LYNNWOOD — A Lynnwood mother has withdrawn her four children from Martha Lake Elementary School in the Edmonds School District after learning that her fourth-grade daughter participated in a Pride-themed lesson during music class without prior parental notification or an opportunity to opt out.
Maria Varchetto said her daughter returned home upset near the end of the school year and described the June 15 lesson as focused on Pride history and LGBTQ identities.
According to Varchetto, the class watched a nine-year-old YouTube video titled “Why is Pride in June” from the YouTube channel Queer Kid Stuff, along with performances by musicians including Freddie Mercury, Lil Nas X and Billy Porter. Students also heard that they could identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, transgender, non-binary or Two-Spirit, she said.
“My daughter came home just so drastically upset the last week of school telling me that the music teacher decided to teach a whole curriculum about Pride history and Pride Month,” Varchetto said in an interview with Ari Hoffman of Talk Radio 570 KVI.
“I assumed I had probably missed an email asking for consent, but there was nothing. No advanced notice, no opportunity to review the lesson, no information letting parents know this topic would be discussed. No option to request that our kids be allowed to opt out and participate in an alternative activity. There was nothing,” she added.
Varchetto shared that what unsettled her most was the lack of transparency by the school or even the teacher and not the subject matter itself.
“I need parents to be informed of this,” she said. “Parents have the right to know what was taught to their kids. Whether or not you agree with it or disagree is irrelevant. You don’t get to teach and go rogue on subjects that are this controversial without providing parents a notice to opt out.”
Varchetto felt she could no longer trust the school’s leadership after contacting Martha Lake Elementary School Principal Angela Mitchell, and emailing Edmonds School District Superintendent Dr. Rebecca Miner and other district officials, because her concerns about parental notification were not addressed and school officials doubling-down on not notifying parents on this subject matter. So, she decided to switch her children to a hybrid homeschool program and is open to private school if a scholarship becomes available.
“We are 100% removing our kids from this school as I have no trust in the leadership,” she said. “I feel mad they did this, mad they hid it. I feel insulted, offended, angry, and sad that my kids are now being taken out of a lifestyle they’ve grown to love, away from the friendships they’ve built, all because this one teacher didn’t care to ask permission and a principal lied and hid it.”
In a statement, Edmonds School District Communications Director Curtis Campbell said the lesson “was not part of a districtwide Pride curriculum.” It was developed by the school’s music teacher “that highlighted the contributions of influential musicians, including some who identify as LGBTQ+.”
“The purpose of the lesson was to teach music and music history through the lives and contributions of notable artists,” Campbell said. “Discussions about an artist’s background or identity were included as relevant biographical context, similar to how students may learn about other aspects of historical figures’ lives that helped shape their experiences and contributions.”
The district expects materials “to be age-appropriate and aligned with district expectations and state standards.” Administrators are reviewing whether the lesson met those expectations.
Under Washington state law, core instructional materials — the primary resources for a given course — generally require adoption by the school board following recommendations from an instructional materials committee. Supplemental instructional materials, by contrast, are defined in RCW 28A.320.235 as educational materials not expressly required by the school or district and instead selected at the discretion of a certificated teacher. These include videos, books and other digital content used to extend and support instruction. Supplemental instructional materials do not require the same formal board adoption process.
State law, RCW 28A.345.130, directs districts to adopt inclusive curricula and select diverse, age-appropriate instructional materials that include the histories, contributions and perspectives of historically marginalized groups, including LGBTQ people. School districts may not refuse to approve or prohibit materials solely because they relate to the role or contributions of protected classes per RCW 28A.320.233. However, materials must still meet standards for age-appropriateness and alignment with state learning goals.
The Edmonds School District maintains a Gender Inclusive Schools Policy (3211) and has formally recognized June as 2SLGBTQIA+ Pride Month.
