A high school in New Mexico used a $10,000 grant to purchase chest binders and pro-LGBTQ+ books for its students.
According to the Independent Women’s Forum, this discovery was made after a mother named Rachel Hein sounded the alarm earlier this year that her daughter’s prospective high school, Las Cruces Centennial High School, planned to install a “transgender closet” for its students. This way, students who identify as “transgender” could change their “gender identity” at school.
Hein’s daughter was preparing to attend Centennial when an article posted on Facebook by another member of the community caused her to reconsider.
“I thought ‘please tell me this is a joke,’” Hein told IWF. “The high school my daughter was going into had been awarded a $10,000 grant to get a ‘transgender closet’ installed.”
The left-wing organization “It Gets Better” reportedly funded the grant for the school to provide “gender-inclusive” and “affirming” supplies for kids who think they’re transgender.
“If you go to school and you don’t want your parents to know you’re changing your identity at school, there you go,” Hein said. “There’s your closet to do that without any [parental] knowledge. They’re trying to keep us out.”
“They don’t care what [parents] think—they want to do with our children what they will and to turn them into whatever they want,” she added. “And that’s not okay with us.”
During the enrollment process, the forms asked the parents to give permission for the school to provide “healthcare” to students. Hein did some research and found that a piece of legislation, S.B. 397, gave schools the right to treat students without requiring parental consent.
“It’s them opening the door to, well, you’re too busy to take them to their pediatrician, so we can handle that here,” she said. “ And once you give over that control, then they can start giving them treatments and all kinds of things that parents are not in the know about.”
In April 2024, the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance filed a public records request, which revealed that despite receiving the $10,000 grant from It Gets Better, Las Cruces’ Centennial High School did not build the “transgender closet.” Instead, Centennial High School used the grant money to buy “chest binders,” which are used to flatten women’s breasts to achieve a masculine appearance, and pro-gender ideology books for their school library, according to the public records request (via IWF):
LCPS’ legal support told the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance that $8,370 of the $10,000 grant was spent on chest binders that were handed out at a “Pride Day event in October 2023” in Las Cruces. This event was likely the Southern New Mexico Pride Celebration in September-October 2023. According to photos published by the Las Cruces Sun-News, the parade was attended by community officials, activists, drag performers, and families with children, some of whom can be seen digging for candy in rainbow-colored wagons.
"At first glance, Centennial High School's decision not to use the grant funds provided by It Gets Better to build a "transgender closet" seems encouraging. However, the reality of the matter is that those funds were used in potentially even more destructive ways,” said Ashley McClure, storytelling assistant at Independent Women’s Forum. “While building a ‘transgender closet’ serves those who already identify as transgender, pro-gender ideology library books expose children to age-inappropriate material and may encourage them to adopt identities that they wouldn't have otherwise.”
“Furthermore, chest binders pose serious physical risks to young girls. Based on their decision to spend $10,000 on these items, it would appear there is a very clear and potentially devastating agenda being pushed on children at Centennial High School,” McClure added.
Hein and her family ultimately moved out of New Mexico over the radical ideology permeating the schools.
“It all started right after the pandemic,” Hein said. “[My eight-year-old] is not going to be able to differentiate between what’s right and wrong, and it will be very confusing that the teachers who she’s around so much, and maybe even the counselors, are pushing [gender ideology] as though it is good.”