When schools take fifth graders on road trips, good parents want details. Will their children get bullied? They want to know where the children will sleep, how many to a room, and whether rooms are co-ed or separated by gender.

Members of the left-wing majority on the Colorado State Board of Education made clear Wednesday they don’t care about parental concerns for children. They don’t care if school officials lie to parents or tell children to lie. The board majority won’t even discuss these concerns.

It stems from a fifth grade school trip of cross-country athletes, sponsored by the Jefferson County School District. Parents Joe and Serena Wailes sent their 11-year-old daughter on the East Coast trip after attending pre-trip meetings. In the meetings, school officials said girls and boys would be in separate rooms – in fact, on different hotel floors.

Despite that assurance, the school assigned the girl to share a bed with a biologically male student who identifies as transgender.

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After their daughter called to explain the circumstance, and how it made her uncomfortable, the parents made several requests for separate accommodations. Instead of compliance, they had to fight to get a result.

By not obeying school policy, the district effectively bullied the girl and the transgender student. What should have been a simple and private matter became an embarrassing conflict of wills, aired in the national press, that put both students in the middle of an adult decision.

God loves all children equally, regardless of gender identity. The community expects schools to care for transgender students and other children with equal regard. That means avoiding unnecessary conflicts that potentially embarrass all involved.

The Jefferson County district’s policy on room accommodations states that schools will assess the needs of transgender children on a “case-by-case basis with the goals of maximizing the student’s social integration, providing equal opportunity to participate in overnight activity and athletic trips, ensuring the student’s safety and comfort, and minimizing stigmatization of the student.”

It also says: “Any student who is transgender or not, who has a need or desire for increased privacy, regardless of the underlying reason, should be provided with a reasonable accommodation, which may include a private room.”

That means any parent or child who raises concerns about school-related sleeping arrangements should receive reasonable accommodation without commotion or resistance.

State board members don’t see it that way, making clear they don’t care. Early Wednesday, longtime board member and former state Sen. Steve Durham tried to clarify that students and parents deserve full knowledge of sleeping arrangements at school events.

Durham presented a resolution explaining how district officials deceived parents before the trip by lying about accommodations. It explains how school officials told the girl to lie about her roommate’s biological traits.

The proposed resolution concludes with, “Be it resolved that the Colorado State Board of Education condemns the policies and malpractice that allowed this situation to occur; and furthermore, The Colorado State Board of Education holds that boys’ and girls’ sleeping quarters on school trips ought to be separated based on sex rather than on subjective gender identity.”

The board voted 6-3 to shut down the discussion and 6-3 to keep Durham’s resolution off the agenda. It voted for secrecy and against transparency.

This is unfair to the transgender student. It is unfair to the girl who did not expect her roommate, with whom she was told to share a bed, to have male genitalia. It is unfair to parents, who provide the children and funding for schools.

The Colorado State Board of Education should have the spine to defend “reasonable accommodations” for all students – as the Jefferson County policy demands – without fomenting uncomfortable, avoidable and needless conflicts that highlight differences rather than accommodating them.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board