In February, officials at Alan B. Shepard Middle School in Illinois informed Christine Parker’s* 12-year-old daughter and several other girls that they would need to start sharing their locker room with a trans-identifying male student. Understandably upset at the idea of having to undress in front of a boy, Christine Parker’s daughter, Justine, argued the situation was unfair and told the administration she would not change in the locker room as long as the boy was using it, according to Parker.

The school responded by sending Justine home with an infraction notice and assigning an adult staffer to supervise the girls’ locker room and the female students as they changed and got ready for gym class — all to prevent the trans-identifying male from being “bullied” by his female classmates, Christine Parker said.

“The school was onto her like, ‘Why don’t you do this? You’re kind of disobedient,’” Parker’s husband, Mark, said in an exclusive interview with IW Features. “They weren’t so nice to her. She had to actually yell at the staffer that she didn’t want to change while [the boy] was in there.”

When Mark and Christine Parker confronted school officials, including Principal Rob Wegley and Associate Principal Cathy Van Treese, during a meeting and asked why their daughter was being punished for objecting to sharing an intimate space with a male student, the administration tried to backtrack, they said. Officials claimed Justine had been offered a separate changing accommodation, including the ability to change in the nurses’ restroom or the girls’ locker room after everyone had left.

However, according to the Parkers, when Justine and some of the other girls in her class tried to use the nurses’ restroom to change, some teachers blocked them from using it. 

“To that, the school staff told us that was just misinformation, and it wasn’t true,” Mark Parker alleged. “But initially, they were pushing really hard against the girls.”

School officials also argued their hands were tied due to Illinois’ Human Rights Act, which mandates that students be permitted access to the restroom and locker room corresponding with their “gender identity.”

“They told us they’re following the law. They just said they’re doing their job,” Christine Parker said, noting that throughout their conversation, officials never took the combative stance toward her or Mark that they had allegedly taken when handling the female students’ protests.

Mark Parker argued the school likely was concerned about growing parental backlash. In fact, he said school officials admitted to him and Christine that they had already received complaints about the situation from multiple other parents. 

This wasn’t much of a surprise to Mark and Christine, since they had learned from Justine that around 40 girls had vocally expressed concerns to each other about the policy. But when the Parkers raised this point to school officials, the administration dismissed it, insisting there were “just a few” girls upset about the violation of their privacy.

But to Mark and Christine, it shouldn’t matter to the school whether just one girl or 40 girls complained. Even one girl being deprived of her right to a sex-exclusive female locker room is “unfair” and “wrong,” they argued.

However, the unfairness of the situation is made even worse by the fact that multiple girls have complained, Christine Parker said.

“The girls are asking, ‘Why do they have to make us use different accommodations and not him? Why do they have to change our schedule, or make us be different and not him?’ To put a few girls that are complaining, to change their schedules because of this one boy, it’s not fair,” she argued.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the Parkers have had to confront gender ideology in their children’s public schools. Their older son, who is in high school, informed them last year that his school had started offering tampons in the boys’ restrooms, they recalled.

“This is not OK, this is not right,” Mark Parker said. “What are the kids supposed to be learning from this? We should go back to a normal school program with basic teaching and nothing about this indoctrination.”

The school did not respond to a request for comment.

The Parkers also argued that school officials’ attempt to hide behind Illinois’ Human Rights Act isn’t going to cut it, especially now that the Trump administration has made it clear that federal law, including Title IX, prohibits girls from being denied their right to sex-exclusive spaces. 

“We voted for change, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening in our state at all,” Mark Parker said.

Illinois is one of several Democratic states with laws enforcing gender ideology that are now in direct conflict with the Trump administration’s enforcement of Title IX. This conflict is likely to make its way into the courts, which have traditionally held that federal law supersedes state law.

The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from school districts that refuse to comply with its directions, and has encouraged families to file complaints with the Education Department against rogue districts. 

That’s why it’s important for parents to remain vigilant, the Parkers said.

“It doesn’t actually affect you until it does. I hoped my kids would go through school and I wouldn’t have to deal with this stuff,” Mark Parker said. “And it’s hard not to ask myself, ‘Why should I have to pick this battle?’ But these are our kids, and it’s just common sense.” 

*The names of these storytellers have been changed to protect their identities.