
You would think that Democrats would find a different target after getting trounced in an election where teachers’ unions and other anti-school choice groups made it a referendum on school choice. But no. After 2 ½ years and multiplefailures trying to overturn school choice, they’d rather double down on their same tired and out-of-touch policies.
This time, Hobbs and the Dems say they want to roll back ESAs because of all the supposed “fraud” in the program. Never mind the fact that the rate of waste, fraud, and abuse in the ESA program is extremely low. Never mind the fact that ESAs have proven to be far more financially accountable than other government programs. Democrats don’t care about facts. Instead, they want to regulate this popular program while Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes asks for more funding to investigate ESA fraud.
But here’s a message for Hobbs, Mayes, and the rest of the Democrats:
If you care so much about fraud, why not investigate Arizona’s public school districts?
They could start with Isaac Elementary School District (IESD)…
School board elections in Arizona are a non-partisan race, by law. In an ideal world, candidates should be focused on the well-being of students, academic achievement, and facilitating as much parental involvement as possible. That’s definitely true in Mesa, where the school board should be comprised of members who want to ensure that students are educated rather than indoctrinated.
But a recent news item by the local NBC affiliate chose to highlight partisan political party affiliation instead of focusing on how each candidate views their role as a potential Mesa school board member.
The story focused on three candidates running for the Mesa School Board as a slate: Courtney Davis, Josh Chilton, and Lacy Chaffee. Courtney Davis, in particular, is a current board member who was appointed by Steve Watson to replace Laura Ellingson in August 2023. The night she was sworn in was the first time she had ever attended a Mesa School Board meeting. The legacy media conveniently left this out. But that’s not all they left out.
In a typical biased move that’s become commonplace for the legacy media, the two opposing candidates—Sharon Benson and Ed Steele—were not offered an opportunity to be interviewed for the story. On top of that, they were given only a few hours to respond before the segment aired.
But here’s the truth about the three slate candidates. Davis, Chilton, and Chaffee have focused their campaign on social issues rather than actual student achievement. All three candidates have endorsements and stated positions that run counter to the values that are expected of elected school board officials. They all support males in female spaces, special transgender rights, Critical Race Theory, and eliminating school choice.
Davis, Chilton, and Chaffee have also been endorsed by Legislative District 9 Democrats, the anti-school choice group “Save Our Schools,” and the teachers’ union, Mesa Education Association.
Digging deeper, the Arizona Education Association endorsed legislative candidate Lorena Austin who promotes drag show fundraisers for her campaign. They have also endorsed Proposition 139, which will allow abortion up to fetal viability and would allow minors to get an abortion without any parental involvement, including notification.
Right now, the Mesa School District faces some significant headwinds with declining enrollment, reduced funding, and competition for students and teachers from charter and private schools. Shouldn’t that be the top priority rather than radical social issues?
Fixing Mesa’s problems requires new board members like Sharon Benson, who brings both a teaching background and small business expertise, and Ed Steele, who brings a wealth of business expertise and problem-solving ability to tackle the problems facing the Mesa district. Both Sharon and Ed have had children enrolled in the Mesa district and have a vested interest in keeping the district at the forefront of educational excellence.
Their goal is to support academic excellence, parental involvement, fiscal responsibility, teachers, safety, transparency, and accountability.
For this election, voters need to decide what they want: a radically aligned slate that is more interested in indoctrinating rather than educating students, or Sharon Benson and Ed Steele, who have the expertise, conservative values, and vision to keep Mesa Public Schools a leader in public education.
Dennis Liles is a Mesa resident and Precinct Committeeman in Legislative District 10.
In its heyday, Mesa Public Schools (MPS) was the district to attend; the envy of the East Valley. From academics to athletics, from artistic endeavors to award-winning music programs, Mesa provided excellent programming from kindergarten to graduation. So much so, that parents would often bring their own children back to Mesa Schools, often to the same school they attended as children.
