District incentivized teachers to attend webinar with doctor who promotes sex surgeries for kids

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Saturday, August 26, 2023

IT Support Technician Michael Hakopian (R) distributes computer devices to students at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020, in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

One of California’s largest school districts reportedly offered financial rewards to teachers who attended a webinar with advocates who encourage children with gender dysphoria to receive cross-sex hormones or undergo body-altering surgeries.

The Los Angeles Unified School District invited teachers to attend a webinar last week titled “The Wellbeing of Sexual and Gender Diverse Girls” in exchange for three Continuing Education credits and hours to use towards salary points, The Daily Wire reported.

The Los Angeles Unified School District did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.

The webinar featured Aydin Olson-Kennedy, a female licensed clinical social worker who identifies as a man, and her spouse, Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

Johanna Olson-Kennedy is the medical director of The Center for Transyouth Health at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and she has been providing cross-sex hormones and other medical interventions to trans-identified youth and adults for 16 years. She is also a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an organization that promotes “transgender health” to its professional and student members.

The couple presented alongside one of the school district’s diversity officers during the webinar. While the content of the webinar is unclear, the couple’s advocacy work is available to the public.

According to an archived GenderTrender post from August 2015, Aydin Olson-Kennedy requested members of the trans community donate funds for a double mastectomy procedure for a child with Down syndrome in a hospital’s intensive care unit. The child, named Sky, could not read or write on her own, so her mother had to write the fundraising requests for her.

The report also shared a screenshot of a 2015 commercial disclosure that showed Aydin Olson-Kennedy and her wife have ties to Endo International Pharmaceutical, which markets the types of hormones they reportedly provide to trans-identifying individuals, including minors.

Johanna Olson-Kennedy is the co-author of a study facilitated by the National Institutes of Health and published by The New England Journal of Medicine in January. The study examined the psychosocial outcomes of experimental sex hormones on 315 youths after two years. The participant’s ages ranged from 12 to 20, and the youth identified as trans or nonbinary.

As journalist Brandon Showalter wrote in a February CP op-ed, two participants committed suicide, which the study documented as “adverse events.”

Showalter also highlighted a progress report detailing a 5-year NIH grant, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The NIH awarded a $5.7 million grant, which started in 2015, to study “the impact of early medical treatment in transgender youth.”

“The unearthed report revealed that mid-way through this study, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the grant’s awardees, lowered the age for the cross-sex hormone cohort inclusion criteria from 13 years old to 8,” Showalter wrote.

In a video published in March 2019 on YouTube, Johanna Olson-Kennedy is heard discussing how some teen girls with gender dysphoria undergo surgery to remove their breasts. The video was reportedly recorded at the "Professional Symposium" convened by the "Gender Spectrum" in July 2018. In the recording, she suggests that girls who later regret undergoing a double mastectomy can simply obtain breast implants.

The invitation for teachers to attend the webinar featuring the pair of advocates is not the first time LAUSD has received attention for encouraging its teachers to promote LGBT issues.

Last July, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, shared documents he obtained from the school district's Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity Department on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"Los Angeles Unified School District encourages kindergartners to experiment with non-binary pronouns, trains teachers to subvert 'mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society,' and promotes sexual identities such as 'trans,' 'pansexual,' 'two-spirit,' and 'genderqueer,'" Rufo tweeted.

Other documents included a "Queer and Trans-Affirming School Calendar" titled "Queer All School Year."

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman