The teacher at the center of a controversy about a secretive
LGBTQ club at a
California middle school is the mother of a
transgender son, DailyMail.com can disclose.
Lori Caldeira's daughter Carolann transitioned to become Jake while he was a teen and has been living as a man ever since. He is now 22.
Caldeira was suspended from her job teaching English at Buena Vista Middle School in Spreckels after she and fellow educator Kelly Baraki, 39, were recorded discussing how they ‘stalked’ students online to find new recruits for their You Be You club and encouraged them to keep discussions hidden from their parents.
Then in December, mom Jessica Konen accused the pair of encouraging her daughter to think she was a trans boy when she was at the school in 2019 – only for the child to return to her female persona while learning remotely during the
Covid-19 pandemic.
The You Be You club has since been shut down by the 360-student school while both Caldeira and Baraki have been suspended pending an investigation. 'The staff involved have been placed on administrative leave,' the school district said in a statement.
Konen has now launched a legal claim against the school and the two seventh-grade teachers – claiming they kept her daughter’s phony trans identity secret from her and hid that she had been having suicidal thoughts. The girl is now attending high school in another district.
In her court papers, Koren says her daughter, identified by her initials, A.G., found distance learning difficult 'but there was a silver lining — because A.G. was at home throughout the school day, she was no longer in the clutches of Ms Caldiera (sic) and Ms Baraki. Freed from their influence A.G. began to return to her old self.'
Now DailyMail.com can reveal Caldeira’s enthusiasm for championing the LGBTQ community stems in part from her own experiences, with son Jake legally changing his gender from female in 2017.
Jake was supported in his decision to become legally male by both parents: Caldeira and her soldier ex-husband James Perry, 52, who now lives in Kansas and has remarried.
The 22-year-old – who was born Carolann - has gone on to become a sign language expert who appears to have inherited his mother’s social conscience.
Photos obtained by DailyMail.com show Jake volunteering alongside her at a community event promoting civic engagement in May 2019, while his social media pages show repeated likes in support of campaigning disability charity, the Association for the Deaf.
He also volunteers with the local YMCA while other photos show him taking part in a panel discussion titled ‘The Power of Democracy’ in 2019.
Jake’s Linkedin profile shows he graduated with a qualification in American Sign Language from Sacramento City College last year and is trained in wilderness first aid.
His older brother Thomas, 25, also appears to have an interest in social issues and was photographed speaking out to defend their mother at the same school board meeting where Konen made her accusations in December last year.
Asked if Lori and Jake would consider sharing their experiences, Lori’s fiancé of four years, Patrick Dermody, 66, angrily DailyMail.com: ‘You don’t even know her. She can’t talk because of the lawsuit and this is not a story anyway.’
Jake and his brothers have not returned requests for comment.
Lori, who is suspended pending an investigation into the You Be You club, has remained silent since news of Konen’s suit broke – as has co-defendant Baraki.
Caldeira made her comments about stalking students at the California Teachers Association’s annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference in October. She has since said they should not have been taken literally.
Baraki, who is married to a tech assistant at Buena Vista Middle School, was photographed by DailyMail.com while running errands but slammed the door of her home when approached and asked to give her version of events.
According to the parent of a former Buena Vista Middle School pupil, Caldeira’s enthusiastic championing of LGBTQ rights dates back to at least 2015 when she was the subject of multiple complaints and asked to ‘tone down’ discussion of the topic.
Mom Cheryl Duffar, 54, said she complained to the school repeatedly and was told Caldeira would ‘tone down’ her discussions – only for them to continue.
She said: ‘There was a lot of talk - Mrs. Caldeira did not hide her agenda whatsoever. She wore a lot of clothes with the LGBTQ stuff, she had the flags in her classroom, she had slogans in her classroom. There was just a lot of talk in the classroom about that.
‘I, as a parent, don’t believe the classroom is the place to discuss that. It’s the same thing as my religious beliefs being talked about in the classroom in public school system. Teach them history.’
Duffar also told of an incident where Caldeira hosted a lunchtime assembly during which the children were expected to draw rainbows and stand under a rainbow arch to declare their support for the LGBTQ community.
She said: ‘My son called me and said, ‘Mom, they’re asking me to draw rainbows in the inner court and they want us to walk under the arch and announce our support for our friends that are gay.’
‘I said, you know what honey, I’m uncomfortable with you doing that and I’m picking you up. I went down to the school and said my son is not part of the [You Be You] club, we are not participating in that and I’m taking him home.
‘There were probably five or six parents that did the same thing.’
Duffar, who asked not to be pictured for fear of a backlash, said she has no objection to gay or trans people but resents teachers being allowed to choose what to teach kids without telling their parents.
She and a group of other parents have also joined a community group called Protect Our Kids 831 which plans to flyer future school board meetings over the issue.
Duffar said she does not want Baraki and Caldeira reinstated and is troubled over Konen’s allegations that they asked her daughter to lie to her.
She said: ‘That’s the most troubling part of the whole thing to me. School clubs happen whether I agree with them or not and if a parent has chosen to put their child in the club, that’s their right as a parent.
‘I’m not parenting other people’s kids, I can’t tell them what to do. The part about having it at lunch, not being forthcoming about who was there – like they said we don’t keep attendance. ‘To have a teacher who’s with them six, seven hours a day telling them not to tell their parents – that’s troubling.
‘If parents enroll their kids for the club and they’re OK with the things being talked about, I think that’s their right. But having a child hide things from their own parents? It’s not right.’
Spreckels is a town of fewer than 700 people located 110 miles south of San Francisco. Buena Vista Middle School says its mission is to provide 'all students an innovative education in a traditional, small-town environment.'
Audio of her speech was leaked to author Abigail Shrier, who wrote the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.
Shrier posted an article
How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids quoting Caldeira as saying: 'Because we are not official—we have no club rosters, we keep no records,
'In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, "Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?" You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.'
Shrier said Caldeira and Baraki led a workshop at the conference entitled 'How We Run a GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance] in Conservative Communities.'
She wrote that Caldeira said they checked students' Google records to see if any showed interest in LGBTQ issues 'We totally stalked what they were doing,' she quoted Caldeira as saying.
The Spreckels School Board has since released a statement saying they do not support the teaching of political agendas or opinion.
The statement, which was released after the recording of Caldeira and Baraki’s presentation was made public in late November, read:
‘SUSD staff, administration and our Board of Education are committed to supporting safe, inclusive and equitable learning environments that support all students without including, sharing or promoting any political opinion or agenda.’
metro.co.uk
