Chalkbeat

Judge dismisses conservative-leaning Colorado school districts’ lawsuit over transgender athlete policies

2026-08-27T22:37:53+00:00

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by several Colorado school districts and charter schools over policies related to transgender student athletes.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Kane ruled Wednesday that the districts and schools don’t have standing to sue the state, in part because they aren’t facing clear harm. The ruling is a win for the state and a loss for the conservative-leaning districts and schools that had challenged the state’s non-discrimination law, specifically its gender identity protections.

Kane’s decision affirmed a January recommendation by a magistrate judge, a type of judge whose decisions can be reviewed by a full judge if one party objects.

The eight plaintiffs in the case — School District 49, Colorado Springs District 11, Academy District 20, Montezuma-Cortez School District, James Irwin Charter Schools, Monument Academy, the Classical Academy, and Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Education Services — objected to the January decision by Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell.

It’s not clear what impact the ruling will have. The districts and charter schools that sued wanted the court to prevent Colorado officials from investigating, penalizing, or fining them for policies banning transgender athletes from joining school sports teams that match their gender identity. State officials so far have not penalized public schools that have such policies.

A second defendant in the lawsuit, the Colorado High School Activities Association, agreed not to penalize schools and districts that have such policies as part of a December 2025 settlement.

The association’s bylaws for years recognized the right of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity and said the group can review district decisions on such matters. But a spokesperson for the group, which governs high school sports in Colorado and is often called CHSAA, said at the time it had never penalized a school or district for policies on transgender athletes.

Some Colorado districts allow transgender students to play on teams that match their gender identity, some prohibit it, and some decide on a case-by-case basis.

Peter Hilts, the superintendent of District 49, which spearheaded the lawsuit, said of Wednesday’s decision in an emailed statement, “We respectfully disagree with the judge’s ruling, but given that we have already secured protections for our students and coaches via a settlement with CHSAA, we are considering how to proceed.”

The Colorado Attorney General’s office declined to comment on the ruling.

District 49 sued the state and CHSAA in May 2025, after its school board narrowly passed a controversial policy banning transgender middle and high school students from joining school teams that align with their gender identity. The policy, which applies to both transgender boys and transgender girls, was developed after President Trump’s executive order threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that allows athletes assigned male at birth to participate in girls’ or women’s sports.

When District 49’s school board considered the new policy, the district’s lawyer speculated that it could lead to the district being sued. But instead of playing defense, the district filed its own lawsuit. The other seven districts and schools joined as plaintiffs a couple months later.

Kane’s 23-page ruling affirmed Dominguez Braswell’s January argument that the eight districts and schools didn’t have standing to sue the state on their own behalf or to sue on behalf of their students.

If a party has standing, that means they have a right to have their lawsuit heard in court. One criteria for standing is that the plaintiff is facing harm.

Kane found no proof of current or future harm. He said the districts and schools didn’t show evidence of a transgender student athlete who might take action because they believe they have faced discrimination as a result of the plaintiffs’ student athlete policies.

“I cannot infer a speculated lawsuit or enforcement action would arise, if no transgender student, who would be subjected to discrimination, exists,” wrote Kane.

Kane and Dominguez Braswell said the districts and schools don’t have standing to sue on behalf of all students because their students may have different opinions on whether transgender students should be allowed to play on teams that match their gender identity.

Kane noted that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to bar transgender athletes from playing on school teams that match their gender identity isn’t relevant to his ruling.

“The Supreme Court’s opinion does not alter the requirements for standing, and as such, does not impact the analysis here,” he said.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Jeffco Public Schools sues Trump administration over Title IX-related threats to federal funding

2026-07-29T02:30:32+00:00

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Jeffco Public Schools is suing the Trump administration in an effort to prevent the U.S. Department of Education from withholding roughly $50 million in federal funding.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Colorado, is the latest step in a dispute between the state’s second largest school district and the Education Department over policies related to transgender students.

The Office for Civil Rights said the district’s policies on transgender sports participation and overnight field trip accommodations violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Numerous other school districts have faced similar investigations.

Under the Trump administration, civil rights enforcement has focused on a few political priorities, including undoing protections for transgender students, while other cases have languished.

In its lawsuit, Jeffco Public Schools alleges that the Education Department changed longstanding interpretations of Title IX without going through an appropriate rule-making process, a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and that the way the department handled the investigation reflects an “arbitrary and capricious” approach that violates the district’s rights.

The lawsuit alleges that the administration has demanded that Jeffco Public Schools violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws based on an interpretation of Title IX that hasn’t been tested in the courts. A recent Supreme Court decision found that states may pass sports policies that block transgender students from joining sports teams that match their gender identity, but it did not require that they do so. The decision explicitly left the issue up to states and school districts, at least for now.

The lawsuit further alleges that the Education Department’s demands violate the First Amendment. One of the corrective actions required by the Office for Civil Rights was that the district issue a public statement adopting the Trump administration’s definition of sex and agreeing with its interpretation of Title IX.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.

In an open letter to the community, interim Superintendent Rob Stein acknowledged that the lawsuit comes as the district faces serious budget problems and involves contentious issues. He said the Office for Civil Rights had placed the district in an “impossible position,” and the lawsuit would provide clarity about what it means to follow the law.

“The federal funding at issue helps support important programs and services that benefit students across our district, including many of our most vulnerable learners,” he wrote. “Protecting these resources is one of our responsibilities as a school district.”

Chalkbeat reporting found that OCR’s investigation into Jeffco was based on a limited review of documents rather than on in-depth interviews, an approach that represents a departure from past practices. The Education Department accused the district of having up to 61 boys on the rosters of girls’ sports teams, while the district says those names belonged to trainers, managers, and mascots. The department also issued a letter of impasse threatening enforcement action even before a 90-day window for negotiating an agreement had expired.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Parental rights and student gender transitions will be civil rights priorities: top DOJ official

2026-07-13T19:26:26+00:00

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The day after the Education Department announced the Justice Department would play a larger role in civil rights enforcement in schools, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official gave a preview of what that might look like.

Speaking on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s radio program, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the Justice Department would use its investigative and prosecutorial powers to enforce its interpretation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

“FERPA protects children and parental rights from illegal gender ideology being forced down their throats,” Dhillon said during the June 17 show. States are “simply ignoring this law and abusing children,” she added, calling the Justice Department the “right place” to enforce the law.

Passed in 1974, FERPA gives parents access to their children’s school records and prevents schools from sharing student data with third parties without permission. The law does not mention gender.

But the Trump administration has made clear through guidance and investigations that it believes policies that make it harder for parents to find out how their child expresses their gender identity at school violate the law. The Supreme Court bolstered that legal interpretation in its Mirabelli v. Bonta decision earlier this year, though the case did not deal specifically with FERPA.

Now, new interagency agreements between the Education and Justice Departments suggest the Justice Department plans to get involved in cases at an earlier stage, allowing for more aggressive enforcement on issues that align with President Donald Trump’s political priorities.

“I would expect that far more cases will go to court because they will begin with an agency that leans towards litigation, and I would expect there to be more of a bias towards litigation, as opposed to a bias towards mediation or resolution,” said Kenneth Marcus, who worked on education-related civil rights issues in both the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.

Unlike the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which must investigate every complaint it receives, the Justice Department can “cherry pick” which cases it pursues, said Marcus, who now heads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law. Under this administration, that means prioritizing allegations of campus antisemitism, anti-DEI initiatives, and issues related to transgender students, he said.

These priority areas are not new — the Trump administration made them clear from the first days. But they do stand in contrast to the disability discrimination cases that historically have made up a large share of OCR’s case load.

OCR historically has resolved many cases through informal agreements. Many years, Marcus said, not a single one of the 20,000 or more complaints that come into OCR gets referred to the Justice Department.

Education Department officials deny doing an end run around Congress

But when cases have been referred, the Justice Department often has to redo parts of the investigation. That’s not necessarily because OCR investigators did a bad job, but because OCR’s focus is not preparing cases for trial, Marcus said.

Bringing the Justice Department in earlier could allow the federal government to put more pressure on noncompliant school districts. That may be more important now because some school districts targeted by the Trump administration disagree with how it’s interpreting the law and have not agreed to change their policies after the Education Department finds them in violation.

“What can make this new system work well is if it facilitates quicker, smoother, and more effective litigation against recalcitrant institutions, Marcus said. “What would make the process fail is if the departments are less able to address the broad range of cases involving well-meaning institutions that probably shouldn’t go to court.”

Lilian Sotolongo Dorka, a former senior counsel to the assistant secretary for civil rights, fears this new system will be harder for families to navigate. The agreements also seem to go against federal law that assigns responsibility for civil rights in schools to the Education Department, she said.

“The spin that this will be great for civil rights enforcement and education is really smoke and mirrors,” said Sotolong Dorka, who is part of a group of former OCR employees attempting to serve as a watchdog. “It’s an attempt to do illegally through this partnership agreement what they cannot do legally, which is to close down the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.”

Justice Department’s Dhillon seeks ‘maximum enforcement’ of FERPA

Education Department officials have said that many aspects of the interagency agreements with Justice — which cover both the Office for Civil Rights and the Student Privacy Protection Office, which oversees FERPA complaints — are still being worked out.

In an interview last month with Chalkbeat, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kim Richey said her office remains focused on resolving cases for families.

“There’s nothing in this agreement that changes OCR practices,” she said.

Dhillon described the agreement differently, telling Beck that “99%” of school-related civil rights work will now be handled “soup to nuts” at the Justice Department. The Education Department retains ultimate authority, though, over whether to withhold federal funding from school districts that don’t comply.

Last year, a FERPA expert told Chalkbeat the law requires that school districts share written records, such as gender support plans, if parents request them. But FERPA doesn’t appear to create a duty to proactively disclose that students are expressing a different gender at school.

Some educators and advocates fear that informing unsupportive parents could put students’ physical and emotional safety at risk. But others say that parents are entitled to information that is entwined with their children’s development and well-being.

Layoffs and other departures at both departments have limited the administration’s ability to pursue its agenda. But some cases are moving ahead.

In late June, the Education Department announced it would now partner with the Justice Department on an investigation opened last year into Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools’ student gender transition and parental notification policies.

But that case appears to have followed a typical trajectory, with the Education Department already declaring it had reached an impasse with the district and would refer the case to the Justice Department. The school district has said its policies already conform to federal law and it “respectfully disagrees” with the administration’s findings.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

However, America First Legal, a conservative legal group closely aligned with the administration, has filed at least nine complaints in recent months alleging that school districts from Chicago to Hoonah, Alaska, kept information about gender transitions from parents. That tees up opportunities for the administration to try a new approach.

In an emailed statement to Chalkbeat, Dhillon said the partnership between Education and Justice “ensures maximum enforcement” of FERPA.

“Congress spoke with a clear voice when it guaranteed parents the right to know what information schools are collecting and using regarding their minor children,” she said. “That guarantee does not bend to the convenience of school administrators.”

A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to additional questions about how more-commonplace cases involving students with disabilities will be handled.

But any change in enforcement, Marcus said, should be seen as a “side effect” rather than the main purpose of the interagency agreements.

“This move can be seen most clearly and accurately as a step along the way towards President Trump’s clearly articulated desire to close the Education Department,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers in Michigan school district can pick from 32 phrases or face legal review over classroom posters

2026-07-08T16:04:07+00:00

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Teachers in Michigan’s Romeo Community Schools have 32 motivational phrases they’ll be able to display in their classrooms next school year.

And if they want to display another motivational phrase? It could take four layers of review, including sign-off from legal counsel.

The approved messages are inoffensive: “Everyone is welcome.” “Be Yourself.” “We value all voices.” But a few phrases missing from the list, like “Hate has no home here” or “All are welcome here,” have become synonymous with LGBTQ acceptance — along with lawsuits and disputes in school board meetings across America.

Teachers and parents in Romeo Community Schools, about 40 miles north of Detroit, said the approved phrases themselves aren’t what they find offensive. But they said the list grew out of what they describe as an effort by the school board to root out signs and symbols associated with LGBTQ pride, and a policy the school board passed last year banning displays of political ideology.

That a “Hang In There, Baby” poster or a sign with an Albert Einstein quote could be subjected to legal review before making it onto a classroom wall might just be a sign of the times. The dispute in Romeo reflects a broader fight ensuing over what belongs in America’s classrooms, with school districts and states exerting more control over what’s plastered on classroom walls, what’s said in the classroom, and what books students read.

“A picture is worth 1,000 words,” said one Romeo teacher, who like other teachers spoke to Chalkbeat on the condition of anonymity due to fears about losing their jobs. She said the board is unsettled by “the depiction of your multicultural learner, your LGBTQ (students) — that they’re still not okay with, and that’s a problem.”

A growing number of state policymakers have proposed and enacted bans on LGBTQ topics in classrooms since 2021, according to a PEN America analysis. But a few lawsuits in federal court are testing those limits by challenging the removal of posters featuring rainbow colors or the phrase “Hate has no home here.” In one Ohio case, for example, a teacher sued his district after it ordered the removal of a rainbow poster from his classroom.

Romeo Schools officials have argued their policy is intended to remove symbolism and displays that aren’t aligned with district curriculum, and to create consistency between classrooms.

Legal experts told Chalkbeat that school districts are within their rights to nix classroom displays and even LGBTQ Pride flags, although Romeo’s policy could represent a relatively prescriptive approach.

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor with the South Texas College of Law, said as long as districts are applying a fair and equal standard when they create these limits, teachers don’t have much free speech to exercise within the classroom.

“I think the school has pretty broad control over what is said in the classroom,” he said.

Romeo Community Schools cracks down on classroom displays

The Romeo school district’s human resources department sent teachers a memo June 8, two days before the last day of the school year, listing 32 approved phrases for classroom signs and displays on district-provided materials.

The memo was the result of an effort to regulate “the display of ideological and political symbols,” spokeswoman MaryAnne Brush wrote in an emailed statement to Chalkbeat.

Romeo Community Schools in Michigan approved these 32 phrases for classroom displays as part of a policy forbidding any signs considered political.

It came after the school board for the district, which educates about 5,400 students, passed a policy in April 2025 banning “political and ideological symbols” in materials displayed by teachers, unless directly related to curriculum. The policy was passed almost unanimously — only one board member opposed it — with little commentary by the board, even after a public commenter asked members to clarify what would be considered forbidden under the policy.

Several Romeo teachers told Chalkbeat that after the board adopted the policy, administrators instructed teachers to remove certain displays. They said Pride flags and signs with rainbow colors were singled out for removal.

One teacher said patriotic slogans, posters featuring President Donald Trump, and “thin blue line” messages supporting law enforcement remained in the classroom.

“I really feel especially for our marginalized communities, our LGBTQ kids, who already feel a bit like they’re in the minority,” said another teacher. “They are seeing something about them that is being erased.”

In response to questions about alleged disparate treatment of classroom posters, Brush wrote that specific building administrators weren’t available to answer questions about those messages.

She added that the district stood by the policy “as a joint effort to keep non-curricular ideologies and partisan politics out of the classroom.”

Romeo Community Schools' policy on political and ideological symbols lays out a four-step review process for any slogans or symbols that are not on the pre-approved list.

Some experts said it seemed unusual for a district to limit classroom displays as narrowly as Romeo did.

Emily Gold Waldman, a Pace University law professor who has written about free speech in schools, said she hasn’t seen another example of a district limiting displays like Romeo. But in general, she said, the policy is an example of attempts by districts across the country to try to ward off discussions of controversial topics.

That might be a good idea, said Samuel Abrams, a senior fellow with the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That’s because teachers aren’t just raising LGBTQ issues in classrooms, he said, but also sharing strongly-held opinions about political topics including the Israel-Hamas war. Those views aren’t appropriate to share with students, according to Abrams.

“Teachers are not supposed to be activists in the classroom in any direction,” he said. “We’re supposed to be educators and lift up everyone across the board.”

Brad Wenz, president of the district’s labor union, told Chalkbeat that the union filed a grievance last fall over how the signs policy would be implemented. The district’s pre-approved statements and review process are the resolution to the union’s grievance, he wrote.

But there’s something lost in the impulse to scrub the American classroom of symbols representing different identities, said John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Districts feel somewhat caught and want to avoid being at the center of national media, but at the same time I think it’s very important for district leadership to give educators the space to communicate in meaningful and authentic ways with their students,” he said.

Christy Seitz believes Romeo’s policy is a mistake. A politically active parent with two children in Romeo schools, Seitz said she’s seen conservative board members attack imagery that would represent LGBTQ students, including Pride flags.

Back when she was a fourth grader in the district in 1996, Seitz recalled that there was a poster with a rainbow declaring that “Kindness matters” in her classroom, and that such sentiments have been an important part of the community’s ethos.

“That has always been a part of Romeo’s messaging,” she said, “that we are a community and everybody here belongs, and now it feels like if you don’t fall in line to this messaging … then you don’t belong here.”

Legal battles over classroom posters brewing

A few fights over classroom displays are winding through federal court.

Earlier this year, Idaho teacher Sarah Inama sued the state and her school district over a state law prohibiting “flags or banners that represent political, religious, or ideological views, including but not limited to political parties, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political ideologies” in public schools.

Inama resigned and drew national attention after refusing to take down a poster reading “Everyone is welcome here” and featuring drawings of hands of different skin tones. Her lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Idaho.

In April, Ohio high school social studies teacher George McIntyre sued his school district after the Little Miami school board voted 4-1 to force him to take down a “Hate has no home here” poster featuring the American flag, transgender flag, and Pride flag colors.

An Ohio teacher is suing the Little Miami School District in federal court after he claims the district removed a "Hate has no home here" poster from his classroom. This screen grab from federal court records shows the poster as it appeared in his classroom.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio alleges the decision violated McIntyre’s free speech rights. McIntyre’s lawsuit also argues that by displaying the poster — alongside family photos and posters featuring Batman, Rosie the Riveter, and the film “A Christmas Story” — he sought to represent his students’ identities proudly.

Board members said they objected not to the message itself but to the rainbow and transgender flag colors.

One of the board members, Diane Horvath, argued that the diversity of public education means everyone needs to “veil certain parts” of their identities to come together in classrooms.

“If you could just have the message without bringing in certain aspects and certain values that not everyone else has, that it would be more acceptable,” Horvath said during a February meeting where the board deliberated over the poster.

In an email included in the lawsuit, a district attorney suggested McIntyre search for a “more neutral” version of the poster. McIntyre rejected that suggestion.

“My concern is that attempting to find a different, ‘neutral’ image may inadvertently lead to the erasure of LGBTQ+ representation,” he wrote in his response to the attorney.

McIntyre suggested finding ways to represent additional groups, rather than subtract.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

What SCOTUS didn’t say about transgender athletes — and what the ruling means for schools and students

2026-07-01T21:41:18+00:00

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision on transgender sports participation in some ways simply upheld the status quo.

States that prohibit trangender athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity can keep doing so — there’s no constitutional problem, the court’s conservative majority found.

But states without such bans can maintain more inclusive policies. Nothing in the ruling requires that states keep transgender athletes out of women’s and girl’s sports.

But that’s just one piece of the story. Advocates on both sides expect the fight in states and the courts to continue. And the Supreme Court majority’s reasoning raises new questions about the boundaries of transgender rights and gender protections more broadly.

Fight over transgender athletes to continue in states

More than 20 states still allow transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity, provided they meet certain criteria, and the Supreme Court ruling doesn’t change anything in those states.

Bolstered by the Supreme Court ruling, people who don’t believe transgender athletes have a place in girl’s sports hope to change that through the legislative process. Voters in Colorado and Washington will also get to decide whether to adopt bans through ballot measures.

Beth Parlato, an attorney with the conservative Independent Women’s Law Center, said she can now reassure lawmakers and the public that any ban they adopt is legal. Parlato said she’s also fielding calls about how the ruling might affect interstate competition when states have different standards.

“As litigators, we keep making these arguments until we win,” she said.

LGBTQ advocates, meanwhile, hope they can succeed in the court of public opinion in a way they didn’t with the Supreme Court.

“We’ve never been favored by the laws, and we know that the courts are not the be-all, end-all,” said Shawn Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center. “We’re on to the next fight.”

All youth need opportunities to be physically active

Soju Hokari, a transgender athlete who described sports as a vital part of her childhood and her development as a person, said those who care about trans youth must find ways for them to get the benefits of sports, even in states with bans. That might mean creating clubs outside school or officially sanctioned teams.

Hokari said everyone involved in sports has “an obligation to make sure we’re making space for trans athletes to thrive.”

Writing in the newsletter QueerED, teacher and researcher Benjamin Lebovitz pointed to data from Wisconsin that showed transgender and questioning youth were much less likely to participate in sports or be physically active than their peers. That gap grew as the political debate over transgender athletes heated up, and Lebovitz fears the Supreme Court ruling will only exacerbate that withdrawal.

Schools should make sure all students have access to physical education, open gym time, and intramural and club sports, and they should make co-ed teams when dividing students, Lebovitz wrote.

The definition of sex remains legally ambiguous

Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education and athletics while allowing sex-separated sports teams. But it doesn’t define sex. Federal courts have said that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex stereotypes — the idea that boys should be one way and girls another. Civil rights guidance from Democratic presidents supported this interpretation.

Conservatives disagree. They say there’s little doubt lawmakers were thinking of biological sex when they passed Title IX in 1972. (Biological sex feels intuitive to most people in most situations, but it can be a mushy concept scientifically.)

Conservatives hoped that the Supreme Court might use the Hecox v. Little and West Virginia v. B.P.J. cases that were the basis for Tuesday’s ruling to find that sex means biological sex. The justices did not go that far.

And the ruling doesn’t officially endorse the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which the Office for Civil Rights has used to justify investigations into school districts and states with inclusive sports policies.

Supporters of LGBTQ rights rally outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the transgender sports cases. Advocates say they'll work to maintain inclusive sports policies in states without bans.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh did write that sex, especially in the portions of Title IX dealing with sports, “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.”

Advocates and legal experts said that position could play a role in future lawsuits.

Neil Gorsuch’s balancing act confuses both sides

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the 2019 case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that Title VII’s protections against sex discrimination on the job also protected gay and transgender employees.

In a concurrence to the sports decision, Gorsuch tried to explain how he could hold that view and still vote to uphold bans on transgender athletes. Title VII bans discrimination while Title IX allows for separation of men and women in some circumstances, he noted.

“It is a mistake to assume that, just because firing someone in part because of his biological sex amounts to unlawful discrimination in violation of Title VII, sponsoring a single-sex sports team limited to biological women or girls must also amount to unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX,” he wrote.

Gorsuch seems to have pleased no one.

Parlato of the Independent Women’s Law Center said Gorsuch tried to “thread a needle” but that his logic doesn’t hold up.

And Meerkamper of the Transgender Law Center said “there’s no principled way” to support both the Bostock decision and the court’s new sports ruling. What’s changed, he said, is the political environment for trans rights between 2019 and 2026.

Still, unlike Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch didn’t call transgender identity a mental illness.

SCOTUS silent on what protections transgender students have

Race and sex are protected classes, and potentially discriminatory laws must demonstrate some significant public interest to pass legal muster.

The conservative majority’s opinion did not find that transgender people have similar protections. But it didn’t find that they did not have such protections either. In short, they evaded the issue.

For Deborah Drake, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, that leaves an opportunity to challenge transgender discrimination in the courts — though she has few illusions that the Supreme Court’s current justices will be receptive to those claims.

But Anna Kirkland, an attorney and professor of gender studies at the University of Michigan, said it’s deeply concerning that the majority gave so much deference to state laws without requiring more evidence that women and girls are harmed when transgender athletes participate in women’s sports.

Under this approach, she said, women might not have been admitted to elite military academies, for example. And it could mean other policies that only affect a small number of people who don’t conform to gender stereotypes are allowed to stand in the future.

“This ruling shows how the conservative majority is narrowing what equal protection means for everyone,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court rules states can restrict transgender athletes’ sports participation in schools

2026-06-30T21:38:29+00:00

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States can bar transgender athletes from playing on school teams that match their gender identity, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The 6-3 decision from the court’s conservative majority leaves intact restrictions in 29 states, most of which explicitly prevent transgender women and girls from playing on women’s and girls school sports teams.

The decision was hailed by conservatives who reject the idea that gender identity is a meaningful legal category and by some groups representing female athletes, who say such bans are necessary to ensure fairness and safety in women’s sports. It marks another legal setback for transgender youth as the Trump administration and Republican-led state legislatures have advanced policies limiting transgender rights.

The decision does not require states to bar transgender athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity, permitting, at least for now, policies in more than 20 states that the Trump administration has targeted.

But writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the plain meaning of “sex” in the Title IX statute that bars sex discrimination in education, particularly in the amendment dealing with sports participation, “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.”

Kavanaugh wrote that the science on whether transgender women athletes who have been through hormone therapy retain physical advantages over other women remains unsettled. That is sufficient reason, he said, to defer to states and athletic associations. And he wrote that allowing transgender girls and women to compete on women’s teams could leave other competitors at a “serious disadvantage.”

“That is because sports are generally zero sum,” he wrote. “Allowing a biological male athlete to compete on a girls’ team necessarily displaces or disadvantages a female athlete—replacing her on the roster, knocking her out of the starting lineup, reducing her playing time, depriving her of a medal, and the like. That hard reality of sports cannot be ignored or swept under the rug.”

