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Today’s article was written by a parent who wants to remain anonymous. She shares a story about why she took her child out of their long-trusted public school. It’s a powerful story that people should know about.
If you have a story about your education path you’d like to share, please let me know.
Right past her story, we have a quick report about the fair we recently held in Bow, including pictures. Following that is our list of upcoming fairs. Check it all out.
-Jody
PARENT VOICES
Why We Left Our Public School
We Trusted the System
I need to begin by saying this plainly: we escaped our local school district. I do not use that word lightly. Escaped. That is what it felt like. By the time we finally got out, I was worn down in a way I had never experienced before. I felt betrayed by people who were supposed to partner with parents, and I felt haunted by the realization that the system I had trusted with my children did not see me as someone who deserved to know what was happening to them. But that breaking point did not happen overnight. It began three years earlier, during COVID, when I first found myself pleading with the district over school closures and forced mask mandates.
For months, I showed up to school board meetings with facts, figures, studies, and science in my hands. I believed that if I could just explain it clearly enough, if I could just make them see what this was doing to children and families, someone would have to listen. Instead, I stood there again and again feeling invisible. It was like pouring my heart out to a brick wall. I would leave those meetings angry, discouraged, and questioning how people in positions of authority could sit so calmly while parents begged them to hear us. When the governor finally ordered schools to stay open and made masks optional again, I felt a rush of relief so deep it almost felt physical. I thought the hardest part was behind us. I thought maybe we could finally exhale.
A New Warning Sign
Then, almost out of habit, I opened the agenda for the next school board meeting. I expected ordinary business, the kind of thing I had trained myself to skim after years of watching every move they made. But then I saw it: proposed edits to a policy about gender changes and whether parents would be told. My heart sank. I remember feeling that awful mix of shock and confusion, the kind where your body knows something is wrong before your mind has fully caught up. The language was so vague that I could not tell whether they were trying to fix a dangerous policy or hide it better.
Apparently, a lawsuit had been filed, and these edits were the school board’s response. The policy said parents would be told only what the district was legally required to tell them. At the time, I clung to the assumption that surely the law must require a school to notify a parent if their child was changing gender or using a different name at school. Surely something that serious could not be kept from the people who loved that child most. I wanted to believe this was the district finally correcting course; I wanted to believe that, after everything we had endured, common sense, parental rights, and basic honesty might still matter.
The Meeting That Changed Everything
I was so wrong. Unlike the year before, when I attended every meeting with a three-minute speech printed, practiced, and ready, I walked into this meeting with no prepared remarks at all. I was not there to make a point. I was there because I needed to understand whether the school district was truly claiming the right to keep something this serious from parents.
Then the lawyer who had brought the lawsuit against the school board spoke. He thanked them for attempting to fix the policy, but he made it clear that they had failed. What they were really doing, he explained, was disguising the fact that they were still keeping secrets from parents about critical, life-altering changes their children were undertaking in school.
I felt the floor drop out from under me. The relief I had felt after COVID vanished in an instant. This was not just another policy disagreement. This was a line being crossed between parents and their children, and once I saw it clearly, I knew I could not stay silent.
Speaking as a Mother
My passion for protecting children took over as I stood up to speak. I was near tears and dismayed as I recounted how many times they called me when my child was sick or hurt or got into an altercation. I asked how is it that I must sign a paper for you to give my child a cough drop, but you can slip them artificial hormones and coach them to change their gender without my knowledge? And not only do this without parental knowledge or consent, but even worse, if a parent called to ask them about it or tell them to stop, they would outright LIE to parents that it wasn’t happening.
They claimed they were doing this to protect vulnerable children. But I reminded them: these are my children. I am the one who kisses them good night. I am the one who tends to their scraped knees, their sprained ankles, and their broken hearts. If they are tormented by confusion, fear, or hormonal turmoil, I am the one who stays with them through it. I am the one who sits beside them, prays over them, cries with them, and helps them figure out who they are and what they need. Not the teacher who leaves them at 3 p.m. Not the school employee who sees one small slice of their day and then goes home. I am the one tending to their nightmares at 2 a.m., not the person encouraging a child to change genders at 2 p.m.
Fighting for Every Child
For the next year, I brought every argument I could to the table. I fought for parental rights, but I also fought for every child whose vulnerability could be exploited when adults decided parents should be kept in the dark. In my view, this policy created a dangerous opening. It stripped away oversight, blurred boundaries, and gave the wrong people far too much access to children at their most confused and fragile moments. We saw situations that should never have been normalized: older boys entering girls’ bathrooms, boys in girls’ locker rooms, and boys competing on girls’ sports teams, all without meaningful parental knowledge or consent. It felt as if every boundary that once protected children had been erased.
The Breaking Point
Then came the most heartbreaking part of all. Two young girls took their own lives while they were struggling with identity, pain, and confusion no thirteen-year-old should ever have to carry alone. I thought surely this would force the school board to stop and ask hard questions. I thought surely the loss of two children would be enough to make them reconsider a policy that, in my view, took ordinary adolescent confusion and intensified it behind parents’ backs. But instead, they ignored the connection. They refused to see what grieving parents and frightened families could no longer unsee.
