WRAL.com26%
Wake elementary parents disagree over gender-neutral dress code during school board meeting 4%
By Emily Walkenhorst0% WRAL education reporter0%
8/4/2026, 5:16:56 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 9 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Begging the Question, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 6.9% saturation with 83 hits. Analysis detected 382 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,195 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 12.8% and a BS Rank of 4% (25,899 of 26,881 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 96.30% of the article peer group.
Parents at a Wake elementary school disagreed during Tuesday's school board meeting over the hiring of a teacher they say is transgender and whether to have a dress code to circumvent the issue.
School board members noted the debate during their own comment portion of the meeting afterward but largely defended the teacher's hire and the district's current dress code that doesn't discriminate based on sex or gender identity.
They cited federal laws and court decisions that require that neutrality.
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The school started classes last Thursday, days after a state lawmaker suggested a dress code that would require sex-based professional attire for public-school employees.
State Rep.
Erin Paré, R-Wake, posted on social media about the issue after hearing concerns from parents about the possibility of a transgender teacher in their southern Wake County elementary school, describing the teacher as a "biological male, who dresses as a woman."
In her posts, Paré added that the Wake County school district should have policies that "protect children from being exposed to more complex and mature gender-identity questions and concepts at too young of an age."
On Tuesday, Paré said she was "standing firm on this for the protection of our children," adding that it is inappropriate for an elementary school setting.
"I’m not sure what a legislative solution is at this point.
I have received a lot of ideas from concerned parents, and I’m open to suggestions," Paré said.
Since then, the issue has been a subject of debate in the community and the focus of state and national political social media accounts.
The debate has been heated, with some accounts posting information and photos about the school and teacher and other groups more closely aligned to the school shutting down their own webpages.
Tuesday night's school board meeting -- the first since Paré's post -- was also heated.
A disagreement between parents briefly interrupted the meeting, after one parent told another he would be subject to eternal damnation for his support of the teacher.
Raising questions about gender
Over nearly an hour of public comment, 15 people spoke about the issue, most of them saying they were parents at the school.
"Elementary school children are now asking questions about sex, gender identity, pronouns and gender presentation," said Aaron Driver, a parent of three children.
"That creates an educational issue and therefore a parental rights issue."
A core disagreement is over whether a transgender teacher dressing according to their gender identity would be noticed by the young children and raise questions for them -- questions that some parents believe are too mature for elementary-age children to be asking.
That's the concern Paré said drove her to raise the issue.
Other parents said they weren't afraid of their children asking those questions and getting answers.
"My kids did have a question or two, and we had a good conversation about how sometimes people don't feel at home in a box society creates," said Stephen Stacks, a parent at the school.
"It was that simple."
Driver said he wished his school had anticipated concerns and would provide clarity to parents on how teachers will answer any questions about gender identity, should children ask them during the school day.
The state has a law, known as the Parents' Bill of Rights, that prohibits instruction on gender identity and sexuality before fifth grade.
The law says that answering students' unsolicited questions on those topics doesn't count as instruction.
Driver said he was disappointed that social media is where parents learned of the issue and felt the school was unprepared.
Other speakers Tuesday said they didn't feel unsafe with a transgender teacher at their child's school until it became the subject of national scrutiny.
They said they wanted their children to grow up in an inclusive environment and don't want to shield them from anyone.
"What's confusing to students is attacking people based on how they might present, their appearance or their identity," said Anna Crollman, a parent at the school.
Some parents called the issue a distraction from bigger issues facing education.
Several school board members said Tuesday they hope to focus on those issues.
"As you've heard, we have a funding crisis in public education," Board Member Chris Heagarty said.
Earlier Tuesday afternoon, the board received $18 million in recommended budget adjustments, including many cuts, from district officials to make up for an impending shortfall.
Board Member Cheryl Caulfield defended Paré before saying she hoped to continue to focus on improving schools.
Paré has represented her southern Wake County district since 2021.
She’s seeking reelection in November in what could be one of the more competitive legislative races.
The district includes parts of Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina.
Paré won it by about 6 percentage points in 2024, down from almost 8 points in 2022.
Democrats are hoping to flip the seat blue following strong showings in suburban Wake’s municipal elections in 2025.
Winn Decker won the district’s Democratic primary in March.
Republicans in North Carolina and other states have taken up a focus on transgender topics in recent years.
The issue has energized voters in the GOP base.
Republican lawmakers passed multiple laws in recent legislative sessions focused on medical care and athletic team participation by transgender children.
Legal precedent on hiring, dress codes
Federal court decisions in recent years have protected employees from discrimination against their gender identity.
One North Carolina charter school had its dress code — which required girls to wear skirts — struck down for violating Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination.
The Wake County Public School System’s policy bars discrimination in the hiring process of anyone over several things, including their gender identity.
“The district prohibits unlawful discrimination while taking into account all requirements in state and federal law," the district said in a statement to WRAL News.
In 2020, the school board changed a handful of policies to reflect various recent federal court decisions related to gender identity.
That included its hiring policy.
The U.S.
Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Bostock v.
Clayton County, Georgia said civil rights protections on the basis of sex also included protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
That's because sexual orientation and gender identity are inseparable from sex, the majority contended in that 2020 decision.
The Supreme Court more recently has ruled against certain protections for the transgender community, including recently upholding state laws that prohibited transgender girls from competing in girls' sports.
When it comes to dress code, federal courts haven't been as clear.
The Supreme Court in 2023 declined to hear a case brought against Charter Day School in Brunswick County, leaving a federal ruling in place.
That ruling had struck down the school's sex-based dress code, which required girls to wear skirts.
The court ruled that sex-based dress codes constituted sex discrimination under Title IX.
In 2024, Wake County updated its faculty and student dress codes to state that they cannot be applied in a way that is discriminatory against a protected class.
The district includes gender identity among its protected classes.
Speakers
6speakers19%attributed speech966writer words
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69%flagged-word coverageErin Paré
89 attributed words39% of attributed speech20% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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