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed that bans on transgender women and girls participating in female sports may not violate Title IX. But she said one of the cases should have been sent back to the lower courts for further fact-finding about whether that particular athlete — a West Virginia high school track athlete who never went through male puberty — could compete fairly with other girls.

And she said the majority opinion was cavalier in its treatment of the legal rights of transgender people under the constitution’s equal protection clause. Sotomayor also expressed concern about the opportunities that could be denied to them under the ruling.

Sports, Sotomayor wrote, “can help build resilience, tenacity, leadership, and discipline. It can lead to life-long friendships, community, and a sense of belonging. It can bring joy and the thrill of victory, along with all the lessons one learns from experiencing defeat. The benefits are immense.”

“Sports, of course, are often zero sum,” she continued, “but the law need not and should not be.”

The ruling stems from two lawsuits challenging state laws in Idaho and West Virginia.

One case, Little v. Hecox, involved Lindsay Hecox, a transgender student who competed in the women’s track and field club team after she didn’t qualify for the Division I team. The other, West Virginia v. B.P.J, involved Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender high school track athlete who had undergone hormone therapy from a young age.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in both cases in January.

The cases centered on whether state laws limiting transgender athletes’ participation in sports violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Idaho became the first state to enact such a law in 2020.

Today, 29 states have laws or policies restricting transgender athletes’ participation, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ issues. Most states with restrictions bar transgender women and girls from participating on girls sports teams, while some also prohibit transgender boys from boys teams.

Other state laws are silent on the issue or require an inclusive approach. Some high school sports associations set standards for when transgender athletes can compete in the female category.

Cases raise issues of fairness, competition, community

Soju Hokari, a transgender athlete who played ultimate frisbee in high school and college, said she wasn’t surprised at the outcome, but said she feels sad and worried for Pepper-Jackson and other trans girls who will have to stop playing on their school teams.

“I cannot imagine, as a high school student, being pulled away from that community,” said Hokari, who graduated from Emory College just as Georgia’s ban was taking effect. “Sports is so central to a lot of people’s childhoods. If I hadn’t had my sports, I would have been a very different person.”

But Nancy Hogshead, an Olympic swimmer and attorney who has advocated for women’s opportunities in sports, called the decision “a step in the right direction” that doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t require states to bar transgender athletes from women’s teams.

Given that everything from weight categories to swimsuits to the air pressure in a football is so heavily policed in sports to ensure fairness, Hogshead said it doesn’t make sense to overlook any potential advantage afforded by sex.

“The female categories exist to exclude males and male athletic advantages,” said Hogshead, who leads the advocacy group Champion Women. “It exists to give girls and women a place to compete and win.”

Ruling upholds status quo, sets up future battles

The decision marks the third setback in two years for transgender rights at the Supreme Court.

In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court in 2025 upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. In Mirabelli v. Bonta earlier this year, the Supreme Court sided with parents challenging a California law that protected the privacy of students who were transitioning.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has issued executive orders recognizing only two sexes and defining sex based on biology at birth, targeting policies involving gender-affirming care, gender markers on passports, and transgender athletes’ sports participation. It has used its interpretation of Title IX to target states and school districts with more inclusive rules.

Legal experts said Tuesday’s decision was narrow in the sense that the justices tailored their arguments to sports and left many other issues related to transgender rights for future cases.

Deborah Brake, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has written extensively about Title IX, said while this Supreme Court has not been friendly to transgender rights, nothing about the decision “forecloses challenges to transgender discrimination in other areas.”

Nonetheless, Shawn Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center, said the decision endorsed sports policies in more than two dozen states that they see as discriminatory and simplistic. The court could have, for example, overturned broad bans and required states to adopt policies that consider the characteristics of individual athletes.

Across the spectrum, advocates predicted the political fight would only intensify in states that still have inclusive policies.

“It is an absolute win, and we still have more work to do at the state level,” said Beth Parlato, senior legal adviser at the conservative Independent Women’s Law Center.

This story has been updated throughout with additional reaction and commentary about the decision.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Inside two Title IX investigations in Colorado that reflect a ‘new way of doing business’ under Trump

2026-06-26T23:01:12+00:00

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An all-gender bathroom in a Denver high school was at the center of the first sex discrimination investigation of the second Trump administration. A year and a half later, the federal Office for Civil Rights has taken no enforcement action.

Neighboring Jeffco Public Schools, meanwhile, has been threatened with the loss of federal funds after investigators said they found boys’ names on girls’ sports rosters. Citing policies on locker room access and overnight field trips, the Education Department is pursuing enforcement even after the district said the names belonged to managers, trainers, and mascots.

Documents obtained through public records requests shed new light on how the Trump administration approached the two Colorado cases. Investigations that once might have involved in-depth interviews consisted of email back-and-forths. Inconsistent follow-up left districts unsure what to expect after being found in violation. And the alleged violations of Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination, were based on untested interpretations.

“More aggressive enforcement” could be on the horizon under a new partnership between the Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice. That could raise the stakes for school districts and students in how OCR approaches its investigations and arrives at its conclusions.

“This is a new way of doing business,” said Seth Galanter, an attorney who worked for OCR under the Obama and Biden administrations and is now a senior fellow at the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.

“There’s no nuance,” Galanter said. “There’s no inquiry into whether there’s a hostile environment. They say, ‘You have a policy, and the policy violated the law and yeah, you’re in trouble now.’ That is not something that prior administrations would have done.”

OCR is increasingly focused on undoing protections for transgender students through investigations it initiates itself. Amid massive staffing cuts, OCR has dismissed thousands of pending cases, according to a January U.S. Government Accountability Office report. Historically, most OCR cases stemmed from disability discrimination complaints filed by families.

The federal education department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

But in a news release this month, the department claimed the Trump administration has made “historic progress” in enforcing Title IX.

“Under the Trump Administration, no woman or girl will have to fight alone to secure her basic protections, and we will not relent until Title IX is restored to the fullest extent of the law,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in the news release.

The Trump administration’s first investigation was in Denver

The civil rights office launched its Denver investigation several days after a local television news station aired a story in January 2025 about how the conversion of a girls’ restroom at East High School to a multi-stall all-gender one had “caused a stir.”

A district spokesperson said students requested the all-gender restroom.

“They were running out of time, being late to the next class because the one or two single stall bathrooms that they had to accommodate this just wasn’t enough for the need that was out there,” spokesperson Scott Pribble told 9News.

To investigate, OCR sent Denver Public Schools a request for 12 pieces of information, according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request. That information included the district’s bathroom policy, a floor plan showing all of the bathrooms at East High, and any complaints the district received about the conversion.

“To our knowledge, OCR did not interview any DPS staff,” a DPS spokesperson said.

Denver provided 17 emails it had received, Pribble said. Nine expressed concern about the restroom, seven were supportive, and one asked for more information, he said.

The civil rights office also asked for the number of students who were tardy to class because of restroom availability before and after the creation of the all-gender restroom.

Denver told OCR that it doesn’t track that specific information. But the district did share data showing the total number of tardies at 2,400-student East High went down, not up, after the all-gender restroom was added, the documents show.

Seven months into the investigation, Denver did something that district officials hoped would neutralize the Trump administration’s claim that the restroom was discriminatory toward girls: It converted a boys’ restroom at East High into another all-gender restroom.

That didn’t help. Days later, OCR found that Denver had violated Title IX. In an 11-page letter to the superintendent, the federal office wrote that the all-gender restroom “had significant deleterious effects” on students and that East High had received “many complaints,” including about boys leering at a girl in the bathroom and pounding on the door of a stall. The letter references written complaints but gives no indication investigators spoke with students.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, Denver refuted that reasoning.

“They requested all emails on the topic and made their findings based solely on a handful of negative emails,” a district spokesperson wrote. “They did not include the comments from positive emails that had also been shared with them.”

OCR’s findings also appear to have been influenced by outside factors. OCR’s letter included a full page of examples from other states, including a 16-year-old in Minnesota who reported seeing a boy in the girls locker room and a 14-year-old in Wisconsin who said she was “exposed to the genitalia” of a transgender student.

OCR gave Denver 10 days to revert East High’s all-gender restrooms back to single-sex ones or “risk imminent enforcement action.” That was in August. The district hasn’t complied, nor has it heard anything further from the federal office, a district spokesperson confirmed.

The administration is threatening funding in neighboring Jeffco

Five months after launching its Denver investigation, OCR turned to neighboring Jeffco Public Schools. The district is home to a politically connected conservative parent group whose founder told local media she shared concerns about district policies with the federal department.

The Jeffco investigation also came after several families sued the district over its overnight accommodations policy. One family claimed their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to share a bed with a transgender student on an out-of-state trip. The lawsuit is ongoing.

Just like in Denver, OCR asked Jeffco for 12 pieces of information, including the names and contact information for all sports team coaches, documents obtained in a public records request show. But a district spokesperson said OCR never interviewed anyone in Jeffco, either.

OCR also asked Jeffco for girls sports team rosters, “identifying on each such roster any participants who are biologically male.” Jeffco sent OCR the rosters, “including the gender provided by students and/or their families,” the district told Chalkbeat.

In March, OCR issued a press release that said the rosters indicated “male students occupy 61 roster positions on girls’ sports teams.” Jeffco serves about 74,000 students.

A later version of the press release posted on the federal education department’s website walked back that language by adding the words “may” and “up to.” The department did not answer questions from Chalkbeat about why.

But Jeffco said recently that the 61 boys on the girls’ rosters were not athletes but “male managers, trainers, or mascots.” The district said OCR never asked to clarify any of the boys’ roles, and that Jeffco didn’t learn of “the confusion” until OCR issued its press release.

“OCR did not engage with District staff whatsoever in the eight months after receiving our data submission — contrary to the dialogue we would have expected during an investigation under OCR’s own Case Processing Manual,” Jeffco wrote in a letter to the office in early June.

Jeffco said it has “repeatedly and respectfully” asked OCR to correct the error, but the office has refused. The education department declined to comment on the matter to Chalkbeat.

The federal civil rights office also asked Jeffco for documentation of instances in which allowing boys to compete on girls sports teams adversely affected female athletes, including any injuries, forfeitures, or cases in which transgender athletes won. Jeffco said it had no such documents.

As in Denver, OCR found that Jeffco violated Title IX. And similar to Denver, OCR gave Jeffco 10 days to rescind its policies or risk imminent enforcement action. Jeffco didn’t do that. Three months later, on Friday, the education department announced it was making good on its threat.

Jeffco was anticipating it. On Wednesday, the Jeffco school board held a special meeting to authorize potential legal action, should the federal administration try to withhold funding.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Trump administration gives Jeffco 10 days to change policies or risk losing federal funding

2026-06-26T21:32:44+00:00

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The Trump administration on Friday gave Jeffco Public Schools 10 days to change its policies on transgender students’ rights or risk losing federal funding.

The federal Office for Civil Rights previously found that Jeffco’s policies on bathroom use, sports participation, and overnight accommodations violated Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Investigators said they found 61 boys’ names on Jeffco girls’ sports rosters. The district said the names belonged to managers, trainers, and mascots rather than athletes.

Still, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights announced in a news release Friday that it is moving forward with enforcement, which could include referring the case to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The district had anticipated the move. On Wednesday, the Jeffco school board authorized potential legal action in case the federal government attempts to withhold funding.

In a statement Friday, the 74,000-student district said it stands to lose more than $90 million in federal funding.

“The trust of our students, families, staff, and community is one of our most important responsibilities,” the district said. “That trust requires us to speak honestly, insist on accuracy, follow the law, and stand up for the students we serve. We will continue to do so.”

Inside two Title IX investigations in Colorado that reflect a ‘new way of doing business’ under Trump

Jeffco Superintendent Tracy Dorland called on Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and Education Commissioner Susana Córdova to back the district, as well.

“Should this dispute wind up in the courts, we ask for your active participation as a party in defense of Colorado law,” Dorland wrote in a letter to the three state leaders.

Jeffco has maintained that its policies comply with Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, whose regulations allow transgender individuals to use restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories that align with their gender identity.

In a news release Friday, U.S. Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey called Jeffco’s Title IX violations “widespread and blatant.”

“Today’s action makes clear that continued noncompliance will be met with accountability and consequences,” she said.

The department also found neighboring Denver Public Schools in violation of Title IX last year but has not pursued enforcement action against that district.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Feds open new investigations into transgender athletes in three Michigan school districts

2026-06-19T14:43:17+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education says Title IX investigations have been opened into three additional Michigan school districts, this time over allegations the districts are allowing students to compete on athletic teams and use locker rooms based on their gender identities.