Parents have statutory rights under RCW 28A.605.005 to examine curriculum, textbooks, instructional materials and supplemental instructional materials used in their child’s classroom, in accordance with district policies and procedures. They also have the right to receive written notice and opt their child out of comprehensive sexual health education under RCW 28A.300.475. No statewide requirement mandates advance parental notification or an opt-out option for all supplemental materials on topics such as Pride history or LGBTQ identities when those materials fall outside formal sexual health education. Parents may request a review and potential removal of supplemental materials after the fact under processes districts were required to establish by the 2025-26 school year with the passage of HB-2331, sponsored by Representative Monica Jurado Stonier (D-LD49).
In reviewing the video at the center of the dispute, “Why is Pride in June?!? – Stonewall for Kids: QUEER KID STUFF #20,” is a 2017 episode from the YouTube channel Queer Kid Stuff, which describes itself as an LGBTQ+ educational web series for children ages 3 and older. The channel’s host goes by the name Lindsay and is accompanied by a non-binary stuffed companion named Teddy. The video explains, in a very simplified way, that June is Pride Month because of the June 28, 1969, Stonewall Inn uprising in New York City—a catalyst for the gay liberation movement.
The video frames the “gay rights movement” having started in 1969 and “is an activist movement.” The video’s host, Lindsey, then stated that transwomen Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera “decided to stand up for their rights” after getting angry because “they weren’t allowed to meet in places they feel safe and free to be themselves.” She then stated that their action “inspired a tone of other LGBTQ+ people to stand up for their rights too.”
A fourth-grade treatment of civil-rights history can cover Stonewall’s place in the timeline of gay legal equality with age-suitable language, but it should stay factual. The video used as a supplemental instructional material by the Martha Lake Elementary school teacher, unfortunately is riddled with falsehoods.
The “gay rights movement” did not start in 1969 as stated in the video. Organized gay rights efforts in the U.S. began decades earlier with the Henry Gerber’s Society for Human Rights that formed in 1924 in Chicago — the first known U.S. gay rights organization. Other groups championed the movement such as Harry Hay’s Mattachine Society (1950, Los Angeles) and the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955 in San Francisco (the first lesbian rights organization).
Prior to the Stonewall Riots in 1969 there was the August 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood which is the first recorded act of resistance by LGBTQ peoples against police harassment—three full years before the more known Stonewall riots in New York City. This riot was fully led by transwomen and drag queens.
Compton’s Cafeteria was one of the few places transwomen and drag queens could hang out as they were unwelcomed into San Fransico’s gay bar scene at this time in the 1960’s. Because cross-dressing (“female impersonation”) was illegal at the time, police could use the presence of trans women and drag queens at Compton’s Cafeteria as a pretext for making a raid and closing the establishment.
On the night of the riot, it is alleged that as one of the San Fransico police officers, responding to a call, attempted to arrest a transwoman at the cafeteria. She then threw a cup of coffee in his face. Other trans patrons then began throwing items at officers; striking them with their purses and high heels. The police were forced into the streets, where the fighting continued. A police car was damaged, and a newsstand set ablaze. The police then called for backup, brought in the “paddy wagons,” and made arrests quelling the riot.
Another falsehood mentioned in the YouTube video titled “Why is Pride in June” was the calling of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera as “transwomen.” In multiple interviews by Johnson, who was born male, repeatedly described herself as a gay man, drag queen, and transvestite. At times she used she/her pronouns and in others he/him and referred to herself as Malcolm—jargon very common among gay men who at times in a form of banter would call each other “gurl” or “she.” Also, Rivera, who was also born male, identified as a drag queen, street queen, and transvestite.
The video insinuates that Johnson and Rivera “decided to stand up for their rights” after getting angry in Stonewall because “they weren’t allowed to meet in places they feel safe and free to be themselves,” well this again is historically false.
Johnson’s own account in a video interview and later accounts state she arrived around 2 a.m., after the riot had already begun, telling the interviewer, “the place was already on fire… the riots had already started” when she arrived.
Rivera’s presence on the first night is not supported by credible eyewitnesses. Historian David Carter, who is the author of the most thoroughly researched account, Stonewall, and others including statements attributed to Johnson herself and witnesses such as Randy Wicker, Bob Kohler, and Doric Wilson conclude that Rivera was not at Stonewall Inn when the fighting started as she was reportedly uptown asleep in a park.
