Over $200K being spent on drag queen shows at NYC schools, records show
New York is showering taxpayer funds on a group that sends drag queens into city schools — often without parental knowledge or consent — even as parents in other states protest increasingly aggressive efforts to expose kids to gender-bending performers.
Last month alone, Drag Story Hour NYC — a nonprofit whose outrageously cross-dressed performers interact with kids as young as 3 — earned $46,000 from city contracts for appearances at public schools, street festivals, and libraries, city records show.
Since January, the group has organized 49 drag programs in 34 public elementary, middle, and high schools, it boasted on its website, with appearances in all five boroughs.
“I can’t believe this. I am shocked,” said public school mom and state Assembly candidate Helen Qiu, whose 11-year-old son attends a Manhattan middle school. “I would be furious if he was exposed without my consent. This is not part of the curriculum.”
Since 2018, the group — previously known as Drag Queen Story Hour NYC, before changing its name early this year — has received a total of $207,000 in taxpayer cash.
The tally includes $50,000 from New York State through its Council on the Arts, along with $157,000 from the city’s Departments of Education, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Community Development, and even the Department of Transportation, city data shows.
“I am considering pulling funding to any school in my district that is implementing Drag Queen Story Hour,” said City Council member Vickie Paladino (R-Queens). “We are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the pockets of hardworking New York taxpayers … to fund a program teaching little children about their gender fluidity? Not. On. My. Watch.”
Most of the money was allocated by city council members from their discretionary budgets, who set aside $80,000 for the group in the current fiscal year — more than tripling the $25,000 earmarked in 2020.
Drag queen story hours for children have been featured at public library branches throughout the city since 2017, with upcoming events scheduled at Manhattan’s Epiphany Library and the Woodside Public Library in Queens, among others.
Cross-dressed performers typically read aloud from a list of books that teach acceptance and inclusion, including children’s classics like “Where the Wild Things Are” and “The Rainbow Fish” — and some that overtly celebrate gender fluidity, like “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish.”
But the expansion into city schools has brought new features to the program, its social media posts reveal.
In April, the elaborately coiffed Harmonica Sunbeam wore a slinky gown to meet with kindergarteners at STAR Academy in Manhattan and color pages from “The Dragtivity Book,” which encourages kids to choose their pronouns and invent drag names.
Bella Noche wore a scanty mermaid-like bra getup to travel with 2nd graders from Manhattan’s PS 34 on a May field trip, and Flame taught middle schoolers “of all genders” how to apply drag eye makeup at MS 88 in Park Slope.
Some of the school-related posts disappeared from the Internet Friday, less than an hour after The Post called Drag Story Hour NYC for comment.
In one deleted photo, a performer known as Professor Lionel Longlegs wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the message “I Don’t Want to Look or Be Cis” before an audience of primary-grade kids in the library of PS 191 on the Upper West Side.
Some city parents welcomed the idea of drag-queen visits to school.
“I’m glad to see all types of people included in what students are exposed to and learn in class,” said Kristen Williams, 40, whose 11-year-old daughter attends an East Village middle school.
But Storm Neverson, 26, had reservations about her 9- and 6-year-old girls’ exposure to the program at STAR Academy.
“If they were in junior high school or middle school, I would be okay with that because I feel like they would have a little bit more understanding,” Neverson said. “At this time, the kids were just a little too young.”
STAR Academy parents were told of the in-school drag session ahead of time, Neverson said — but could not opt their kids out of it.
“It was mostly just like a heads up, you know, like, ’Hey, this event is coming up. We’re gonna have these people come in.’ And that was that,” she said.
But at other schools, parents had no idea.
“I didn’t get any notice,” complained Reese Harrington, a parent at PS 191. “My daughter actually came home and told me that a drag queen came to the school … I feel like it would have been better for that conversation to happen at home.”
Last week, angry Texas parents protested outside a “Drag the Kids to Pride” event — billed as “a family friendly drag show” — at a North Dallas gay bar called Mister Misster, where children tipped drag queens with dollar bills as they shimmied and sashayed.
The “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account was banned Thursday for posting a series of tweets spotlighting additional drag shows for kids.
Dr. Elana Fishbein, founder and president of the conservative group No Left Turn in Education, slammed the city’s in-school drag appearances as “a flagrant disregard for the real needs of the students.”
“Exposing children to drag queens in school is none other than an abuse of authority for the purpose of sexualizing children,” Fishbein said.
The DOE did not respond specifically to questions about parental notification, and refused to say whether the drag queens must pass background checks — but defended the program as “life saving.”
“Last year, 50 transgender or gender-nonconforming people were killed in the United States due to their identity,” spokeswoman Suzan Sumer said. “We believe our schools play a critical role in helping young people learn about and respect people who may be different from them.”
Additional reporting by Maddie Panzer