I eventually realized I had to take a different approach. As angry and afraid as I was, I did not want the children caught in this policy, the children struggling with gender confusion, to believe I hated them or saw them as the enemy. They were not my enemy. They were children, too. My fight was with the adults who had created a system that put one group of children at odds with another and then expected parents to accept it in silence.
So I filed a private complaint with the school board, explaining that my daughters no longer had a safe, private bathroom in their own high school because they were repeatedly encountering boys in spaces meant for girls. That private appeal dragged on for the better part of a year, and deep down, I knew I was not going to win. Still, I kept going, because what mother can look her daughters in the eye and say she did nothing?
An Impossible Choice
In the end, their solution was that my daughters could use the private bathroom in the nurse’s office. Think about that. While one or two boys were allowed to use whichever bathroom they chose, my daughters were the ones told to leave, to walk farther, to explain themselves, and to carry the stigma of going to the nurse’s office every time they needed something as basic and private as a bathroom. The message could not have been clearer: their comfort, their privacy, and their dignity mattered less. The disparity was not subtle. It was glaring. And as their mother, it broke my heart.
When the school board issued its final decree, I went home and had one of the hardest conversations I have ever had with my youngest daughter. I told her she could not return to the public high school. She had just finished her sophomore year, and her older sister had just graduated, which meant the invisible safety net I had counted on was suddenly gone. The thought of sending her back into that chaos without her sister there to watch out for her filled me with a fear I could feel in my bones. I could not ignore what I had seen. I could not pretend the school was safe simply because it was free.
So I told her she could go to any school she wanted, but the public high school was no longer an option. As her mother, I had reached the point where protecting her mattered more than preserving the life we had planned.
There are Multiple Problems
I want every parent to understand how serious this really is before they are forced to learn it the way we did. Please do not misunderstand me: there are many wonderful teachers in public schools. I know that. I am grateful for the good ones. But the problem is bigger than individual teachers. The problem is the school board, the policies they pass, and the culture those policies create.
And once you start looking closely, you realize the breakdown is not limited to gender ideology. The same collapse of boundaries and consequences has reached academics, too. In our public school, children could retake exams an unlimited number of times. They could turn in homework months after it was due. They could miss forty or fifty days of school and still pass.
At some point, you have to ask what kind of future we are preparing them for when accountability itself has been erased.
Hope Beyond the System
But there is a way out. I need parents to hear that, too. You are not trapped. Your child is not trapped. In New Hampshire, Educational Freedom Accounts are now open to everyone and provide a minimum of $3,900 per child. Many private schools offer financial aid or sliding-scale tuition, and some provide tuition benefits if a parent works at the school. There are also free charter schools. I know it can feel impossible when you first realize you may have to leave the system you thought would serve your family. I know the fear, the grief, the anger, and the uncertainty. But I also know this: there is a way out. And if your child is being harmed, dismissed, silenced, or sacrificed by a system that will not listen, you do not have to keep offering them up to it.
I wish you all the best in your journey out of public school and I pray for your children’s safety and happiness.
EdOpt Fair in Bow
Our first OUTDOOR fair was rain-free! Enormous kudos to Dianna DiNapoli from The Learning Cove for organizing this event. It was held Thursday, July 30 from 6-8pm in Bow.
We had a food truck and music with over 20 educators providers on this beautiful day. Thank you to all the providers who came from far and wide prepared for rain, and to the families who came to learn something.
More Fairs!
- We might have a fair in Manchester in late September. Stay tuned!
- New! Evergreen Elementary in Hudson (near Nashua) will host a fair on Saturday October 3 from 2-4pm. It’ll have a Fall Fest theme and be tons of fun. Please register here.
- Join us in Loudon (near Concord) on Saturday October 24 from 9am-1pm. It’ll be held indoors at the Benjamin Franklin Academy Charter School, 157 Chichester Rd in Loudon, and held in conjunction with a 5k run, so we expect a lot of families to show up. Education providers and attendees can register here.
Let us know if you want to organize a fair in your area. Anyone in the Laconia area interested? We haven’t had one in that region yet. We’re also interested in hosting fairs in the Lakes or Seacoast regions.
Let your friends know about these fairs. Word of mouth is the best way to advertise. Also, follow us and share our events and posts on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
About EdOpt
EdOpt is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose aim is to help families understand all their education options, from non-traditional (homeschooling, homeschool co-ops, microschools) to traditional (charter schools, private schools, tech centers, dual enrollment, learn everywhere).
Use our website to find education providers options around the state. Please let us know if we’re missing any!
EdOpt also provides guidance to help you figure out what will suit your children. Set up a FREE Education Options consultation today. And check out our new AI Assistant, the EdOpt Navigator, available on every website page.
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