A teacher has been placed on leave following complaints from parents at a school board meeting in Cupertino that their four-year-old children were being taught overly complex ideas about gender identity and expression.

The tensions arose after parents of students in a transitional kindergarten class in the Cupertino Union School District found out that the teacher of the class, who identifies as nonbinary, introduced complex lists of pronouns — including "ze" and "tree" — and had LGBTQ+ books and posters in the classroom for kids who are mostly not even reading yet.

"They’re less than 5-years-old," said one parent, Qina Sa, at a recent school board meeting, per Bay Area News Group. "At this young age, children are still developing their fundamental language skills and cognitive abilities. Introducing such advanced gender fluidity concepts could create confusion rather than helping them learn."

The district has responded and agreed that pre-K students should not be getting such lessons, placing the teacher on leave.

But an education lawyer, Bradley Flynn, tells the news group that such conflicts can quickly become "legal nightmares" for a school district, especially when it comes to First Amendment questions and Title IX laws.

"If a teacher is transgender and says that they want to talk about gender expression, I think they’re well within their First Amendment right to do so," Flynn tells the News Group.

Cupertino Union Superintendent Stacy Yao said in a statement that "Based on state guidance, these topics are not age-appropriate for TK students and are not taught."

Still, though, California is one of seven states that mandates LGBTQ+ curricula for K-12 students, along with curricula that reflect a "wide variety of races, ethnicities and genders."

The district says that it does support classroom decorations that "reflect and celebrate the broad spectrum of diversity found within the district." However, they say teaching materials need to adhere to district guidelines.

Such controversies about LGBTQ+ education are rare for Bay Area school districts, although we have seen this arm of the culture war show up here in the last year. The tiny Sunol Glen Unified School District in the East Bay had two conservative board members who took a controversial vote to ban all flags last year that aren't the US or state flag, in an obvious move to ban the flying of the Pride flag that a school administrator had been doing during Pride Month. The move sparked widespread news attention and brought a lot of MAGA loons out of the woodwork who didn't even live in the district. And, subsequently, both of those school board members were voted out in a recall this past July.

Photo via Cupertino Union School District