Massachusetts school survey asks kids about gender, climate change fears

This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

A Massachusetts school district will distribute a survey to middle schoolers after asking parents not to share it with anyone else.

Students at Thomas Blake Middle School, part of Medfield Public Schools, will be administered a survey that asks children about gender identity, suicide and mental health, parental behavior at home and how worried they are about climate change, according to documents obtained by Defending Education in October.

The MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey, which was not created by Medfield Public Schools and which the district says is “given to 40,000 students in Grades 6-12 in 25 school districts west of Boston,” asks intrusive questions of students. 

The 112-question survey “gathers timely and important data on the health and risk behaviors of students in the middle and high school grades, with a goal of informing data-driven efforts to keep students healthy and safe,” according to its fact sheet. The survey promises anonymity to the students who take it.

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“The data is used to help the 25 school districts with programming, staffing needs, grants, and support for kids,” Jeff Marsden, Medfield Public Schools superintendent, told Fox News Digital. 

In a letter to parents, school principal Nat Vaughn told parents they could opt out of the survey on behalf of their children, and not to share the survey with anyone else, claiming that prior discussion could influence student responses.

The fourth and fifth questions, respectively, ask students what sex they were assigned at birth, and what their gender identity is.

Gender identity responses include “non-binary or other (including gender-queer, gender-fluid, gender non-conforming),” “I am not sure about my gender identity” and “I do not know what this question is asking.”

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The sixth question asks whether the student is transgender. The following question asks students whether they are heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual, questioning their sexual identity or whether they identify in some other way.

A large part of the survey focuses on mental health, asking the children how often they feel stressed and anxious, how often they feel worried beyond their control, whether they feel hopeless or depressed and whether they feel like failures or that they have let themselves or their families down.

Suicidality is also a prominent section in the survey.

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Children are asked whether they have felt sad or hopeless in the past 12 months for two weeks or more, whether they’ve “seriously” thought about killing themselves, whether they’ve made plans or tried to kill themselves and whether they have ever lived with someone who was “depressed, mentally ill, or suicidal.”

There are three questions about climate change on the survey.

“How often do you feel worried or stressed about climate change?” is the first, followed by “Do you think you are personally being affected by climate change?” and “Have you ever taken any actions to reduce the effects of climate change.”

Further questions include parental behavior at home, including whether parents or adults at home have ever insulted the survey subject, whether they have been physically abused by an adult at home or whether adults in their home physically abuse each other.

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Defending Education is a grassroots organization “working to restore schools at all levels from activists imposing harmful agendas,” according to its website.

“The bad news is that these surveys are extremely common in schools and continue to get more invasive, ideological and developmentally inappropriate—there is no justification for a regional health foundation using schools as the vehicle to ask all middle schoolers about their gender identity, suicidal thoughts or feelings about climate change,” Erika Sanzi, the group’s senior director of communications, told Fox News Digital.

“The good news is that the principal notified parents, with sufficient notice, about their right to opt out and even provided a copy of the survey. Federal law requires that parents be notified and provided a mechanism to opt out but it’s extremely rare to see a copy of the survey provided to all parents without them having to ask to see it,” she said. “Perhaps this is a hopeful sign that some school districts are becoming more transparent about the controversial and sensitive content included in these surveys.”

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In April, Burlington Public Schools in Massachusetts issued a similarly invasive survey, sparking outrage among parents.

Medfield Public Schools did not return a request for comment.