The districts include Ann Arbor Public Schools, Monroe Public Schools, and Chippewa Valley Schools. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which will soon move to the U.S. Department of Justice, will conduct the investigations.

A press release from the Education Department alleges the Ann Arbor district allowed a transgender student to compete on the girls volleyball team, the Monroe district required the girls volleyball team to compete against a team with a transgender student and share locker rooms with the student, and the Chippewa Valley district permitted a female student athlete to use the male-only locker room.

“The convoluted practice of allowing students to participate on sex-segregated athletic teams and make use of locker rooms based on ‘gender identity’ is not only known to be unsafe for students, but is a direct violation of federal law,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in the press release.

Title IX is a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. The Trump administration has used it to target transgender student protections.

A statement sent Friday by Monroe Superintendent Andrew Shaw said there has been a “prior, thorough review of this matter by an independent investigator” who determined that Title IX violation allegations were unsubstantiated.

The statement said the district is dedicated to “fostering a secure and nurturing educational setting for every student,” and complies with all state and federal rules.

“We welcome the opportunity to coordinate with federal officials and are working in full cooperation with the Office for Civil Rights,” the statement read.

A spokesperson for the Chippewa Valley district said in a statement Thursday to Bridge Michigan that it had yet to receive a copy of the complaint and learned about the investigation from the media.

“As a matter of practice, the district cooperates fully with any review conducted by the Office for Civil Rights,” Diane Blain, the spokesperson, said in the statement. “Chippewa Valley Schools remains committed to providing a safe, supportive, and respectful learning environment for all students and to complying with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations. We will continue to work cooperatively with the Office for Civil Rights throughout its review process.”

A spokesperson for the Ann Arbor district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department earlier this year opened Title IX investigations into the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the Lansing School District, and Godfrey-Lee Public Schools.

The department at the time said it is investigating whether the districts have included “sexual orientation or gender ideology content” in any classroom and if parents were notified of their rights to opt their children out of such instruction. It will also determine if transgender students are allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

The status of those investigations is unclear.

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

District says 61 boys the Trump administration found on girls’ sports rosters were mascots, managers

2026-06-12T22:12:54+00:00

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When the federal education department announced in March that Jeffco Public Schools had in its view run afoul of anti-discrimination law, it cited one key piece of evidence: rosters indicating 61 boys were on girls’ sports teams.

In a letter to the community this week, Colorado’s second largest school district said no boys were competing on those teams — and offered an explanation.

“Some teams had male managers, trainers, or mascots — not athletes,” the letter said.

“Because the [U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights] never asked us to clarify the role of any individual listed on those rosters, we did not learn of this confusion until the OCR issued a press release. Since that moment, we have repeatedly and respectfully asked the OCR to address this factual error. They have declined to do so.”

The U.S. Department of Education declined to comment for this story.

The federal Office for Civil Rights is meant to ensure equal access to education by enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination. But under President Donald Trump, the office has used the federal Title IX law to target school district policies that protect transgender students.

Jeffco has been in a back-and-forth with the federal office for a year.

Last June, the office launched an investigation into Jeffco’s policy on sleeping arrangements for transgender students on overnight school trips. The policy says transgender students should share rooms with peers who match their gender identity. A family had sued the district after their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to share a bed with a transgender student.

The federal office eventually found that several of Jeffco’s policies — including those on overnight accommodations, bathroom use, and sports participation — violated Title IX.

At first, the office said Jeffco athletic rosters indicated “that male students occupy 61 roster positions on girls’ sports teams.” A later version of the press release posted on the federal education department’s website walked back that language by adding the words “may” and “up to.”

The department has not answered questions from Chalkbeat about the change. Nor has it answered questions about how it made the determination about the 61 boys.

Last week, the federal office issued a warning letter to Jeffco threatening to pull the 74,000-student district’s federal funding if it doesn’t change its policies, saying the two sides are at an impasse.

In a statement, Jeffco disagreed about the impasse, noting that the district is still within the 90-day window that the office allows for good faith negotiations.

Jeffco has said from the start that it is following Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, which “directly contradicts” the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the district said.

“This places school districts in an impossible position,” the district wrote in its letter to the community, which was posted to its website Thursday. “We must navigate conflicting requirements with clear state law on one side and non-binding federal guidance on the other.”

Despite receiving an impasse letter, Jeffco said it has “not given up on dialogue” with federal officials to come to a resolution.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Superintendents defend policies about transgender students, parent rights on Capitol Hill

2026-06-10T22:19:04+00:00

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Three progressive superintendents defended their policies for parental involvement and transgender inclusion during a congressional hearing Wednesday in which Republican lawmakers called them “pathetic” and said they should find other jobs.

House Education and Workforce Chairman Tim Walberg convened the hearing with the title “Breaking Trust.” Much of the questioning centered on policies intended to protect the rights of transgender students or create more inclusive school environments. But lawmakers also brought up abortion, the role of teachers in promoting political protest, and eighth grade algebra access.

Called to testify were San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su, Loudoun County Superintendent Aaron Spence in Virginia, and Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King, who had to be subpoenaed.

Each of these superintendents is a relatively new leader in a district that has been at the center of intense controversy over race, gender, and other topics that are often referred to as part of culture war fights. Chicago and Loudoun County, in particular, have been the targets of repeated investigations by the Trump administration, which has also threatened to withhold funding.

Two days before the hearing, the conservative advocacy group America First Legal, founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, filed formal complaints accusing all three districts of violating parental rights and federal law with policies that give students a say in whether parents are notified that that child wants to change their gender presentation.

Walberg, a Michigan Republican, said in his opening remarks that Congress has a responsibility to ask questions of school districts, including when “parents are excluded from major decisions involving their children” and “when classrooms become vehicles for political or ideological agendas.”

“Across the country, school districts are losing sight of their core mission: educating students,” Walberg said.

The superintendents, in turn, said they respect parents as partners, develop policies with input from local communities, and want to create school environments where students can show up as themselves.

“We’re in education because we care about students, and part of that means ensuring an environment where all students can reach their full potential,” Spence said.

Lawmakers and superintendents spar over abortion, transgender students

Asked repeatedly if parents can opt out of lessons related to sexual health or LGBTQ topics, superintendents said yes or that they comply with state and “binding” federal law.

Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, asked King about Chicago Public Schools making information about abortion available to students. He also pressed her about “which form of abortion” she preferred after offering graphic descriptions of the procedure.

“I’m very disturbed by that question,” King said after a pause. “I want to say that Chicago Public Schools’ sexual education curriculum is in compliance with Illinois state law.”

CPS CEO Macquline King testified before Congress. Here are 3 key takeaways.

Rep. Rick Allen, a Georgia Republican, cited a recent malpractice lawsuit in which a New York jury awarded $2 million to a woman who felt disfigured by a mastectomy she had as a teenager when she identified as male. He compared that to school districts having policies that require addressing students by their preferred names and pronouns.

“You’re going to be held responsible legally for what you’re perpetrating on young people,” Allen said.

Democrats for their part used their time to highlight cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, the value of diversity, and Republican efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. They emphasized that the superintendents were accountable to local elected school boards and that policies reflected community preferences.

“This committee talks all the time about ‘decisions should be made at the local level,’ but I guess that’s only if they like the decisions that you make at the local level,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat and former national teacher of the year.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

And Democratic Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania urged the superintendents not to “change your values or your positions, because you know who you work for, and it is the parents and the students in your community.”

Spence came in for some of the most intense questioning. The Virginia district has been at the epicenter of political battles over COVID restrictions, parental rights and policies related to transgender students and racial equity. Most recently, the district refused to bend to pressure to exclude some immigrant students from federally funded career education.

Virginia sits under the jurisdiction of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in the 2020 Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board decision that students cannot be prevented from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. Loudoun County officials have said they are bound by that ruling until the 4th Circuit or the Supreme Court decides otherwise.

The Trump administration, in contrast, says Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in education, actually requires that transgender students be excluded from restrooms that align with their gender. It has threatened Loudoun County with the loss of federal funding.

“Yes or no, should biological men be allowed in locker rooms with biological women or girls?” asked Rep. Robert Onder Jr., a Missouri Republican.

“Transgender women should be allowed in women’s spaces,” Spence responded.

“That’s a yes,” Onder said. “So biological men should be able to go into locker rooms and shower rooms with biological girls?”

“Federal law requires it,” Spence said.

“No it doesn’t,” Onder said.

“Yes, it does,” Spence said.

“No,” Onder said. “Title IX is, in fact, quite the opposite. Title IX requires you to protect women and girls.”

Loudoun County has also been investigated over an incident in which a transgender boy was accused of filming other boys in a locker room. The U.S. Department of Education said the school district violated Title IX in its handling of the incident.

Several representatives interrogated Spence over the incident and why the students who complained about being filmed allegedly received longer suspensions than the transgender student.

Spence said he could not discuss specifics due to student privacy laws but said that the incident had not been described accurately in public reports. He also said the district applies discipline “appropriately” and in accordance with its policies, including policies against bullying.

The hearing did have moments of comity. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who recently switched from Republican to independent, said he’d long been a critic of San Francisco Unified but praised Su, giving her a platform to talk about changes she’s made.

Su said the district has brought back eighth grade algebra, revised its ethnic studies curriculum, and implemented literacy approaches consistent with the science of reading, among other changes.

“When I came on as superintendent 18 months ago, I listened to families, listened to parents and our educators, and we moved quickly,” Su said.

Kiley said he probably disagrees with many things the district is doing.

“But these are really good, important steps, so thank you for your leadership,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump termination of civil rights agreements could chill student complaints and confuse schools

2026-04-14T10:52:00+00:00

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When the Delaware Valley School District board voted unanimously last month to reverse policies protecting transgender students that they’d adopted a decade ago, some in the audience cried, “Shame!” Others said the board didn’t go far enough.

The district had adopted those policies in the first place under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in response to a complaint from a transgender student. An agreement between the district and the federal government during the Obama administration called for more training for staff and more support for students changing their gender presentation.

Now that same agency had told the district the agreement was terminated. Officials had 30 days to remove gender from the district’s anti-discrimination policies or face consequences.

The board voted at its March meeting to require transgender students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that match their sex assigned at birth. The superintendent said social workers would meet with the affected students to go over the changes.

This whiplash is one potential outcome of the Trump administration’s decision to terminate civil rights agreements drawn up under previous Democratic administrations. The Education Department announced in early April that it was ending such agreements related to violations of Title IX — the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education — in five school districts in four states, as well as for a California community college.

In other communities, little may change because local officials are more supportive of transgender rights. Nevertheless, multiple legal experts and former employees of the Office for Civil Rights told Chalkbeat that tearing up agreements reached after lengthy investigations and negotiations sends a dangerous message to all students: If you file a complaint, the resolution might last only as long as the next presidential election cycle.

“How far will it go?” asked Beth Gellman-Beer, an attorney who spent 18 years with OCR under Republican and Democratic administrations. “Once you open that door to something that is unprecedented, where does it end? If we have another administration that is Democratic, what will they do? What will be the point for anyone to bring a case to OCR, if they can’t trust whatever decision that comes out of that complaint will remain the decision?”

Revoking civil rights agreements is just one piece of a much larger transformation of the Office for Civil Rights, where a reduced staff focuses on cases that align with the president’s political priorities. And federal officials are blunt about how much the government’s approach has changed between the Obama and Biden administrations and Trump’s second term.

“Prior Administrations regularly misinterpreted Title IX to pander to political ideology and police ‘misgendering’ despite not having sound legal grounds,” Education Department spokeswoman Amelia Joy wrote in an email. By terminating past agreements, Joy wrote, “the Trump Administration is upholding the law and righting years of wrongs.”

Given what’s happened over the last few presidential administrations, canceling civil rights agreements was perhaps inevitable, said R. Shep Melnick, a Boston College political scientist who has studied civil rights enforcement extensively.

“The combination of presidential influence and partisan polarization means you have administrations that have very different understandings of how to interpret civil rights law,” Melnick said. “It’s not surprising, once the regulations flip back and forth, that agreements based on previous understanding of statute would be subject to change.”

Ending OCR agreements part of new enforcement approach

The Office for Civil Rights under Trump has made keeping transgender students out of bathrooms and off sports teams that match their gender identity one of its top priorities. Ending the six agreements, which treated discrimination based on gender identity and sex stereotypes as Title IX violations, fits into that broader enforcement approach.

Conservatives hailed the decision as reversing a misinterpretation of Title IX.

“These particular agreements were changing the definitions of sex such that boys could self-identify into locker rooms, bathrooms, and showers,” said Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel at the conservative Independent’s Women’s Forum. “The Trump administration is sending a strong message that Title IX is about protecting women and girls.”

In Delaware Valley, a 4,200-student district in northeast Pennsylvania, most transgender students weren’t using shared restrooms even under the OCR agreement, said Taylor James, executive director of TriVersity Pride Center, an LGBTQ community group and resource center based in Milford.

Fearful of backlash, he said, most students either used the restroom in the nurse’s office or just waited until they got home. But telling students they can’t use a restroom they feel comfortable in sends a message that there’s something wrong with them, James said.

Without the OCR agreement in place, James fears there won’t be any repercussions when teachers deliberately misgender students or when students face bullying because they don’t conform.

He’s working with legal aid groups on potential next steps, but his top priority is making sure students feel valued and cared for.

James said his biggest piece of advice to those students is to “just make it to adulthood, because you will be celebrated for the things you’ve been taught to hate about yourself.”

Many states still have laws protecting transgender students

Not all of the documents related to the affected districts are available in OCR’s public case search. The Education Department declined to make all the previous settlement agreements available or answer questions about which provisions would no longer be enforced.

But in the La Mesa-Spring Valley school district near San Diego, the revoked agreement involved allegations that a nonbinary student was bullied for continuing to use the restroom that matched their sex at birth — the very practice that the Trump administration wants to require.

And in the Sacramento Unified School District, the complaint didn’t relate to restrooms at all, according to local news reports. Federal investigators found that district officials responded promptly in 2022 after teachers didn’t use a transgender student’s preferred name and pronouns but failed to inform the student of their right to file a complaint.

Kayleigh Baker, a consultant with TNG Consulting and a member of advisory board of the Association of Title IX Administrators, said she’d recommend that institutions “wait just a second” if they’re considering policy changes based on the fact that the agreements have been rescinded.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

Many states, including California, Delaware, and Washington, where the Education Department rescinded agreements, have state laws protecting transgender students’ rights. Some school districts have had early court wins after pushing back against funding cuts related to Title IX.

“We shouldn’t rush to anticipatory complying with what we think the administration may do, because we have state law, we have all of these open questions,” she said. “And at the end of the day, we have very real students and employees who are trying to access their education, access their work environments, free from discrimination, and we don’t want to rush to take away rights that they have.”

Kristina Moon, senior attorney with Education Law Center-Pennsylvania, stressed that federal laws and legal rulings, not OCR agreements, ultimately spell out what districts’ obligations are to LGBTQ students.

Some affected school districts, for example, are also under the jurisdiction of federal appeals courts that require schools to protect transgender students’ bathroom access.

“A fundamental concern is that our school boards and our school leaders are not understanding this distinction and feeling significant threats from the federal government, by design,” Moon said.

Parlato acknowledged that rescinding agreements is unusual and that courts haven’t yet consistently interpreted Title IX the way the Trump administration does. But she’s optimistic that will change in the next few years.

“Sex is an immutable characteristic, it can’t be changed, and once we can get that codified in law, we won’t have this issue,” she said.

Terminating agreements could undermine OCR’s credibility

The Education Department has also rescinded agreements that have nothing to do with transgender students.

Last year the Education Department withdrew a 2023 settlement in Forsyth, Georgia, in which the Office for Civil Rights had determined that book-ban discussions created a hostile environment for some students. The department also ended an agreement in Rapid City, South Dakota, that addressed mistreatment of Native American students.

Rescinding agreements tells students not to bother filing complaints, said Gellman-Beer, who led the OCR’s now-closed Philadelphia office before resigning last year. She also fears it will give school districts few incentives to work cooperatively with OCR or comply with ongoing monitoring.

“It’s going to make it a thousand times more difficult to negotiate with a school district when they think they can just renegotiate with the next administration,” she said.

Throwing out agreements is “clearly going to reduce the credibility and authority of OCR,” Melnick said. At the same time, the more overtly politicized enforcement becomes, the more questions it raises about the validity of agreements. Melnick highlighted how the Trump administration threatened to withhold billions in federal research dollars to pressure universities to sign sweeping settlements of antisemitism claims.

“One administration should not be able to lock in a policy for the indefinite future regardless,” Melnick said.

Students bring complaints because they want their negative experience to lead to a meaningful change in their community, Baker said. Even students who agree with the current administration’s policies might wonder, “who’s to stop that meaningful change from being undone the second there’s a change in power?”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Trump administration finds Jeffco bathroom, sports policies for transgender students violate Title IX

2026-03-17T23:15:19+00:00

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The federal education department has found that Jeffco Public Schools’ policies on sports participation, bathroom use, and overnight trip accommodations violate a federal law the Trump administration has used to challenge transgender students’ rights.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights said it received Jeffco athletic rosters “indicating that male students occupy 61 roster positions on girls’ sports teams,” according to a Friday press release. Jeffco Public Schools is Colorado’s second-largest district, with about 74,000 students.

It’s not clear from the press release how investigators reached the conclusion about the 61 athletes. The education department did not respond to questions.

Jeffco Public Schools pushed back against the department’s finding, saying in a statement that the “interpretation has no basis in the Title IX regulations and is not supported by any binding court decision.”

The Colorado High School Activities Association, which governs high school sports, said in a statement that it doesn’t maintain data on the number of transgender student athletes.

The Office for Civil Rights investigated Jeffco for violating Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. President Donald Trump has made targeting protections for transgender students a key part of his second term, and his administration’s interpretation of Title IX is contested. The civil rights office previously found that Colorado’s largest district, Denver Public Schools, violated Title IX by converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom.

The Jeffco investigation came after several families sued the district over its policy for overnight accommodations for trangender students. One family claimed their daughter, then 11 years old, was assigned to share a bed with a transgender student on an out-of-state trip.

In court documents, Jeffco Public Schools argued that the district “does not typically know the sex assigned at birth of any of its students” because parents can legally change the sex designation on their child’s birth certificate before enrolling the child in school.

In the case of the 11-year-old, trip organizers “quickly and discreetly” moved her to a different room when she expressed discomfort, Jeffco wrote in court documents.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in August. The families appealed that ruling in September, and the case is set for an appeals hearing in May, court records show.

Jeffco Public Schools’ policy says that in most cases, transgender students “should be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity,” though it notes that determinations will be made on a case-by-case basis. The policy is the same when it comes to transgender students’ access to locker rooms.

The policy says students should have access to a restroom that aligns with their gender identity. As for sports participation, Jeffco’s policy points to the bylaws of the Colorado High School Activities Association, or CHSAA, which say the transgender student’s school should meet with the student “to determine the gender assignment for the prospective student-athlete.”

The bylaws say CHSAA will review those decisions according to its policies and appeals procedures. But in its statement Friday, CHSAA said it has “no history” of doing so. School districts don’t share that information with CHSAA due to student privacy laws, it said.

The Office for Civil Rights has given Jeffco 10 days to agree to a proposed resolution “or risk imminent enforcement action,” the press release says.

The proposal would require Jeffco to rescind or revise its policies about bathroom access, overnight accommodations, and sports; adopt “biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and female;’” issue a statement saying that Title IX applies regardless of state law; and post that statement “in a prominent location” on its main website and girls’ sports websites.

Jeffco has said that its policies are grounded in Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, the regulations for which say transgender individuals should be allowed to use restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories that are consistent with their gender identity.

In its statement, the district said it will continue “to maintain its compliance with the law” and provide “exemplary, equitable educational opportunities for all students."

Eight conservative-leaning Colorado school districts and charter schools are suing the state, arguing that the anti-discrimination law violates students’ rights by allowing transgender youth to play on sports teams that match their gender identity. Jeffco is not involved in that lawsuit.

This story has been updated with information from the Colorado High School Activities Association and a statement from Jeffco Public Schools.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Republican effort to stop school lessons around gender identity rejected by state education board

2026-03-10T21:48:39+00:00

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Democrats on Michigan’s State Board of Education rejected a GOP effort Tuesday that was aimed at ending the teaching of gender identity in schools.

Nikki Snyder, a Republican from Goodrich, proposed adding an agenda item for the board’s monthly meeting that would have members vote on a resolution she said would not only end the teaching of gender identity but also end gender “transitioning in Michigan schools.”

The effort failed when the Democratic majority on the board voted against placing the proposal on the agenda. It was the latest attempt by the Republicans on the board to push back against the updated sex and health education standards.

Citing recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Snyder and Tom McMillin, a Republican from Oakland Township, alleged that the Michigan Department of Education is violating federal laws with updated sex and health education guidance the State Board approved in November, a claim another board member said was misleading and incorrect. The elected State Board oversees the Michigan Department of Education. Democrats control the eight-member State Board with six seats.

They also cited controversial training materials that came to light in 2022 in which a trainer suggested that teachers can talk with parents about a student expressing suicidal thoughts without having to reveal that gender identity or sexual orientation is a cause of their distress.

During debates in 2016 over State Board guidance to schools on addressing the needs of LGBTQ students, advocates argued that in a small number of cases, revealing to parents that their child is transitioning could put the student in danger. Several Democratic board members argued Tuesday that the language in the 2022 video was acknowledging that reality and wasn’t intended as a blanket suggestion that teachers withhold information from parents.

The attempt comes amid intense national debate about whether schools should teach about gender identity, parents’ rights to opt their children out of such lessons, and parents’ right to know about the gender identity their child uses at school.

In November, the State Board faced backlash for voting to approve updated standards for sex and health education that recommend students be taught to define gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. In Michigan, local school districts aren’t required to align their curriculum to the state standards, though for subjects that are tested on annual exams, most do. Sex and health education are not tested. State law requires that parents be allowed to opt their children out of sex education lessons.

Last week, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Michigan House passed a bill inspired by the debate over the updated standards that would require legislative approval of standards adopted by the State Board. The legislation isn’t expected to succeed in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

In February, the U.S. Justice Department announced it was investigating three Michigan school districts — Detroit Public Schools Community District, Lansing School District, and Godfrey-Lee Public Schools — to determine whether they had included “sexual orientation or gender ideology content” in any classroom and if parents were notified of their rights to opt their children out of such instruction.

Letters sent to the districts cited the November vote to update sex and health education standards, with the DOJ saying those updates may violate Title IX rules. Snyder said during Tuesday’s meeting that she wrote a letter to the DOJ asking the department to investigate Michigan but didn’t mention specific schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week in a California case that parents have a right to know about their child’s gender identity at school. The ruling in the Mirabelli v. Bonta case overturns a California law that required teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns at school and barred them from disclosing students’ gender identity to parents without the students’ consent.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in the Mahmoud v. Taylor case in Maryland that parents have the right to opt their children out of lessons that violate their religious beliefs.

McMillin urged the board to take up the proposed resolution in part because local districts should know that they “could be obstructing justice” if they withhold gender identity information from parents.

Ellen Cogen Lipton, a Democrat from Huntington Woods, noted that the Mirabelli v. Bonta ruling was an emergency ruling on the so-called shadow docket. Lipton, an attorney, said the shadow docket is for cases that are not intended to make broad-based policy decisions.

Lipton said that to describe the ruling in the Mirabelli v. Bonta as making policies or recommendations in other states as unconstitutional “is legally incorrect.”

“But it’s coming,” Snyder responded.

GOP and Democrat members accuse each other of politicizing education

State Superintendent Glenn Maleyko said he sought guidance on the California ruling from the Michigan attorney general’s office. He said there are differences between the California law and Michigan’s recommendations, including the fact that Michigan allows districts to choose whether to adopt the recommendations and for parents to opt their children out of lessons they object to.

“We don’t have a policy or protocol that mandates the implementation of those training materials or standards,” Maleyko said.

The resolution Snyder proposed called on the State Board to remove the health education guidelines adopted in November and notify all districts of that removal. The proposed resolution also noted that it would be “the first step in notifying the Michigan Department of Education that the continuous effort to politicize public education in our state will end and to receive this declaration as the repeated call to return to a model of education that teaches children how to think and not what to think.”

Board President Pamela Pugh said the resolution is an example of politicizing education that spreads confusion and misinformation.

“Our responsibility is to provide safe supportive respectful learning environments for all children,” Pugh said. “This resolution really is another attempt to rehash what the board has debated.”

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

2026-03-07T00:27:11+00:00

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s Mirabelli v. Bonta ruling casts doubt on the legality of school district policies that aim to protect transgender students’ privacy.

But even though the majority of justices sided with California parents who said those policies led schools to withhold important information about their children’s gender identity, the practical impact of their ruling is less straightforward amid a shifting legal landscape for trans rights.

In Mirabelli v. Bonta, teachers and parents challenged a California law that required schools to use students’ preferred names and pronouns and to not disclose students’ transgender identity — including to parents — without the student’s consent.

A U.S. District Court judge sided with the parents and teachers and ordered California to revise its guidance to school districts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit put that decision on hold, leaving California’s law in place while the lawsuit played out. The Supreme Court intervened before the appeals court could more closely consider the case, with the conservative majority finding that the parents were likely to succeed on the merits.

