Proposed NYC ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ charter school would encourage 9-year-olds to ‘explore their gender’: ‘Indoctrinating’

A proposed “trans” and “queer” issues Brooklyn charter school — which promises to let kids as young as nine “explore their gender” identity — is causing outrage from critics who are blasting it for “indoctrinating” children.

The Miss Major Middle charter school in the trendy Prospect Park area of District 13, says it would create a “genderful environment” for kids in grades 5 through 9 to “embrace their own identity, and decide how they will authentically walk, through the world.”

But the plan to instruct elementary and middle school-aged kids about such sensitive issues is leaving some parents and activists terrified.

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“It’s horrifying. No charter school that’s aimed at gender ideology indoctrination should ever be approved for children this young,” said Maud Maron, a parents rights activist and community education council member in NYC. “In the most charitable light, there might be people who think they’re doing good. But this is a situation in which activists want to use and abuse children to promote their ideology.”

Maron, a former Democratic candidate for a Brooklyn congressional seat, claimed the school “rewards and encourages gender dysphoria,” adding that indoctrination leads to “physical harm – to puberty blockers and surgeries, which are irreversibly damaging to children’s bodies.”

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The founder of Miss Major Middle, Joji Florence, a “proud” nonbinary parent of three and graduate of Dartmouth College, however, painted a rosy picture for the school, while describing its vision in a recent piece for Chalkbeat.

“More of our children want to explore, learn about, challenge, change, or move inside and outside the bounds of masculinity and femininity,” Florence wrote. “Many kids seem to get that with increased access to an evolving gender spectrum, more people can experience more joy. In the trans community, I’ve heard this idea described as ‘genderful.'”

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But some parents are sounding the alarm.

“I was shocked to hear about this school,” said Helen Qiu, a NYC mom with a middle-school-aged son who’s running for New York’s 65th State Assembly district in lower Manhattan. “There’s a push in schools to normalize the transgender movement, to make it younger and younger in age, and to exclude parents from knowing about their children’s transgender inclination. These three things combined equals child abuse.”

The conservative vows to fight against schools with this targeted mission if elected. “We need to elect people to oppose it.”

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Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist and Manhattan Institute fellow, said that such a school sounds good, but is actually a “sinister” trap.

“If you’re a parent who doesn’t know much about gender ideology and you hear that a kid can be themselves, not judged, it looks so progressive and fantastic. It sounds really good,” he told the Post. “These parents probably think the school is about just being yourself, free to be you and me, but it’s absolutely not what’s happening. They’re saying you can’t just be an effeminate boy and masculine girl. It’s saying, ‘If you’re an effeminate boy, you’re actually a girl.’”

He warned that enthusiastic self-styled “progressive” parents are really embracing regressive ideas, said Wright. “It‘s all about stereotypes of what makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl. 

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“I would keep my kids so far from this school, it’s not even funny,” he said.

According to Manhattan Institute fellow, Leor Sapir, “The 2022 Olson study, which contradicts the findings of decades of research on desistance, is a good piece of evidence that social transition ‘locks in”‘ gender incongruence that otherwise would very likely abate. Trans activists cite it as evidence that ‘trans kids know who they are.’ It’s the perfect Rorschach test.”

So far the future of the school is uncertain, as it is among numerous applicants for just nine charters that have set aside for New York City starting in fall 2025.

Applications were due on Feb. 8 and the approval decision will come down from SUNY in June.

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Reps for the school did not return requests for comment.

But Florence has previously described it as focusing on the “needs and voices of trans, nonbinary, queer, and ally students, teachers, and parents in mind.”

The school will teach “gender-inclusive biology,” an activist-heavy and social justice-leaning model that promotes five key attributes, including “authenticity, continuity, affirmation, anti-oppression, and student agency,” allowing any lesson “to be inclusive of diverse gender, sex, or sexuality.”

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Instead of lessons differentiating male and female anatomy, language is changed from “women” to “ovaries” that produce eggs and “gestational parent,” not mother, that “carries the fetus for nine months.”

The school touts that it “creates a shared space where we work toward physical and emotional safety for all students,” but parents argue that should be a basic right for any student in any school environment.

“Aren’t all children supposed to feel safe in NYC schools?  If children don’t feel safe, isn’t there an established protocol? Why do we need to create another layer of separation and protection for children?” said Natalya Murakhver, an Upper West Side mom of two, including a middle schooler. 

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Murakhver, the co-founder of Restore Childhood, which advocates for children’s health, education, athletics, and art, said that she finds the school’s premise “troubling.”

“It’s another attempt to segregate children and prey upon kids with potentially preexisting mental health issues.

“You have these children who have underlying mental health conditions being courted by a colorful school where it’s going to be fun and ‘genderful,’ whatever that means,” said Murakhver,  a registered Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020.

The school, whose “founding team” includes ten members of the “Trans+ / Queer Advisory Council,” is the namesake of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a black transgender activist who played a pivotal role in the Stonewall uprising, according to the site.