Claims that Johnson or Rivera initiated the resistance are myths. Stormé DeLarverie is the person identified in historical accounts as the “butch lesbian” who resisted police during the raid and is credited with fighting back at the Stonewall Inn which sparked the riot. DeLarverie was a singer, bouncer, and longtime protector of lesbians in Greenwich Village. She was biracial, born from a Black mother and White father, in New Orleans where interracial marriage was illegal, resulting in her having no official birth certificate.
Multiple eyewitness accounts describe New York City police roughly handling “a woman in masculine clothing,” hitting her, and the woman fighting back with punches to the officer, resisting arrest, and yelling to the crowd something like “Why don’t you guys do something?”
That was the alleged moment the crowd gathered and fought back, launching the Stonewall riot that involved many young gay street kids, gay men, some lesbians, and others—not a premeditated decision by Johnson and Rivera. The multi-night Stonewall riot was a collective event involving hundreds of people that shifted to a more militant gay liberation movement with the formation of the Gay Liberation Front and the first Pride marches in 1970.
The video shown to the fourth graders also oversimplified the cause of the Stonewall raid. The Stonewall Inn was a Mafia-run bar operating without a proper liquor license, selling bootlegged alcohol. The raid could have been rooted in homophobia, but it was operating illegally without a liquor license to pay the city its tax revenues. The video’s phrasing that LGBTQ people were “not allowed to meet safely” omits the illegal status of the bar.
That video’s subject matter—sexual orientation and expression—intersects with recent concerns about indoctrination within public schools—an item President Donald J Trump personally addressed with an official executive order titled, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” Parents rights advocate groups such as Moms for Liberty, raise the issue of indoctrination of elementary student particularly around issues involving gender identity claiming that activist frame laws or personal beliefs as settled fact to young children which risks shaping their minds without parental involvement.
A group of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, sued and won after their school district introduced books to pre-K through grade 3 that presented gender transition and related identity claims as settled fact. The parents argued this constituted ideological instruction conflicted with their beliefs and they were denied an option to opt-out which violated parental rights. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that parents could opt their children out.
In a Pew Research Center survey in 2023, 48% of parents agree that they should be able to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom with only 38% of parents agreeing that these topics should not be opted out. According to another Pew Research Center survey in 2023, about half of teachers say students should not learn about gender identity in school at all. This increases significantly for elementary school teachers with 62% saying elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.
What makes something educational is that the verifiable information equips a student to evaluate the claims of what the teacher presents. Indoctrination, on the other hand, transmits a preferred moral-political lens as the only legitimate premise and seeks emotional buy-in.
The Why is Pride in June video explicitly and directly tells their child audience—reinforced by a puppet—that watching and learning from the video “makes you an activist too” and “We’re all activists.” This is not teaching what activism is; it is assigning an identity and moral role to the audience for consuming the content—their passive viewing was participation in a political movement.
The very mention of “bathroom laws” being “really unfair to trans people and trans kids” is being presented as settled fact to the elementary school kids with no acknowledgment of competing interests—non-trans kids, specifically the safety of biological girls and the privacy of biological boys. An educational discussion would debate fairness and not simply declare the preferred side and invite agreement with the “It’s not cool to treat anyone unfairly” comment by Lindsey.
The video lacked any tools for critical thinking, such as there was no invitation to ask the students why same-sex bathroom laws exist, what possible trade-offs are involved, how do different people weigh safety vs. affirmation, and what does the empirical evidence show about outcomes. Instead, it leans towards a classic pattern of ideological transmission: affirmation to simplified hero story to current injustice declaration to collective pride.
The above examples collectively build on the video’s indoctrination-feel marred in pseudo-historical facts as the vehicle. The video for a fourth-grade audience appears to not be balanced in civic nor historical literacy and tends to be that of early socialization into a specific activism framework.
On why she came forward to make her experience known, Varchetto told the Lynnwood Times, “To give parents the chance to talk to their kids about what they learn in school behind their back.” She also shared that the supplemental video was shown to kindergarteners through sixth graders.
Author: Mario Lotmore
