A profanity-laced argument that almost turned into a physical altercation. An auditorium full of people turning their backs and humming to drown out an anti-transgender protester. A defiant rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.”
The near-constant disruptions stretched the November meeting of a Manhattan parent council to nearly four hours. About halfway through, Maud Maron, a conservative activist and the council’s best-known member, paused to admonish the crowd.
“This has become theater,” she said. “Next month will be the 10th month of these histrionics.”
Ms. Maron’s critics say she’s the one putting on a show. As she spoke, she wore a black trucker hat with the blue and green logo of “XX-XY Athletics” — a clothing company whose mission statement revolves around the idea that “women’s sports need to remain female.”
The question of whether transgender girls should be allowed to play girls’ sports and the debate over the rights of transgender people more broadly have prompted political skirmishes on county commissions, college campuses and the presidential campaign trail. In New York, that question has made the community education council for District 2 — one of the city’s largest and wealthiest school districts, covering Lower Manhattan, Midtown and the Upper East Side — almost entirely unable to function.
And at the center of it all is Ms. Maron, 53, who in March led the passage of a resolution that asked the city’s Department of Education to reconsider its policy of allowing transgender students to play on teams that match their gender identity.
The D.O.E. promptly rejected that resolution. But soon, the council’s meetings were overtaken by debates about gender and protests demanding that the resolution be overturned, even as bewildered parents showed up hoping to discuss school buses and math.
The city’s community education councils are largely symbolic. Their members are mostly parents who serve on a volunteer basis and only have the power to rezone and rename schools.
But around the country, Republicans have sought to strategically take over school boards over concerns related to pandemic-related school shutdowns, transgender student policies and teaching about race, and the District 2 council — even in one of the most liberal sections of the city — is no different.
On one side of the 12-member board are Ms. Maron and another vocal right-leaning parent, Charles Love, along with six members who tend to vote with them. On the other is a progressive contingent of four parents.
“I certainly do care about being a voice of reason in our city,” Ms. Maron, a mother of four who lives in SoHo, said in an interview. “I have heard time and time and time again from New Yorkers that they want more common-sense policies and a more common-sense approach to solving the problems that we have in New York City.”
In June, David C. Banks, then the schools chancellor, removed Ms. Maron from the council after she criticized a pro-Palestinian opinion essay in a student newspaper and called its anonymous author a “coward.”
But three months later, following a successful court appeal, she was back — as were the relentless arguments over her resolution. And, as it turned out, over every other resolution, too.
“How is all of this debate helping our kids?” said Kate Wheeler, a parent in the district who believes trans students should be able to play on teams that match their gender identities. “It’s just not.”
Vying for Power in a Powerless System
New York City’s public school system is controlled by the mayor, not by school boards, and the resolutions passed by community education councils are nonbinding.
At best, the D.O.E. views them as recommendations.
“The reality is, we have so little impact and so little authority — and that’s by design,” said Leonard Silverman, a member of the District 2 council who often tries unsuccessfully to bridge both ends of its ideological spectrum. “So if people are expecting miracles, it’s not going to happen.”
This fact has failed to turn down the temperature at recent meetings.
In November, Mr. Love and one of the council’s left-leaning members, Sara Schacter-Erenburg, got into a screaming match after he refused to stop speaking over her.
When a third member asked Mr. Love to stop interrupting, he yelled: “Why don’t you come over here and make me stop?”
Gavin Healy, a progressive council member, said that such clashes gain the attention of the schools chancellor and others in power.
“That’s power, that’s influence,” Mr. Healy said.
While the council has struggled to find common ground on just about anything, transgender issues have been the sticking point since last December, when a WhatsApp group chat leaked. It showed Ms. Maron stating: “There is no such thing as ‘trans kids.’”
Mr. Banks admonished Ms. Maron over her comments during a meeting of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy. But Ms. Maron said his criticism only emboldened her.
“Did I start this? No,” she said. “But am I going to finish it? Yes.”
Finishing it, according to Ms. Maron, would mean the Education Department’s adopting what she sees as a “rational policy”: barring transgender students from using the bathrooms and joining the sports teams that align with their gender identities.