As an emergency ruling on the so-called shadow docket, Mirabelli doesn’t create binding precedent but gives a strong indication of how judges view the issue.

Conservatives hailed the 6-3 decision as a victory for parental rights that puts school districts on notice. A database maintained by the conservative parent group Defending Education identified more than 1,000 school districts nationwide with policies that limit parental notification about children and their gender identity.

“If you have been socially transitioning children at school without their parents’ knowledge, the Supreme Court of the United States has now told you in no uncertain terms: that is unconstitutional,” Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society, a conservative religious public interest law firm representing the California parents and teachers, said in a statement. “Get your policies into compliance immediately.”

But while the decision seems to say clearly that schools can’t withhold information from parents, the ruling doesn’t clarify under what exact circumstances they have to reach out, said University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black.

A narrow reading of the ruling could be that schools need to respond honestly to parent questions, but don’t have an obligation “to get on the phone and say, ‘Hey, did you know that Jane is going by John now?’” Black said. “That would be kind of absurd actually because the parents may very well know.”

Advocates for transgender youth, meanwhile, worry that some students will lose their only safe haven.

President Donald Trump has asserted through executive orders that there are only two sexes and that people cannot change their gender. His administration has investigated school districts over inclusive policies and threatened to withhold funds from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.

Mo Turner, director of policy and advocacy for Glisten, a group that focuses on making education safe for LGBTQ youth, sees “a steady march towards trying to create a U.S. where trans folk don’t exist.”

“We are creating a harmful environment when we see school districts asked to forcibly out students, when we ask folks to chip away at the little pieces of independence that our youth are getting, as they try to figure out who they are,” Turner said.

When must schools notify parents about gender identity changes?

Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor gave parents the right to opt their children out of lessons that violate their religious beliefs. But even before that, legal precedent going back to Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder generally supported parents’ rights, Black said.

Those constitutional issues are distinct from political questions or policy preferences, he said, even if the outcome presents a “tough pill to swallow” for some.

“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children,” he said. “I’m not saying every parent is going to get it right, but if you have to choose between the state, the school, and the parent, it’s going to be the parent every time.”

One exception, Black noted, was the 2024 U.S. v. Skrmetti decision, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and disregarded the rights of parents who supported their children’s transitions.

Indiana, Tennessee, and four other states have laws that require schools to notify parents when a student wants to go by a different name or change their gender presentation at school, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

But on the ground, school district policies can be inconsistent, Chalkbeat reporting found.

And the Supreme Court did not address what actions should prompt schools to proactively inform parents. Does that obligation kick in when a student informs adults at school about a new name or pronouns? Or if teachers notice that a student’s friends address them differently?

“The implications for enforcement are so complex and almost impossible to comprehend in terms of how it will be operationalized on a day-to-day basis,” said Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center.

Asked if the state would be issuing new guidance for school districts, the California Department of Education said only that it does not comment on pending litigation.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office is “disappointed” in the ruling but declined to say whether they would continue to defend California’s law in court.

“We remain committed to ensuring a safe, welcoming school environment for all students while respecting the crucial role parents play in students’ lives,” the statement said.

Where do parental rights begin and end?

Social conservatives and the Trump administration have accused schools for years of facilitating children’s gender transitions. Most often, this refers to schools using children’s preferred names and pronouns as part of a process of social transition.

Such accusations touch on highly sensitive and disputed questions of parental rights and the role of schools and educators in children’s lives. Sometimes children or teens ask to go by a different name or gender identity at school and ask trusted teachers not to tell their parents because they fear their parents will respond negatively. Schools might continue to use a student’s legal name and gender in communications with parents.

These decisions can have high stakes for everyone involved. One set of parents in Mirabelli said they did not know their child identified as a different gender until they were hospitalized for a suicide attempt. At the same time, between 20% and 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, with many reporting that parental rejection and abuse contributed to them leaving home.

Black said policies that treat parental involvement as the default and carve out clearly defined safety exemptions might withstand legal scrutiny better than those that tightly limit disclosure.

Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a blog post that the decision was “a quiet victory for public schools and teachers.”

“Teachers do their best work when aligned with families, not forced to participate in secrecy regimes that invite suspicion,” he wrote.

Absent from Mirabelli was any consideration of students’ rights or agency. In an unrelated Colorado case, a U.S. District Court judge rejected the parents’ claim that district policies limiting disclosure had harmed them. “The District is not the decision maker at issue: the student is,” the judge wrote.

These and other legal questions could get more consideration if the Supreme Court takes up any of the several dozen cases working their way up through the lower courts.

Like Mahmoud before it, Mirabelli raises other questions about where parental rights begin and end, and whether it matters if parents’ claims are grounded in religious belief. Many states allow teenagers younger than 18 to consent to mental health treatment, medical care, working during school hours, sex, and even marriage without parental permission.

Writing in Vox, Ian Millhiser said the decision’s description of parental rights was so broad that it could require schools to report students to their parents if they dated a classmate, ate non-kosher food, or removed their hijab after arriving on school grounds.

The Education Department, meanwhile, has ongoing investigations into California and Maine based on accusations they violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which lays out students’ privacy rights in school and also gives parents access to students’ educational records, by withholding information. Conservative advocacy groups have filed civil rights complaints that make similar claims.

FERPA requires schools to share written records, such as a formal gender support plan, with parents, but experts question whether it requires proactive disclosure. The administration could draw on Mirabelli to bolster its pursuit of these claims, but on its own, the decision doesn’t change the law.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court finds parents have a right to know about gender transitions at school

2026-03-03T15:44:03+00:00

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Parents have the right to know about their child’s gender identity at school, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an emergency decision Monday.

The 6-3 decision by the conservative majority found parents were likely to prevail in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a California law that required teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns at school and that barred them from disclosing students’ gender identity to parents without the students’ consent.

The decision was notable because the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to take up similar cases that had worked their way through the courts. The case touches on hotly contested issues about the role of schools in children’s lives and how the law distinguishes between parents’ rights and children’s rights.

The majority invoked Mahmoud v. Taylor, a decision last year that found parents have the right to opt their children out of lessons that violate their religious beliefs. California’s law is unlikely to survive the strict scrutiny requirements imposed by Mahmoud, the court wrote.

“Indeed, the intrusion on parents’ free exercise rights here — unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition — is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks we considered sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny in Mahmoud,” the court wrote.

Going beyond just the question of religious rights, the court also found that California’s law likely violates parents’ due process rights to direct their children’s upbringing.

“Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours,” the decision stated. “These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

Writing in dissent, Justice Elana Kagan said the court should have allowed the case to get a more thorough airing in the lower courts — or taken up one of the numerous cases that has been argued more extensively, including a similar one out of Massachusetts.

The case, Kagan wrote, “raises tricky questions, and so cries out for reflection and explanation. The Court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly.”

Kagan also noted that the court last year refused to even consider the due process rights of parents who supported their children’s gender transition in its 2024 U.S. v. Skrmetti decision, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for minors.

The lawsuit in California originally was brought by Catholic teachers who said the law impinged on their free speech and religious liberty rights. Later, parents who said the law blocked them from making important decisions about their children’s health and upbringing joined the lawsuit.

A U.S. District Court judge sided with the teachers and parents, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit put that decision on hold, leaving California’s law in place while the lawsuit played out.

The teachers and parents asked the Supreme Court to intervene on an emergency basis. They said allowing the law to remain in place, potentially for years, while the case worked its way through the system, could do irreparable harm.

The Supreme Court did not weigh in the teachers’ rights issues raised by the case, only on the parental rights.

The Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm focused on religious liberty that represented the parents in the case, predicted that the decision will “dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country.”

“This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” said Paul Jonna, special counsel at the law firm. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.”

Attorneys for the state of California had argued their law supports the creation of safe and inclusive environments at school and allows parents to be notified, even against a student’s wishes, when there are immediate safety issues.

LGBTQ advocacy groups have said they generally encourage schools to help students find a way to involve their parents in these decisions, but not all parents are safe. Between 20% and 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, with many reporting that parental rejection and abuse contributed to them leaving home.

The court majority wrote that California could inform parents about children’s gender transitions and still ensure child safety by enforcing child abuse laws.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

State superintendent says Trump’s Michigan schools investigations are based on false info

2026-02-20T00:23:56+00:00

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Michigan’s superintendent is firing back at the U.S. Justice Department by saying the Trump administration’s Title IX investigations into three districts are based on false information about the state’s health education guidelines.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon sent notices of compliance reviews to superintendents of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, Lansing School District, and Godfrey-Lee Public Schools on Wednesday. The department said it is investigating whether the districts have included “sexual orientation or gender ideology content” in any classroom and if parents were notified of their rights to opt their children out of such instruction. It will also determine if transgender students are allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

The letters cited the Michigan State Board of Education’s November revision of its “Michigan Health Education Standards Guidelines” that recommended students be taught about gender identity and sexual orientation. The correspondence said “health is a required class for graduation in the state of Michigan, with no opportunity for parents to opt their children out of receiving instruction.”

In a statement Thursday, State Superintendent Glenn Maleyko said the premise of the investigations are a “mischaracterization.”

“Local school boards set health curriculum with input from local sex education advisory boards,” he said. “Local control remains in place. Parents retain the right to decide whether their children should participate in sex education instruction.”

The current health education guidelines noted that under existing state law, parents must be notified ahead of sex education classes, have a right to review curriculum, and can opt their children out of all or some of it without penalty.

Michigan districts decide their own curriculums and are not required to comply with suggestions in the state board’s guidelines.

When the state’s current health education guidelines were proposed last year, many conservative and religious parents and community members spoke out against the changes. They claimed their rights to protect their children’s religious upbringing were stripped away.

Maleyko also reaffirmed the state’s commitment to ensuring all students feel safe and included.

“The much-needed updates to health education guidelines—which the Department of Justice falsely said are state requirements—help local districts make decisions on how they can support student health,” he said.

The Justice Department is asking the districts to hand over numerous documents, including library books with mentions of LGBTQ+ matters, curriculum texts, and presentations.

The letters threaten terminating federal funding if the districts do not comply.

All three districts receive high percentages of their funding from federal grants, said Peter Spadafore, executive director of the Michigan Alliance for Student Opportunity, an organization that works to help students in districts with the greatest needs by creating educational equity.

Advocates worry the investigations will hurt youth

Erin Knott, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Equality Michigan, said in a statement that the group is disappointed about the investigations.

“LGBTQ+ youth are among the most vulnerable young people in our state,” she said. “They face higher rates of bullying, harassment, and mental health challenges. Inclusive education policies are not ‘ideology,’ they are evidence-based efforts to ensure that every student feels safe, respected, and seen in their own school community.”

Jay Kaplan, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan, said while the investigations may not have legal bearing, they could cause a chilling effect that results in districts rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ students.

“This is an attempt to harass and bully districts into discriminating against trans kids and into erasing the existence of LGBTQ people,” he said.

Taryn Gal, executive director of the Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the political pressure on districts puts schools in an impossible situation.

“Do they comply and risk violating state law, implementing policies and practices they know harm students and the entire school environment?” She said. “Or do they risk federal funding and do what’s right to ensure every student, regardless of their identity, can succeed in school?”

Many Michigan LGBTQ+ youth say they fear the ripple effects of political rhetoric in President Donald Trump’s second term. A 2024 survey by the nonprofit advocacy group the Trevor Project found 89% of Michigan LGBTQ+ students said recent politics negatively impacted their sense of well-being.

Affirming policies are potentially life-saving, other surveys suggest.

Why the DOJ opened the investigation

The Department of Justice said in the letter that the revised standards could violate Title IX or a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Mahmoud v. Taylor, which requires districts to allow parents to opt their children out from classes with LGBTQ+ themes.

Spokespeople from the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to questions about why the three districts are the target of the investigations.

Kaplan said it appears districts with large populations of Latino and Black students in communities experiencing high rates of poverty were targeted. He said investigations are unusual because they don’t appear to be prompted by parent complaints. He added the letters are “constitutionally flawed,” and that current law does not allow the executive branch to dictate what local schools teach.

Gal said the letters also appear to “misunderstand the timeline and the standards it references.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud was issued in June 2025, and Michigan’s updated health standards were finalized later in 2025, yet the investigation is requesting materials and communications going back to 2023,” she said. “That kind of mismatch creates confusion and fear for school districts about what is actually expected of them.”

Arnetta Thompson, superintendent of Godfrey-Lee Public Schools, said in an email the district will provide all information the Department of Justice requested.

“At this time, this is a standard review process. “The District is not facing any charges or findings of wrongdoing. We remain committed to complying with all applicable federal, state, and local laws and have consistently operated in accordance with those laws.”

