Proposed ‘genderful’ charter school wants kids to ‘explore their gender’

(Daily Caller News Foundation) – Concerned critics are reportedly pushing back against a proposed public charter school in Brooklyn, New York, that would encourage kids as young as the fifth grade to explore themselves in a “genderful environment.”

According to the Miss Major Middle Public Charter School’s (MMM) website, a “genderful” environment is one that “lives at the intersection of gender, choice, liberation, joy, and creativity. Our genderful students explore their gender, embrace their own identity, and decide how they will authentically walk through the world.”

“We create a brave space as we work towards physical and emotional safety for all students. We prioritize total inclusivity by ensuring that policies and resources are designed with and for trans, gender non-conforming, queer and ally students and families,” MMM’s website reads concerning their mission.

This embrace of the “genderful” lifestyle for kids as young as 9 years old has sparked concern and outrage among parents, who are wary of “indoctrination,” the New York Post (NYP) reported.

“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,” Helen Qiu, a mom running for New York’s 65th State Assembly district in lower Manhattan, told the NYP. 

“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,’” Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist and Manhattan Institute fellow, told the NYP. He added that schools like MMM are a “sinister trap.”

The proposed charter school includes that all students will take courses in “STEAAM (Science, Technology, Arts+Activism, Mathematics),” a play on the traditional STEM courses, while also imagining “the possibility of gender not as a force that restricts us, but as an embodied experience that is inherently joyful,” according to the school’s website.

The school’s formation and operations are guided by a Trans+/Queer Advisory Council, of which seven of the 10 members include either “they” or “them” in their pronouns, according to the community page of the school’s website.

“The spirit of our school is embodied by our namesake, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Miss Major is a Black transgender activist who played a pivotal role in the Stonewall Uprising and has dedicated her life to advocating for the rights and well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals,” the school’s website reads. “We prioritize total inclusivity by ensuring that policies and resources are designed with and for trans, gender-nonconforming, queer and ally students and families.”

“It’s horrifying. No charter school that’s aimed at gender ideology indoctrination should ever be approved for children this young,” Maud Maron, a community education council member in NYC, told the NYP. “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.”

MMM is one of many applicants for New York City school charters, of which there are only nine spots for the fall of 2025, according to the NYP.

The school did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.