The Inconvenient Mom

How NYC schools silenced me for speaking up about controversial school gender policies

"There is no place for PLACE NYC in District 2" signs with Maud's picture posted around her neighborhood

I met Maud Maron in November 2020 at the first open schools rally in downtown Manhattan. She was then, and still is now, indefatigable- a public school mom with integrity and grit. We fought together to reopen schools, against mask mandates (she was the first person in our open schools Facebook group to even suggest that it was time to get school mask mandates rescinded) and now we continue our work pushing back against gender ideology and Anti-Americanism in our public schools.

Maud is also featured in our upcoming documentary “15 Days…” which will be released this fall.

I asked Maud to adapt a (very long!) post she made on Twitter last month about her experience as an elected (and removed) NYC school board member- to go on the record.

This is her story. I hope she inspires you as much as she inspires me.

-Natalya

I am a NYC mom of four public school children and thrice elected parent leader to Manhattan’s largest School Board (Community Education Councils in NYC). 

I fought NYC’s last Mayor Bill DeBlasio when he tried to get rid of the SHSAT entrance exam to NYC’s famed specialized high schools and won that battle. 

I co-founded PLACE NYC to create a much-needed parent organization in NYC to advocate for high quality education. In 2019, we were a handful of parents meeting on the freezing top floor of a church in Chinatown. By 2023, we had swept several education councils (there are 36 in NYC) and won 40% of the Community and Citywide Education Council (CCEC) seats in the 2023 elections. 

The radical, woke-left equity activists have a grudge against me for the SHSAT victory and for the success of PLACE NYC.

These activists have wanted to remove me from my elected seat on Community Education Council 2, the largest education council in NYC for a long time. They have openly campaigned for my removal–and this past election they plastered posters with my face and the slogan “No PLACE for Maud Maron” around my seven-year-old son’s public school.

They lost. I won that seat for a third term.

Then on June 14th, NYC Schools Chancellor Banks caved to the mounting pressure of NYC’s “progressive” activists.  The Chancellor removed me from my elected position on Manhattan’s largest Community Education Council District 2. 

His reason was pretextual and unconstitutional. I am currently challenging the removal in federal court (more on that later). 

Really though, he removed me because anti-merit gender ideologues and NYC’s far left politicians lost their minds when I passed a resolution calling to reexamine the 2019 Gender Guidelines that let boys into girls’ sports through the “gender identity” loophole. 

“Hey, hey, ho, ho, the hateful whore has got to go,” they chanted for my removal in meetings.

By removing me from my elected position, the chancellor, who was in attendance, is actively appeasing them.

Last year, Chancellor Banks lambasted me and my fellow CEC2 member Danyela Egorov in a public meeting about year-old, private What’sApp texts that had just been published by an activist-reporter.

The offending comments?

“There is no such thing as a trans child,”

And —

“No child can consent to permanent changes being made to their body.”

The Chancellor stood in front of the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) in December 2023 and declared “the comments made by some parent leaders and reported on in the press were despicable… I am prepared to take action.”  Although he did not mention me by name, everyone knew it was me. Even“America’s Education News Source” The 74 updated their article to reflect that fact.

This May, Chancellor Banks visited my Community Education Council for the Chancellor’s Town Hall. He declared that he considered the resolution I had written, and my council had passed (asking for a review of the 2019 Gender Guidelines with input from female athletes) “rescinded.”

In other words he refused to even consider listening to young NYCPS (NYC Public Schools) female athletes’ concerns about their sports, their rights and their spaces. 

Federal judges across the country have heard female athletes' concerns and acknowledged their legal right to challenge the very laws and rules that Chancellor Banks has repeatedly refused to even discuss. 

How did all this happen?  

In 2021, the NYC Panel for Education Policy passed an unconstitutional speech code called Chancellor’s Regulation D-210. At that time, I knew this reg would be used to silence disfavored speech before it passed. I even I wrote about it.

But really, I saw it coming years earlier. 

In 2019, woke activists, deeply committed to Ibram X Kendi style racism and the “safetyism” that informs it, were outraged that I won reelection to the school board (I was the highest vote getter no less). They barraged the system with letters of complaint about safe spaces for non-white people. Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 was rushed through at the tail end of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty to appease them. 

Leading this charge was Shino Tanikawa, one of NYC’s most ardent advocates of anti-merit neo-racists, who has urged my removal from every elected position I’ve held in the NYC parent leader system. Shino is a wealthy Japanese woman (married to a white guy, of course) who wrote a public letter when we served on CEC2 together indicating she would not cooperate with me unless I adopted her anti-racist beliefs (this despite the fact that at the time of her letter I was an elected member and she was a political appointee required by the terms of her appointment to “cooperate” with other members). The Atlantic covered the story of Tanikawa’s demands and illiberal beliefs, and intolerant form of activism.

