‘I will lie for you’: WA teacher details how schools are offering to hide students’ pronouns from parents

A Washington public school teacher who serves as an elected union representative said schools in his district are actively offering to conceal students’ preferred names and pronouns from their parents, and that a committee he sat on discussed ways to introduce certain topics into classrooms specifically so families could not opt out.

Travis Reep, a fifth-grade teacher in the North Thurston School District in Olympia and a father of four, joined “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio to explain why he broke with the Washington Education Association (WEA) to publicly support Initiative 001, which would restore the parental rights provisions that the Legislature rolled back last year.

“I’m not the parent, you are,” Reep said at a recent Let’s Go Washington rally in Olympia. “You are responsible for raising your children, and I happen to be a teacher that respects that.”

Reep says a committee discussed introducing topics so parents could not opt out

Reep said the break with his union started several years ago, when he sat on a committee examining how to bring certain equity-related topics into the classroom.

“Specifically, in ways that parents would not be able to opt out of those,” Reep said. “The idea from several educators on this committee was to introduce picture books in the classroom that had those topics relevant to them. But rather than putting it in the curriculum, that was the purpose; the curriculum would focus on plot and character development and setting. And then the students would naturally ask questions about those other topics, and thereby not needing to be parent notification because it was student-led rather than part of curriculum.”

Reep said the approach troubled him regardless of where he stood on the underlying topics.

“As a parent, I don’t want educators sitting across from me trying to get things into the classroom intentionally so that I can’t make a decision on them,” Reep said. “And I thought it was disingenuous for us to be sitting on a committee that was initially a community committee and then talking about how we can do things without the most important community knowing, the parents of the children that we’re serving.”

Reep says his own child received a survey asking which pronouns to hide from parents

Reep said the problem is not theoretical. He explained how his own child received a school survey at the start of this year that asked students which names and pronouns they wanted used at school versus which ones should be used around their parents.

“They were specifically asked, ‘Which one do you prefer? And please let me know, do I need to use the same ones with your parents or different ones with your parents?'” Reep said. “Essentially telling students that, ‘I will lie for you and hide that for you.'”

KIRO host John Curley asked what that dynamic does to a child’s psychology when one authority figure is offering to deceive the other.

“When teachers are saying, ‘I’ll hide this for you,’ they’re essentially saying, ‘I’m going to be a secret-keeper between you and your parents,'” Reep said. “I think that sets up a dangerous situation on multiple levels, not the least of which is potential for grooming. I think we would be much better served if we helped that student to have difficult conversations with parents, just like we do with their peers at school when there’s conflict.”

Reep says most teachers agree but stay quiet

Reep said he has not received pushback from union leadership despite speaking publicly against the WEA’s position. He said the teachers who agree with him tend to stay out of union politics.

“Of my colleagues who I am friends with outside of education, I would say the vast majority of them agree with the idea of sharing more information with parents and not hiding it from them,” Reep said. “Among the union representation, when I’m sitting in a room full of union representatives, I would say that of that population, they disagree. But I often find that those who are sitting in those meetings are a part of those meetings by their very nature because they are activists for certain agendas.”

Initiative 001 would re-enact the provisions of Initiative 2081, the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which passed the Legislature in 2024 with strong bipartisan support — 82-15 in the House and 49-0 in the Senate. Democrats passed House Bill 1296 in 2025, which supporters of the original law say dismantled those protections. Initiative 001 qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot after more than 400,000 signatures were submitted in January.

Reep said he believes the measure will pass.

“I think that the voters already one time through legislation in 2024 said that this is what they wanted,” Reep said. “I don’t think parents realize all of the things that they can’t ask or would be told ‘we can’t tell you.’ If they knew that, they would maybe be more inclined to see this as a bigger issue and vote yes for it.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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