Tension over a teacher

North Carolina parent Aaron Driver said that when his 5-year-old twin daughters met their new music teacher—a male who dresses as a woman—they simply thought it was silly. The teacher started this fall at Middle Creek Elementary School near Cary, N.C. Driver said he hopes the girls won’t remember the experience. But confusion regarding the new teacher has added to his 8-year-old son’s anxiety, Driver said.

“We started to talk to him, like, ‘Hey man, how’s the music going? Like, do you want us to take you out of there?’” Driver said.
“And he would just shake his head and just kind of shut down, ‘No, I don’t want to talk about it.’”

Driver and a group of like-minded parents hoped to opt their kids out of the teacher’s classes, but school officials have denied their requests. On Tuesday, the group sent a demand letter to the Wake County Public School System, which Middle Creek is part of. The group, consisting of more than 70 individuals, argues the lack of accommodation from North Carolina’s largest school district violates their parental and religious rights.

Driver said his kids are too young to learn about the complicated issue of transgenderism.

“But you know, thanks to the Wake County school, I was able to have the discussion of transgenderism with them much earlier than I anticipated.” Driver said. “I was thinking, probably around, like, age 13, maybe before they started high school, I could tell them about this, but the Wake County Public School System thought that it was appropriate for me to have that conversation much earlier.”

Driver said he first heard about Middle Creek’s new hire at a friend’s daughter’s birthday party this summer. The news spread as Republican state Rep. Erin Paré posted about the teacher in late July and floated the idea of “requiring gender-appropriate professional attire for public school employees.” The conservative social media account Libs of TikTok published a viral post about the teacher a few days later. Senate candidate Michael Whatley also chimed in, writing, “We cannot allow men in high heels and skirts to indoctrinate North Carolina’s children.”

Driver argued the teacher’s presence in the school infringes on both his Christian religious beliefs and his desire to raise his kids according to these beliefs. He has set up a Facebook page for like-minded Middle Creek parents. He said the group’s nearly 80 members represent hundreds of kids.

As the music class is required weekly, Middle Creek parents said their children can’t avoid the teacher, according to the demand letter. The parents said they have the right to decide if and when to instruct their young children about gender identity, but the music teacher’s presence forces them to address the issue.

Additionally, children face the threat of discipline for not using female pronouns to refer to the teacher, and one student was corrected for addressing the teacher as “Mr.,” the demand letter said. The families asked to opt out of music class in favor of another class, but Middle Creek officials denied the request, the letter said.

“Not all of us buy into gender theory,” Driver said. “We don’t subscribe to it. We don’t have to. I feel like this is being pushed on us by a radical, sort of postmodern, progressive school board.”

In August and September, the issue got heated as parents raised their concerns before the school board at two meetings. On Aug. 18, Driver told the school board that parents “shouldn’t have to pass an ideological test to participate in public education.”

Another parent noted that the music teacher’s hiring could contribute to gender confusion in the elementary students, potentially causing lifelong harm.

Becky Lew-Hobbs, a mother who represents the area’s local Moms for Liberty chapter, said during the Sept. 1 meeting that the teacher had caused children to come home and ask questions like, “Why is a man wearing a dress? Why is he wearing makeup?”

But other parents pushed back. At the August meeting, parent Renee Sekel stated that the music teacher wasn’t “providing lessons on gender or sexuality. To the best of my understanding, they’re providing the curriculum required by this county. … But apparently the mere existence of a human being is now to be considered a lesson.”

Another parent said the teacher shouldn’t be “targeted, harassed, or publicly vilified because of their gender identity.” One speaker at the meeting labeled the parents seeking to defend their religious rights as “stupid, narrow-minded conservative bigot[s].”

Tuesday’s demand letter asked the school officials to give parents assurances within the next 15 days that they will be able to opt their children out of any class taught by the teacher. It also asks that no student be disciplined for using male pronouns with the teacher, and that the teacher won’t share a bathroom, locker room, or similar space with students. Additionally, the parents said school district faculty should not discuss gender identity and sexuality with their children without advance parental notice and the right to opt out.

WORLD reached out to the Wake County Public School System for comment but did not hear back prior to publication. According to the district’s policy, “The principal shall balance any individual request for assignment or reassignment within the school against the welfare of other students and the efficient operation of the school.”

By requiring students to attend the music teacher’s classes, the district is teaching students that this biological man is a woman, said Tyler Brooks, an attorney at the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, which represents the families.

“They’re sensitive and delicate concepts for parents to be able to address with their children, issues of gender, sexuality,” Brooks said. “Parents have the right to address those issues on their timeline … not when the government forces it on them.”

The Wake County parents have religious and parental rights grounded in state law, the Constitution, and recent Supreme Court rulings, Brooks said. For instance, in 2025, the court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have a right to opt their children out of LGBTQ-themed elementary school storybooks. The North Carolina school district should easily be able to offer an opt-out accommodation from the class, Brooks said.

Brooks is optimistic that the school district will respond to the demand letter favorably. But if not, Thomas More is ready to file a lawsuit and take the district to court.

For Brad Jacob, a constitutional law expert at Regent University, the case is not so straightforward. The parents’ request to be accommodated for a teacher is asking for more than the request in Mahmoud. Schools have a right to hire who they think is most qualified to teach a class, and a right to say what classes are or aren’t required, Jacob noted.

“I can’t tell you how a court is going to come down on this,” Jacob said. “Does religious liberty win all of this stuff? I don’t know.”