A California school district’s superintendent said its now-taken down LGBTQ Resources did not include links to an LGBTQ youth center’s “Affirming Therapy” page, though screenshots from The Daily Signal’s report tell a different story.
Newport Harbor High School in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District had posters around its halls as recently as May with scannable QR codes that take students to a number of “LGBTQ+ Resources,” including the LGBTQ Center of Orange County’s website, according to photos shared with The Daily Signal.
A QR code poster can be found in the background of a May 7 Newport Harbor High School Instagram post of students posing with a teacher in a classroom.
The now-deleted resources included this link to “LGBTQ Affirming Therapy” provided by the LGBTQ Center OC. The link takes students to a form that helps them connect with a therapist who can write a referral letter for transition procedures.
“The links they mentioned we partner with we do no not partner with,” Newport-Mesa Superintendent Wesley Smith said at a July 30 school board meeting. “The things they mentioned in those links are not in those links.”
Superintendent Wesley Smith denied a Daily Signal story at a July 30 Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Education meeting. (Courtesy: NMUSD)
Smith’s total pay with benefits in 2023 was $487,746.
The QR code now takes scanners to an “Error” page. But a WayBack Machine search proves that the LGBTQ resources page did link to the LGBTQ Center’s website.
The link is not the extent of the district’s involvement with the LGBTQ Center. Employees of the LGBTQ Center have spoken to the Newport Harbor High School’s LGBTQ+ club during the lunch period.
A presentation in the spring of 2022 obtained through a California Public Records Act request and shared with The Daily Signal discussed “Trans Health and Wellness” and advertised the center’s LGBTQ+ groups for children as young as 10.
The superintendent said no students in the district transitioned without parental involvement.
“The accuracy about secretly transitioned is not true, never happened,” Smith said of The Daily Signal’s report.
However, The Daily Signal did not report that the district has secretly transitioned kids in the past, but that its policies allow gender transitions to be hidden from parents.
Newport-Mesa uses a “Gender Support Plan” form that asks the person filling out such a form to indicate the level of support of a student’s parents for his or her gender identity, according to internal emails obtained by The Center for American Liberty and shared with The Daily Signal. Students ages 12 and older may formulate gender support plans in the Newport-Mesa school district without parental knowledge or consent.
Neither the superintendent nor the district responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
A mother in the district who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about threats to her family told The Daily Signal it’s easy to disprove Smith’s claims about the district’s involvement with the LGBTQ Center and its plans to hide gender identity from parents if students request it.
“If you do any basic research, or pay any attention, which is what we urge parents to do, you can see that he’s lying,” the mother said.