In a Siena College poll released in April, 66 percent of the registered New York State voters surveyed said they supported requiring student athletes to compete on teams aligned with the gender they were assigned at birth.
But advocates for transgender people argue that such policies are both harmful and unnecessary. It is unclear how many — if any — trans girls are participating in school sports in New York City.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education emphasized that all community members were entitled to “share their thoughts in the open forums provided by community education councils” but that the department was committed to ensuring that all student athletes “may participate in competitive athletic activities and contact sports in accordance with the student’s gender identity asserted at school.”
Ms. Maron, a self-described former liberal and ex-Legal Aid Society lawyer, made a sharp turn right in recent years and became a vocal proponent of conservative education policies, primarily centered on opposition to the way race and gender are discussed in the classroom.
That transformation has placed her at odds with most of New York City’s voters, who consistently elect Democrats by large margins. But it has also won her favor among parents who agree with her positions on some issues and feel underrepresented.
Ms. Maron said her ideological shift began as she argued for maintaining test-based admission to specialized high schools, but solidified as she fought against school closures at the height of the pandemic.
In 2019, she founded PLACE, which stands for “Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education,” an organization whose stated goal is to improve public schools’ “academic rigor and standards.” In recent years, the group has worked to place parents who share Ms. Maron’s views on community education councils across the city. Last year, PLACE recommended seven parents, including Maron, for the District 2 council, all of whom now tend to vote as a bloc.
Brad Lander, the city comptroller, opened an investigation into the group’s practices and found that it had improperly endorsed its own members in last spring’s elections, violating city rules. Mr. Lander recently filed a formal complaint against the group with the Education Department.
A move into citywide politics
As she has worked to expand the influence of like-minded parents, Ms. Maron has sought to raise her own profile.
In 2022, she ran in a Democratic primary for a House seat and lost. Last week, she announced her plans to run for Manhattan district attorney as a Republican.
She and Mr. Love appeared in January at a town hall event held by Moms for Liberty, an ultraconservative political organization that supported Donald J. Trump’s campaign for president, on the Upper East Side.
Ms. Maron is unflinching in her views.
“There’s not one single word in that resolution that is bigoted or inappropriate — it’s a resolution asking for a conversation,” Ms. Maron said. “They refuse to engage in a conversation with me. Instead, they say, you know: ‘We’re right about everything. We’re moral, you’re wrong, you’re immoral, you’re bad, we’re good.’”
But Alaina Daniels, a former District 2 teacher and a transgender activist who attends the council’s meetings, said that Ms. Maron and those who voted to pass her resolution have caused harm.
“All students deserve the chance to go to school and feel safe enough and loved and seen, and Maud and Charles and their allies are going out of their way to make certain that it’s only some students,” Ms. Daniels said.
Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said that seeking out attention — positive or negative — benefits their cause.
She said the protests against their views only elevate Ms. Maron, whom she described as a “freedom fighter” and a friend.
Their fight feels misplaced to Lila Jassen, a high school senior and one of two student representatives on the District 2 council. (The student members’ votes do not count toward the passage of resolutions.)
Ms. Jassen, 17, said that since she began attending New York City public schools in first grade, she has consistently seen students support their nonbinary or gender nonconforming peers.
“Parents think that kids have a lot more issues, or it’s a lot more complicated, than it really is,” she said.
One of her best friends, Ms. Jassen said, is transgender and has been out to her classmates since eighth grade.
“I’m not trying to dismiss the years of transphobia and homophobia,” she said. “But if you explain it to kids really young, they might have questions, but from what I’ve experienced, they’ll say, ‘OK, great.’”
There is no sign of the conflict easing. Each month, protesters pack the school cafeterias and auditoriums in which the council meets. Parents testify tearfully on behalf of their trans children while audience members weep. At the November meeting, Mr. Healy and Ms. Schacter-Erenburg, the progressive members, held white roses because the meeting fell on the International Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Mr. Love said that the council would not rescind Ms. Maron’s resolution and that because the D.O.E. had rejected it, there was no need to keep protesting. Mr. Healy said that even though he and his fellow progressives knew they did not have enough votes to pass an opposing resolution, they would not stop trying.
The stalemate has eroded relations. The fighting continues.
“It’s exhausting and pointless,” Mr. Love said. “There is no path forward.”
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