School boards wrestle with transgender student policies

School officials across the country are attempting to deal with the increasing number of transgender students requesting fair and equal treatment in the school environment. Some deal with the issue in a sensitive manner, while many do not.

For example, many school districts in Missouri have adopted a policy requiring transgender students to either use a gender-neutral restroom, or a bathroom designated for their biological gender. Meaning of course, that the school is effectively ignoring the student’s gender identity.

According to an Associated Press report Tuesday, the Cherry Hill NJ School Board is taking a more enlightened approach. They plan to adopt a policy on transgender students at next month’s meeting that says, “The Board of Education believes the responsibility for determining a student's gender identity rests with the student or, in the case of young students not yet able to advocate for themselves, with the parent/guardian.”

The board wants to provide “a safe, supportive, and inclusive learning environment for all students. In furthering this goal, the Board adopts this Policy to ensure all students, including transgender students, have equal educational opportunities and equal access to the school district’s educational programs and activities.”

The proposed policy defines gender expression, gender identity, gender nonconforming, and transgender, and uses professionally accepted terms like “regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth.” It avoids terms that the GLAAD Media Reference Guide – Transgender Issues describes as problematic or defamatory.

The policy covers the use of the student’s preferred name and pronouns and the use of names in student records. It deals with what has become controversial among people who oppose transgender rights – bathroom and locker room access – by affirmatively stating that transgender students will have access to restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity.

For sports programs, schools should determine a student’s eligibility for participation in accordance with the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s (NJSIAA) eligibility rules. Those rules, although not crafted in as sensitive language as the Cherry Hill policy, leaves the determination of a student’s gender identity (the NJSIAA uses the term “sex-assignment”) up to the school the student attends.

The policy also includes provisions for the Superintendent or designee to meet with the parents and the student if the parents don’t agree with the student’s assertion of their gender identity.

Things aren’t going as well in many other parts of the country. In most of the cases where transgender policies have faced opposition, it is because anti-LGBT activists and parents have stoked the fires with warnings of attacks in bathrooms because a transgender student is using a bathroom that conforms with their gender identity, rather than their gender assigned at birth.

The Wisconsin legislature, for example, is considering legislation to force transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms assigned to their biological sex, according to the Associated Press.

You can read the proposed Cherry Hill NJ policy in its entirety at http://tinyurl.com/jfm7bk7

Watch The Gayly print edition, www.gayly.com, and our Facebook page for continued coverage of the effort to provide transgender students fair and equal treatment.

The Gayly - January 12, 2016 @ 1:40 p.m.