The parents of an 11-year-old female Colorado student are furious after their daughter claims she was forced to share a bed with a trans identifying biological male student while on a school trip. The student, identified as D.W. in reports, was on a cross country trip with her school, Jefferson County Public Schools, over the summer when she found out that one of the other three students she would be sharing a room with, K.E.M in the documents, was a boy who identifies as a girl. K.E.M was a student from another school who revealed to D.W. that he was biologically male.

Feeling uncomfortable about sharing a room and a bed with a biological male, D.W. snuck off to a bathroom and called her mother, Serena Wailes, who was also on the trip, though not attending as a chaperone. “We were definitely not aware of that before we went on the trip,” Wailes told The Daily Signal. She stated she had been assured that boys and girls would not share rooms and would be on separate floors. Wailes met with her daughter in the hotel lobby to discuss the situation. “I was really upset. One, I was really upset that she was put in that situation at 11 years old—I don’t feel that is fair to put kids in that kind of situation—and two, that we were not even given the information that this was a possibility before the trip,” said Wailes. “The whole time they’re saying, ‘Girls on one floor, boys on another, they’re not going to be in each other’s rooms unless it is pre-approved.’ So, we’re going through this whole process, not even recognizing that this is a possibility.”

A chaperone was contacted, who then contacted the school’s principal, Ryan Lucas. According to the Wailes’ legal counsel through the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Lucas confirmed K.E.M’s biological gender with his parents and informed that he was in “stealth mode,” meaning that other students could not be informed of K.E.M’s biological sex. According to the ADF, after a long discussion, D.W. agreed to move to a different bed in the room, but was apparently told to lie about the reason, telling the other students she wanted to be close to the air conditioner. However, another student suggested K.E.M move to the bed by the air conditioner with D.W, causing further uneasiness. D.W reached out to her mother again, who then spoke to a chaperone again. It was finally agreed that D.W. could move to a different room, but according to the ADF, the chaperones lied about the reason as well, stating it was due to an illness. The ADF has written a demand letter to the school, requesting clarification on its room-sharing policies as the Waileses have two fourth-grade students that are planning to attend the same trip next year.

The ADF accused the school of having an “unequal application” for students regarding its transgender policy. “The policy is supposed to ‘maintain the privacy of all students,’ Id. at 1, and allow for ‘[a]ny student who is transgender or not’ to be ‘provided with a reasonable accommodation,’ including a ‘private room.’ Id. at 3,” the ADF wrote in its complaint. “But in practice, JCPS does not provide this same opportunity to students like D.W., who do not wish to room with a student of the opposite sex, nor to parents like the Waileses, who would like to know whether JCPS intends to require their daughter to share a room with a boy.” Parental rights and school transgender policies have often been at odds with one another, with a number of schools adopting policies that allow students to change their gender identity without notifying the student’s parents. ADF senior counsel, Kate Anderson, says that parents, and not just schools, have the right to such information. “Parents, not the government, have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and that includes making informed decisions to protect their child’s privacy.”