In 2011, MPS students were achieving at levels in keeping with the stellar reputation that Mesa had always experienced. But between 2014 and 2015 achievement in MPS, as well as across the state, plummeted, and MPS hasn’t been able to break the 50% achievement rate since that time. There were a few ‘events’ that occurred during this time period, only one in which your school board would have had direct input; unless they were to be extremely courageous and decide to refuse federal education dollars.
The state assessment test switched from AIMS to AZMerit, there was a full implementation of Common Core across the state, and districts began to go down the road of developing a ‘Portrait of a Graduate’. As these took hold, publicly funded schools began to face steep declines in enrollment. MPS, for example, lost a total of 8,979 students as of the 2021/22 school year according to data located here. Consider that our 15-day student count for the school year 2024/25, is 54,339, a loss of 20,610 students since the 2011/12 school year. These trends are not exclusive to MPS, and this is where your vote for school board matters.
I have a friend who has said repeatedly that if an organization, which begins with conservative values, does not hold fast to those values, the organization will ultimately become liberal. The core conservative value which directed education in MPS, as well as many other districts across the state, was focused on developing a solid academic foundation upon which students could build. This value was supported by a few other core values such as individual responsibility, discipline, working hard, perseverance, and merit. These values have been eroding over time, often due to a lack of leadership from a district’s governing board.
The trend in education in Arizona, which has been in works since at least 2014, is the Portrait of a Graduate. This has become the framework upon which other elements have been built into our classrooms such as culturally relevant teaching and social emotional learning (SEL); here is just one example of new ‘science’ curriculum adopted by MPS last spring.
When you really take a look at the Portrait of a Graduate in most, if not all districts which have adopted this framework, there is no indication that we want our graduates to be academically sound in the basics needed in order to participate in society. School boards voted to adopt this framework to develop their strategic plan, and can vote to redirect the district using a different framework; one in which academics and solid, critical thinking is the foundation.
Curriculum adoption is another area in which your school board members are of critical importance. Many curriculum options available today are infused with elements incorporating ideas which are contrary to conservative American values. Rather than using quality literature, which incorporate timeless values, stories are selected that allow students to “see themselves” in the literature. Often the material brings in concepts regarding racism, “white privilege,” oppressed/oppressor, sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, or gender confusion issues. Many examples straddle the edge of pornography and reading the text or displaying the pictures would be deemed offensive and would not be allowed at a school board meeting. Forcing these themes and concepts upon children results in confusion and anxiety. This is clearly evident as we look at the “mental health crisis” within students across Arizona. A strong conservative school board is able to push back against district leadership, and remove that which is not beneficial for our students’ learning.
Policy development is another critical piece in the quality running of a school district over which your school board members have control. Drafting clear, quality policy, and procedures which are not contrary to federal or state law is critical to improving the education students are receiving as they attend our public schools. This is a statutory mandate for school board members, and should not ever be relegated to hired district leadership.
In MPS, there has been much controversy the last few years regarding this very issue as the community became aware of Transgender Guidelines, and the Checklistassociated with the guidelines. Notice, these are guidelines, not policy; no MPS Governing Board has developed or voted on policy regarding gender dysphoria, yet the district has had guidelines in place since 2015. This fact went under the radar for several years, and only became visible because of the social contagion surrounding this topic since 2020. As a result of these guidelines, which in our humble opinion, violate ARS 1-602, and the First Amendment, teachers feel free to introduce concepts of sex and sexuality with minor students, planting seeds of confusion within young minds, which is not acceptable. Voting for a school board which will possess members who uphold parental rights, and the rights of all students will be the only way to reverse this trend, and protect all our students.
Finally, the school board is responsible for hiring the Superintendent, whose responsibility it is on a daily basis, to ensure the will of the elected board members is enacted with fidelity. This is critical, as the elected board members who represent the will of their voters, can do all things right and in alignment with their community, but if the district leadership undermines that, the degradation of our educational system continues. The Board must hire an ethical person of integrity who aligns with the values of the community, as represented by the elected members of the board.
Your vote for school board members may be the most important vote you cast this election season. Being a non-partisan race, it is important to engage with those people who are running and to investigate and research the candidates, so that you are casting an informed vote that represents your values. The future of public education, which still educates a majority of American children, depends upon it.
