Why can’t teachers just stick to teaching?
A Long Island teacher forced her fifth-grade student to change her name and pronouns. As a result, the child began developing suicidal thoughts, a lawsuit states.
Debra Rosenquist, a teacher at Terryville Road Elementary School, supposedly started calling the female student “Leo” and was referring to her with male specific pronouns for months.
In January 2022, nearly five-months since the start of the school year when Mrs. Rosenquist began referring to the student as Leo, the school principal called the child’s parents to let them know that the student was presenting suicidal thoughts.
Supposedly the child drew a picture of a girl and wrote “I wanna kill myself” and “I feel sad like a lot,” as New York Postpointed out. The principal also told the parents that the child had met with the school psychologist and confided that she was confused about her gender identity.
I would be too if I was in fifth grade and was told I was something that I wasn’t.
The parents were also told about the child’s name change in the same call and were fine with it as long as the child initiated the change, not the teacher. However, it's unlikely that was the case. Supposedly the teacher had numerous complaints against her online, including that she told her students to “try being gay.” She also wrote an LGBTQ book called “I Am Neither” and assigned a book called “When Aiden Becomes a Brother” to her students.
Rosenquist previously “manipulated a pre-teen female into changing her gender identity when the child did not feel any inclination to do so." Why was she still allowed to be around kids?
After the school didn't take the situation with appropriate seriousness, the parents sued. The lawsuit says the parents were “worried” their child “was being persuaded by Rosenquist to be transgender when she had not expressed any such inclination” and sued over the school’s negligence.
Though it’s clear Rosenquist needs to have her teaching license removed, the district superintendent declined to comment on the job status or allegations towards Rosenquist, according to New York Post.
Homeschool. Private school. Just keep your kids out of public schools.