Tanikawa’s letter may have never gotten national attention but for one of her disciples trying desperately to “be a better white person” who had a public breakdown on one of our official council zoom meetings during the Covid lockdowns. 

Councilmember Robin Broshi had a meltdown over a “brown baby on a white man’s lap” claiming it “hurts people” and demanding that we all “Read a book! Read Ibram X. Kendi!” Our council which rarely got a baker’s dozen of people to attend our in-person meetings pre-lockdown suddenly had 500K+ views. 

Berserk woke rants are a thing to behold and this one (at 42:23) stands the test of time: 

The allegiance to anti-merit anti-racism may be fading, but gender ideology which requires more cult-like beliefs, rejects facts even harder, and is infinitely more damaging to kids is right there to replace it. Made clear in June by a Panel for Education Policy (PEP) member who co-authored and voted on a resolution to remove me and all council members who voted “yes” on the Resolutions asking to review the 2019 Gender Guidelines. 

“Throughout history, third gender, two spirit people have existed. The gender binary is a well-documented phenomenon of European colonialist white supremacy. It is culturally repressive,and you know, you need to do some reading…” PEP member Jessamyn Lee announced — (always with the reading exhortations!) 

Ms. Lee sits on the highest level school Board in NYC, one that votes on the contracts of the nation’s largest school system with a staggering $38 Billion budget ($40K/per student!). She and her fellow members are the ones who have Chancellor Banks’ ear.

While the Chancellor was publicly complaining about my private WhatsApp message and the PEP was passing resolutions to remove me and the seven other council  members who voted to review the Gender Guidelines, NYC’s Equity Officer who works with the NYC Equity Council (new expensive posts and positions created by the speech-chilling Reg D-210) began emailing me (an unpaid volunteer) demanding to “interview” me (Star Chamber style without counsel or recording device) about the complaints of activists who do not like my comments about “LGBTQI+ community.”

The Chancellor, his Equity employees, and the activists have been joined by NYC’s lefty politicians who are all-in on the kind of “gender affirming” care that castrates young boys, cuts the healthy breasts off confused girls after jacking them up with testosterone, and deteriorates bone density. 

Eighteen(!) politicians, including NYC’s longest serving Congressman Jerry Nadler, signed a letter condemning my “Review the 2019 Gender Guidelines” resolution as “hateful and discriminatory.” 

Many Democrat politicians are furious that our council even suggested NYC Schools include girls in the conversation about their sports. 

This is our non-binding, advisory Resolution, simply asking to include young girl athletes in a conversation about their own sports.

Read it, then, please, tell me: 

Where’s the hate?

The fact that there is none doesn’t seem to matter. This resolution not only got me removed from my school board, it also got the only “LGB” member of our council removed from his Community Board as punishment for merely voting yes.

It has disrupted the professional lives of other council members. The activists that target parents for daring to disagree have now started to mob our meeting with increasingly bizarre behavior like standing up, turning their backs and humming whenever someone they disagree with is speaking. Really. 

The chancellor may agree with gender activists who think children may be born in the “wrong body” and need surgeries like “phalloplasties” and medically unnecessary double mastectomies. Or he may just be caving to them out of craven politics. 

It does not matter. 

By removing me from my elected seat, he is doing their bidding.

After the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, I objected to antisemitism in an anonymous speech at my daughter’s high school. I used the same exact words that Mayor Adams used to object to the behavior of anti-Israel student protesters who hide behind masks.

We both labeled them “cowards.” 

First Amendment enthusiasts will be horrified to note that the Chancellor’s letter informing me that he was invoking his rarely used power to remove an elected council member cited “comments” in the NYPost article as a reason for my removal–making elected parents liable for the words of others in a national periodical.  

The real intent is more nefarious- the administration is sending a clear message chilling speech- telling other parent elected leaders to shut up and not talk to reporters at all. There is a party line–left DNC policies only–you better know it, parrot it, promote it, or else. 

Today, I am in court challenging my removal and the constitutionality of regulation D-210 with the amazing free speech advocates at the Institute for Free Speech. I could not be more grateful for their outstanding work and unwavering commitment to protecting the First Amendment rights of those of us who say things that people in power do not want to hear. 

While I have encountered actual hate and bullying – which is quite different from the fake “bullying” of hearing ideas you don’t like, I have also had so much love, support, good humor and fellowship from so many. 

All NYC families should be able to rely on our schools for a great, high quality education and all parents should be welcome to share their ideas for improving that education, protecting and supporting kids, and advancing policies that align with their values. 

We won’t always agree! But that is what elections and conversations are for, and that is why, as I remind all my most committed critics, you have to be able to converse with your fellow American who think differently than you. 

As a public servant, an elected school board member and a former congressional candidate, I have been listening to you all for years. I am not convinced or persuaded by your anti-merit, antiracist arguments or your gender ideology pagan rituals, but I will defend forever your right to say it all. 

In the America our children deserve to inherit, you would do the same.