Spokespeople for the Detroit Public Schools Community District and the Lansing School District declined to comment.

Monique Bryant, a member of the DPSCD board, said as a parent she has never had a concern about classroom material.

“Sometimes you can have students and parents go too far left with something, and we have to be thoughtful and mindful of everyone,” she added.

Lansing school board President Guillermo Lopez said he had not heard complaints from any parents about not being able to opt out.

House Speaker Matt Hall, a Republican from Richland Township, said at his regular news conference on Feb. 19 he supports the investigations because he doesn’t think most parents want their children receiving that type of instruction.

If it is happening, officials should “put a stop to it,” Hall said.“I would welcome more investigations.”

State Board of Education member Tom McMillan, a Republican from Oakland Township, said he was pleased to learn of the Department of Justice investigation: “This is one of the things the federal government can do to make kids safe.”

Even though state law says that parents have a right to opt out their children from sex education lessons, McMillan said there are no consequences for districts that do not follow the opt-out law.

“I think there should be serious consequences, removal of funds, maybe jail time, prison, for districts that don’t follow the law,” he said. “If they are harming kids, allowing boys to go into girls’ locker rooms, showers, that’s perversion and should be met with some kind of serious consequences.”

Pamela Pugh, president of the State Board of Education and a Democrat from Saginaw, said the investigation is a “politically motivated fishing expedition” and “a misuse of federal resources” that will burden local schools.

Trump threatens funding over transgender student protections, DEI

As promised during his campaign, Trump has targeted transgender communities and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in multiple executive orders.

Since last year, the Michigan Department of Education has pushed back on those executive orders, saying its efforts to incorporate curriculum that reflects diverse experiences won’t change.

The Trump administration has also targeted districts across the country with investigations and funding threats.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announced an investigation into New York City’s education department for a policy that allows transgender students to play on sports teams in line with their gender identity.

Denver Public Schools was investigated last year by the Department of Education for converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom.

Chicago is facing a loss of millions in federal funding for magnet schools due to a dispute with the Department of Education over how the district serves transgender and Black students.

Another Title IX probe began in Maine in April. The Department of Justice sued Minneapolis Public Schools over its layoff protections for teachers of color in December.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Georgea Kovanis is a reporter covering LGBTQ+ issues for the Detroit Free Press. You can reach her at gkovanis@freepress.com.

Paul Egan contributed to this report.

Power in pride: This Brooklyn student wants to reclaim queer activism in NYC schools

2026-01-22T21:36:44+00:00

This originally aired on The Bell’s Miseducation podcast.

At my school, the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, or GSA, feels more like a social club than a space for activism. And I’m not alone in feeling that way.

In this episode, I look at how GSAs in New York City have drifted from their original purpose: organizing for change and uplifting queer voices. Once at the front lines of student activism, many GSAs now avoid political conversations and lack diversity, even as queer youth face mounting attacks across the United States.

It’s time for a GSA rebrand. To recenter activism and ensure every queer student feels seen and supported, GSAs must be spaces that are bold, inclusive, and purposeful.

Queer youth have played a key role in leading social movements, and history shows that when we organize, we create change. It’s time for GSAs to reflect that legacy and reclaim their role.

This is a video-first episode. You can watch it now on YouTube.

Miseducation is The Bell’s flagship podcast, which gives New York City public high school students the tools to report on inequities in the nation’s largest school system.

To join the conversation, send us a message and follow us on Instagram.

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Federal judge recommends dismissal of lawsuit by Colorado school districts over transgender athletes

2026-01-16T23:38:46+00:00

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A judge recommended dismissing a federal lawsuit brought by several Colorado school districts that challenged the state’s antidiscrimination law on the grounds that it violates students’ rights by allowing transgender youth to play on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

The Jan. 13 recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell is a tentative win for state officials and a loss for the eight plaintiffs, which include four school districts, three charter schools, and one public education cooperative. A federal district court judge will now review the recommendation and make a final decision.

The lawsuit was spearheaded last spring by the conservative-leaning District 49 near Colorado Springs, after its school board passed a policy banning transgender girls from girls sports teams and transgender boys from boys sports teams.

The recommendation came the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in cases brought by two transgender athletes who oppose state laws barring transgender athletes from girls and women’s teams.

The high court’s conservative-leaning majority seemed open to upholding the state laws, according to national news outlets, but how broad or narrow such a ruling would be remains to be seen.

One of the defendants in the Colorado case, the Colorado High School Activities Association, settled with the districts and charter schools in early December.

Dominguez Braswell’s recommendation, even if it’s affirmed by a district court judge, may not have much effect on high school sports in Colorado, because it doesn’t directly weigh in on the legitimacy of policies that ban transgender students from joining sports teams that match their gender identity. Rather, it says the districts and schools that filed the lawsuit don’t have the standing to sue the state on their own behalf or to sue on behalf of their students.

Michael Francisco, an attorney with the law firm First & Fourteenth, which is representing the plaintiffs, said he disagrees with Dominguez Braswell’s recommendation and looks forward to filing objections with the district court judge soon.

“This recommendation will not alter the course of this case or deter us from continuing this litigation to ensure every district in Colorado has the freedom to protect girls’ sports, safeguard student privacy, and uphold the spirit of Title IX,” he said in an emailed statement.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Attorney General’s office declined to comment Friday.

A number of Colorado districts have policies that allow transgender students to join sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Others make decisions on a case by case basis. Some, including the districts and schools that sued, recently passed policies barring transgender students from playing on teams that match their gender identity.

In their lawsuit, the districts argued that the state’s antidiscrimination law, which includes protections for transgender people, put the districts in an “untenable position” because they risked state penalties over their transgender athlete policies.

In her recommendation, Dominguez Braswell said settled legal principles prohibit the districts from bringing claims against the state based on the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. She also took issue with the plaintiffs’ claim to represent the interests of all district students.

The plaintiffs brought two of their claims on behalf of all students, she noted, “but their interests do not align with all students.”

She said the districts’ policies barring transgender students from certain sports teams “cut against the interests of transgender students” and “may also cut against the interests of students who seek inclusivity in school-sponsored activities.”

In addition to the 26,000-student District 49, the plaintiffs include Colorado Springs 11, Academy 20, Montezuma-Cortez, James Irwin Charter Schools, Monument Academy, The Classical Academy, and Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Education Services.

The defendants in the case were Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and the Colorado High School Activities Association.

When the districts settled with the Colorado High School Activities Association in early December, the association agreed not to sanction plaintiff schools or teams over their transgender athlete policies. The settlement also required the plaintiffs to pay the activities association $60,000.

The association’s bylaws for years recognized the right of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity and stated that the group can review district decisions on such matters.

But the group had never penalized a school or district for policies on transgender athletes or dictated what those policies should say, an association spokesperson said in December.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

CHSAA and districts settle Colorado transgender athlete lawsuit; case continues with state

2025-12-05T02:55:43+00:00

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The group governing high school sports in Colorado has agreed not to sanction schools or teams from eight conservative-leaning school districts and charter schools for policies on transgender student athletes under a settlement agreement finalized Thursday.

Some of the districts and schools passed policies this year barring transgender students from joining teams that align with their gender identity.

The agreement marks the end of the Colorado High School Activities Association’s involvement in a federal lawsuit spearheaded last spring by the 27,000-student District 49 near Colorado Springs. The lawsuit will continue with other defendants, including Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and officials from the Colorado Civil Rights Division.

The settlement won’t have much effect on high school sports in Colorado because the Colorado High School Activities Association, also known as CHSAA, has never had a major role in determining which school teams transgender athletes can join. The group’s bylaws have for years recognized the right of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity and state that the group can review district decisions on such matters.

But the group has never penalized a school or district for policies on transgender athletes or dictated what those policies should say, a CHSAA spokesperson said in an emailed statement Thursday.

“Eligibility decisions have always been left to individual schools and districts, which is why being named in this lawsuit was both frustrating and unnecessary,” she said.

The statement called the plaintiffs’ decision to sue CHSAA “much more performative than substantive,” and said it won’t change anything about the group’s policies, practices, or authority.

The outcome of the ongoing lawsuit between the state and the eight plaintiffs remains to be seen. The state’s anti-discrimination law includes protections based on gender identity.

A number of Colorado districts have policies that allow transgender students to join sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Others make decisions on a case by case basis, and more recently, some bar transgender students from playing on teams that match their gender identity.

In addition to CHSAA’s agreement not to sanction the plaintiff districts and schools for policies on transgender athletes, the settlement states that CHSAA won’t penalize the plaintiffs for making public statements about the “advantages of biological males over biological females in competitive sports” or the risk of “allowing biological males to play contact sports with or against biological females.” The agreement says this provision won’t apply to statements that advocate violence or demean people based on gender identity.

The settlement also states that if an athlete or team forfeits a competition against a transgender athlete or a team with a transgender member, there will be no penalty, but the forfeit will be counted as a loss.

Finally, the settlement stipulates that the plaintiffs will pay CHSAA $60,000 to cover legal fees and operational costs.

In a press release Thursday, District 49 Superintendent Peter Hilts said, “This settlement is a major step forward, but our work isn’t done. We will continue litigation against the Colorado Civil Rights [Division] and the Attorney General’s Office to ensure every district in Colorado has the freedom to protect girls’ sports, safeguard student privacy, and uphold the spirit of Title IX.”

Multiple Republican lawmakers cheered the settlement on social media Thursday.

Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents western and southern Colorado in Congress, said on X, “At its core, this settlement is about fairness, safety, and common sense. Schools have a responsibility to protect young women and maintain a level playing field by upholding basic biological standards. As a father of daughters, I know how important that is.”

District 49 filed the lawsuit against the state and CHSAA last May, the day after its conservative-learning board narrowly passed a controversial policy banning transgender middle and high school students from joining school teams that align with their gender identity. The policy was developed after President Trump’s February executive order that threatened to withhold federal funding from any school that allows athletes assigned male at birth to participate in girls’ or women’s sports.

In addition to District 49, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Colorado Springs 11, Academy 20, Montezuma-Cortez, James Irwin Charter Schools, Monument Academy, The Classical Academy, and Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Education Services.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Catholic preschools appeal to Supreme Court in Colorado case over LGBTQ rights and religious liberty

2025-11-14T23:46:34+00:00

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Two Denver-area Catholic parishes asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to reconsider a lower court decision that said parish preschools participating in Colorado’s state-funded preschool program couldn’t deny admission to LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families.

The appeal to the Supreme Court comes about six weeks after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Catholic parishes, which had argued that enrolling children from LGBTQ families would conflict with their religious beliefs.

Gov. Jared Polis lauded the circuit court’s Sept. 30 ruling, which was a major win for the state.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, the justices could answer a question at the heart of the case: Can private religious schools that accept public education dollars refuse to enroll certain kids based on religious principles? The state and two lower courts have said no. The Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, could give a different answer.

A spokesperson for Colorado Department of Early Childhood, which runs the state-funded preschool program, said officials won’t comment on pending or active litigation.

The Catholic preschools sued the state in 2023 as Colorado launched its new universal preschool program, which provides tuition-free preschool to 4-year-olds statewide. The $349 million program serves more than 40,000 children and allows families to choose from public, private, or religious preschools.

St. Mary Catholic Virtue School in Littleton and Wellspring Catholic Academy in Lakewood wanted to join the program when it started, but didn’t want to admit LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families.

They asked for an exemption from state rules banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, but the Colorado Department of Early Childhood refused. The two preschools never joined the program, and in August 2023, the parishes that ran the preschools sued the state.

Of more than 2,000 preschools participating in Colorado’s universal preschool program this year, about 40 are religious.

Attorneys from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the Catholic preschools in the case, have argued that Colorado is discriminating against the preschools based on religion.

“Colorado is picking winners and losers based on the content of their religious beliefs,” Nick Reaves, senior counsel at Becket, said in a press release Friday.

The release suggests that Colorado’s rules barring discrimination have hurt Catholic preschool enrollment.

Since universal preschool began, “enrollment at Catholic preschools has swiftly declined, while two Catholic preschools have shuttered their doors, including one that predominantly served low-income and minority families,” the press release said.

Wellspring, one of two parish preschools involved in the case, did close last year when the K-8 school it was part of closed because of low enrollment and financial problems. A Catholic preschool in Denver also shuttered when the K-8 school it was part of — Guardian Angels Catholic School — closed at the end of the 2024-25 school year. At the time the Archdiocese of Denver announced the closure of Wellspring and Guardian Angels, it also announced the consolidation of two Catholic high schools into one campus.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Appeals court rules for Colorado and LGBTQ rights and against Catholic parishes in state preschool case

2025-09-30T23:25:08+00:00

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Preschoolers with LGBTQ parents or who identify as LGBTQ can’t be shut out of religious preschools that are part of Colorado’s state-funded preschool program, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision, which upholds a key part of a lower court decision, represents a major win for the state and a defeat for the two Denver-area Catholic preschools at the center of the case.

