When her school instructed her to use kids’ preferred pronouns and lie to their parents, middle school teacher Deb Figliola objected. Now, she’s secured a key victory. Praise God!

From CBN. A Virginia teacher is celebrating victory after fighting back over the claim she was “asked to lie to parents about their own children.”

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Deb Figliola, a middle school teacher, told CBN News she felt compelled to take a stand after the Harrisonburg City Public School Board reportedly created a new policy she believes upended parents’ rights.

“A little over three years ago, we were given a training that told us as a staff — and this training was given to all staff and all personnel within the school district — that we would have to ask students for what they wanted to be called and what pronoun they preferred,” she said. “And then we had to always refer to them that way.”

Beyond that, Figliola said teachers were told not to tell parents about the use of these pronouns. …

“When I heard that training, I basically went back to my office, my classroom, and wrote … down some thoughts,” she said. “I still have the paper and I just wrote, ‘I can’t lie. I’m not going to lie to kids and I’m not going to lie to parents.’”

According to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal advocacy group, the school district decided before the 2021-2022 school year to add “gender identity” to its nondiscrimination policy. …

Figliola teamed up with ADF and decided to join two other educators in pushing back.

Watch her explain:

“That process included a lot of prayer … a lot of consideration, and, in spending time in prayer, really feeling like God was directing me to do this with my time — that this was important,” she said. “And it was a responsibility that I had to speak up for kids and for families.”

As a parent and grandparent, Figliola said she couldn’t imagine not knowing what was happening to her family members while in school. Ultimately, her faith and commitment to the kids forced her to speak out. …

Vincent Wagner, senior counsel at ADF, told CBN News that Figliola and the two other teachers who joined her to combat the policy ended up landing a big win — a decision by the school district to offer a religious accommodation for teachers unwilling to violate their religious conscience. …

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(Excerpt from CBN. Photo Credit: MChe Lee on Unsplash)