(The Lion) — Staff and union leaders at a large Kansas school district have been caught on a video call strategizing how to secretly advance LGBT agendas in classrooms under a rebranded DEI department.

The March 12 call, a recording of which was obtained by The Lion, was attended by at least three representatives of the National Education Association (NEA), including Kansas City, Kansas, NEA President Dominick DeRosa.

The wide-ranging chat by district staff and others focused on how to continue LGBT advocacy after the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) department at Kansas City Kansas Public Schools (KCKPS) was rebranded under the name “Organizational Development.”

The online meeting, called an “LGBTQIA+ Round Table Discussion,” lasted 90 minutes and included discussion of how teachers could help students suffering from gender dysphoria hide the condition from their families, even for kids in elementary school.

Additionally, the candid chat by teachers, many of whom identified as LGBTQ, addressed the use of pronouns preferred by students and sexual identity “coming out” experiences, all of which they agreed must be hidden from parents who disagree.

The meeting was organized by Lauren Hernandez, who remains a staff member of the district’s DEI department under its new name.

Hernandez introduced the talk with a laundry list of woke verbiage related to DEI, including equity terms such as “your truth” and “triggering events.”

“It’s OK to experience discomfort, but we also want you to be able to protect yourself,” added Hernandez, who urged participants to keep everything discussed secret. She said the meeting would follow “Vegas rules here: what goes on here stays here.”

While Hernandez said the group couldn’t “solve homophobia tonight,” the meeting was clearly intended to deal with LGBT topics that are political in nature and considered by many to be inappropriate in a taxpayer-funded public school.

Hernandez referred to President Donald Trump as “a yahoo,” at which point her boss, Canise Salinas, called her neighbors who agree with Trump “a yahoo” too.

Several themes are interwoven throughout the meeting, especially the need for secrecy and the desire to introduce students to more LGBT content and topics that have nothing to do with academics.

At one point, Salinas, who is head of the rebranded “Organizational Development” department, said the political nature of DEI made it necessary to rename it.

“I hate to say it in this space, but the higher you get, the more political it gets, or the more cautious the optics look,” said Salinas. “And so, hence the reason why our title has changed, to be very transparent.”

She even called the meeting and its contents “Underground Railroad conversations.”

When considering a question about tolerance for what Salinas called “microaggressions” toward LGBTQ teachers and students, she implied cancel culture may be used to enforce ideological adherence.

“You know, we try not to cancel people immediately. But then again, how much grace do you give?” she asked. “Are they trying to make comments on the sly? We need to know those microaggressions so that we can still continue to address them.”

James Moran, an LGBTQ activist who runs a center for LGBTQIA+ teens called “Our Spot KC,” said even though discriminatory DEI activities are now banned, there are plenty of federal laws that prevent discrimination.

Still, he emphasized the necessity for secrecy about the group’s LGBTQ advocacy in schools and with children.

“Yeah, everybody’s kind of in the same garbled mess of figuring out, where can we find the loopholes?” he said. “Where can we sneak things in? Because, I mean, our assessments are correct. You look at some of these lists of restrictive language, and it’s like the entire progressive dictionary” is now banned.

NEA’s Dom DeRosa talked about how teachers in Kansas are bringing their public-school students to the state Legislature to testify against conservative bills, including students from Wichita and Topeka.

“From what I’ve heard, I know that there [were] also students from Salina that offered testimony against that bill, and there was a lot of testimony given,” added DeRosa.

Hernandez also related how every year students “come out” to her and advised about ways teachers can keep it from parents, including the surreptitious use of pronouns at school to satisfy children while not notifying parents.

She related how one time she kept the information from the parents simply because the father of the student was “a preacher.”

She also expressed support for more “pronoun” training in the school.

Others in the meeting complained schools no longer do a month-long pride event to indoctrinate students.

“We had multiple people who complained about the content of them – and the word ‘recruiting’ was used,” mentioned one of the teachers, who took kids to the Capitol to lobby for DEI and LGBTQ legislation.

The conversation made clear that all the participants understand how politically charged and politically inappropriate, at least to outsiders, the meeting would appear.

That contrasts sharply with just a year ago, when DeRosa put out a video with a laundry list of progressive DEI buzzwords, exhorting teachers to support the liberal cause loudly and proudly.

In that August 2024 video, which welcomes teachers back to school after summer break, Kansas City’s top teachers’ union official said woke union teachers must be willing to attack their critics “as vocally and just as publicly as our adversaries attack us.”

“We must firmly say ‘no’ to those who seek to marginalize our fellow educators and our students by disregarding the rich stories and contributions of our indigenous people and our diverse communities,” said DeRosa. “We must affirm the rights of our transgendered students and staff to live authentically.”

In contrast, participants at this secretive meeting bragged they were loud, proud and courageous – or some variation thereof – at least 18 times, while hoping no one else was listening.