Tuesday’s decision provides the latest answer to a question being asked in several cases percolating in state and federal courts: Can private religious schools that accept public education dollars refuse to enroll certain kids based on religious principles?

Along with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, a Maine federal district court and a Utah state court are among those who have said no.

It’s possible the U.S. Supreme Court could eventually weigh in, though it’s not clear which case will advance to the high court.

In its 54-page ruling, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that it found no proof that the Colorado Department of Early Childhood took actions that “evidence religious hostility” as the two Catholic preschools claimed.

The state’s universal preschool program “went to great effort to be welcoming and inclusive of faith-based preschools’ participation,” the decision said.

The three-judge panel also found that the early childhood department, which runs the preschool program, had applied the state’s nondiscrimination policy in a neutral way to both religious and non-religious preschools.

The policy bars preschools in the universal preschool program from discriminating based on a variety of factors, including sexual orientation and gender identity. State officials cited the policy in denying the Catholic preschools a waiver that would have allowed them to keep LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families from enrolling if the preschools had joined the state-funded preschool program.

In a statement Tuesday, Gov. Jared Polis said, “We are building a Colorado for all, where every student is free from discrimination and this voter-approved initiative continues to enroll approximately 70% of all eligible four-year-olds each school year and many faith based and secular providers are operating terrific preschools that serve parents and children well.”

Tuesday’s ruling essentially upholds the status quo in the universal preschool program, meaning that participating preschools can’t shut out LGBTQ children or children with LGBTQ parents.

The three appeals court judges who ruled Tuesday were Gregory Phillips, Veronica Rossman, and Richard Federico. Phillips was appointed by President Barack Obama, and Rossman and Federico were appointed by President Joe Biden.

Nick Reaves, senior counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the Catholic preschools in the case, sent Chalkbeat a short statement about the ruling.

“Colorado is punishing religious schools and the families they serve for following their faith. The Tenth Circuit’s decision allows the state’s anti-religious gamesmanship to continue. We will keep fighting to ensure that every preschooler in Colorado can access quality, affordable education.”

Conflict arose as state preschool program rolled out

The Colorado case began in 2023 as the state was launching its new universal preschool program, which provides tuition-free preschool to 4-year-olds statewide. The $349 million program serves more than 40,000 children and allows families to choose from public, private, or religious preschools.

Of more than 2,000 preschools participating in the program this year, about 40 are religious.

In June 2024, a federal district court judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter largely ruled in the state’s favor.

He wrote of Colorado’s non-discrimination rules: “The purpose of the requirement is not to invade religious freedom but to further the implementation of a strongly embraced public value.”

The parishes quickly appealed.

Unfolding alongside the Catholic preschool case is a separate lawsuit over universal preschool brought by an evangelical Christian preschool in southern Colorado. Unlike the Catholic preschools, that school, Darren Patterson Christian Academy, joined the universal preschool program when it launched.

While officials there never sought to keep LGBTQ children or families out, their lawsuit said state non-discrimination rules could force the preschool to hire employees who don’t share its faith or to change school policies related to restrooms, pronouns, and dress codes.

In February, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump ruled in favor of Darren Patterson Christian Academy.

The state appealed the ruling in May. The case is ongoing.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

All-gender school restroom: Denver asks feds for 90 days to negotiate resolution per Title IX

2025-09-08T19:19:45+00:00

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Denver Public Schools had 10 days to agree to revert the all-gender restrooms at East High School back to single-sex ones or face consequences from the Trump administration. Instead, the school district on Sunday asked the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for 90 days to negotiate another resolution.

“DPS is committed to effectively implementing the Title IX regulation according to the law, and there is clearly much to discuss in regard to this matter,” DPS Senior Counsel Kristin Bailey wrote in a letter addressed to Erica Austin, the acting regional director for the federal Office for Civil Rights in Denver. “Consequently, we are not at an impasse.”

The Office for Civil Rights recently found that an all-gender restroom at Denver’s East High School violates Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination. OCR said DPS would face “imminent enforcement actions” if it didn’t get rid of its all-gender restrooms and adopt “biology-based” definitions of “male” and “female,” among other actions.

The U.S. Department of Education did not respond Monday to a request for comment about DPS asking for a 90-day negotiation period.

President Donald Trump has made targeting transgender rights a key part of his second term. The investigation into DPS’ all-gender restroom was the first launched by OCR after his inauguration in January.

OCR concluded on Aug. 28 that the conversion last year of a girls’ restroom on the second floor of East High to an all-gender restroom meant that only girls “bore the burden of seeking an exclusive restroom elsewhere in the building or limiting their restroom use,” according to a letter from Austin to Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero.

Because boys still had a single-sex restroom on the second floor, OCR found that girls at East High were being treated differently, in violation of Title IX.

In an attempt to address any disparity, DPS converted a second-floor boys’ restroom to an all-gender restroom over the summer. But OCR called the move a “misguided effort” that ended DPS’ “different treatment” of girls but did not fix its Title IX violation.

Marrero criticized the Trump administration for pushing “an anti-trans agenda through the weaponization of Title IX.” In a joint letter, more than 40 Colorado and Denver elected officials called OCR’s investigation “an ideologically driven attack.”

In a Sept. 7 letter to OCR, DPS accused the federal agency of being unwilling to communicate about the investigation. “Due to your office’s intransigence,” the communication between DPS and OCR was limited to one phone call in February, an email in March, and another phone call in June, wrote Bailey, DPS’ senior legal counsel.

On those phone calls, OCR staff were vague and noncommittal, saying they would have to run ideas “up the flagpole,” and that OCR’s position “depends on what the issue is,” Bailey wrote.

Bailey also took issue with OCR’s finding that the all-gender restrooms created a hostile environment at East High, an issue she said was a “new and different allegation.”

“If OCR can provide a more precise articulation, based in fact, of the reasons it purports to have sufficient evidence to support a legal conclusion that the bathroom created a hostile environment, it may prompt an appropriate resolution to this matter,” Bailey wrote.

OCR’s Aug. 28 letter said that East High received “many complaints from students and their families” about the all-gender restroom, including that boys were leering at girls in the restroom and, in one instance, pounding on the door of a stall while a girl was using the toilet.

But DPS said OCR’s findings were “based solely on a handful of negative emails,” and that the federal agency ignored the positive emails that DPS received. At a school of about 2,400 students, OCR’s conclusions were based on three emails, “none of which provide information from a direct witness to any concerning conduct,” Bailey wrote.

“All supportive comments seem to have been disregarded,” she wrote.

OCR said that if DPS didn’t agree to its proposed resolution within 10 days, the agency would issue “a letter of impasse that confirms the District’s refusal to voluntarily come into compliance with Title IX.” Ten days after that, OCR said it would issue a letter of impending enforcement action. It did not say what that action would be.

Five Virginia school districts are now receiving their federal education funding by reimbursement only — meaning the districts must pay those costs up front — because OCR found that their restroom and locker room policies for transgender students violated Title IX.

Nearly 7% of Denver Public Schools’ budget last year, or about $96 million, was federal funding, according to district budget documents.

DPS had not yet received a letter of impasse from OCR as of Monday morning, according to a district spokesperson.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver schools chief: Trump administration is weaponizing Title IX and pushing ‘anti-trans agenda’

2025-08-29T21:03:06+00:00

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Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero said Friday that the Trump administration is pushing “an anti-trans agenda through the weaponization of Title IX,” a federal law the administration says DPS violated when it converted a girls’ restroom to an all-gender one.

“They have claimed Title IX prohibits the conversion of a girls’ restroom to an all-gender restroom,” Marrero said in a statement. “They now claim Title IX prohibits the use of any multi-stall, all-gender restroom. This has never been true; it remains untrue today.”

Marrero’s comments come one day after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced that DPS’ restroom conversion at East High School violated Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination. Officials with the Office for Civil Rights said that the all-gender restroom at East High places a burden on girls to seek a single-sex restroom elsewhere, and that DPS is endorsing “a self-defeating gender ideology.”

Marrero strongly disagreed.

“To our LGBTQ+ students, families, and supporters, we see you, and we will not stand for these attempts at your erasure,” Marrero said.

However, Marrero did not say whether or not DPS will comply with the Office for Civil Rights’ demands, which include reverting the district’s all-gender restrooms to single-sex restrooms. A DPS spokesperson said, “We are still looking at our options.”

The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Marrero’s statement.

DPS’ federal funding could be at risk. The U.S. Department of Education recently sanctioned five Virginia school districts that it found to be violating Title IX for allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. All federal funding for those districts — a total of more than $50 million — will now be distributed by reimbursement only, meaning the districts will have to pay those expenses up front.

Nearly 7% of Denver Public Schools’ budget last year, or about $96 million, was federal funding, according to district budget documents.

The Office for Civil Rights on Thursday gave DPS 10 days to agree with a proposed resolution.

In addition to reverting all restrooms to single-sex, the proposed resolution would require the district to rescind any policies that allow students to use restrooms based on their gender identity, adopt “biology-based” definitions for “male” and “female,” and issue a memo to all schools saying they “must provide intimate facilities that protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of its students and are comparably accessible to each sex.”

In his statement, Marrero said the language proposed by the Office for Civil Rights is “the dangerous rhetoric and definitions of their administration.”

“We will protect all of our students from this hostile administration while we continue to raise the bar on achievement,” Marrero said.

The investigation into the all-gender restroom at East High was the first Title IX investigation launched by the Office for Civil Rights in Trump’s second term. Using a disputed interpretation of the law, his administration has used Title IX to challenge transgender rights policies in schools.

A January letter from federal officials to Marrero cited a 9News story about East High converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom. At the time, DPS said it was “unprecedented” to initiate an investigation based on a news story. The district said East High’s all-gender restroom was added at the request of students and has 12-foot-tall partitions to ensure privacy.

This month, East High opened a second all-gender restroom, Chalkbeat reported. The second one was formerly a boys’ restroom, and DPS said it added it in an attempt to address any disparity. But the Office for Civil Rights said on Thursday that the second conversion did not fix the situation “because males are still allowed to invade sensitive female-only facilities.”

Marrero said that reasoning is a shift in the Trump administration’s legal theory. He also criticized the investigation itself.

“While they label this a ‘directed investigation,’ make no mistake: there was no on-site review, not a single witness interview was ever conducted, and not one substantive conversation with any OCR attorney ever occurred,” Marrero said.

“The district’s requests for conversation, clarification, mediation, and discussion of remedies all went unanswered,” he said. “This is unprecedented behavior from an OCR we no longer recognize.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

All-gender restroom at Denver’s East High School violates Title IX, Trump administration finds

2025-08-28T23:04:08+00:00

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The Trump administration has found that Denver Public Schools’ conversion of a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom at East High School violates the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights said in a press release Thursday that the all-gender restroom places a burden on girls to seek a single-sex restroom elsewhere, “thereby denying their right to equal educational facilities and opportunities” under Title IX.

President Donald Trump has made targeting protections for transgender students a key part of his second term, and his administration’s interpretation of Title IX is contested.

DPS recently converted a boys’ restroom at East High to an all-gender restroom in an attempt to address any disparity. But the Office for Civil Rights said the second conversion did not fix the situation “because males are still allowed to invade sensitive female-only facilities.”

“Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX,” acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement.

“The Trump Administration will work relentlessly to hold accountable school districts that harbor the ideological fanatics and policies that sully students’ educational experience with sex discrimination,” Trainor said.

In a statement, DPS said it has received the findings and “is determining our next steps.”

The investigation into the all-gender restroom at East High began in January. It was the first Title IX investigation launched by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in Trump’s second term.

A January letter from federal officials to Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero cited a 9News story about East High converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom.

At the time, DPS said it was “unprecedented” for the Office for Civil Rights to initiate an investigation based on a news story. The district defended East High’s all-gender restroom, saying it was added at the request of students and has 12-foot-tall partitions to ensure privacy.

The Office for Civil Rights has issued a proposed resolution agreement and given DPS 10 days to agree, according to the press release. The proposed agreement would require DPS to convert its all-gender restrooms to single-sex restrooms.

It would also require the district to rescind any policies that allow students to use restrooms based on their gender identity, adopt “biology-based definition for the words ‘male’ and ‘female,’” and issue a memo to all schools saying they “must provide intimate facilities that protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of its students and are comparably accessible to each sex.”

If DPS doesn’t agree, it will “risk imminent enforcement action,” the press release said. That action is not defined in the press release, but recent cases in other states offer some clues. Last week, the Office for Civil Rights found that five Virginia school districts were violating Title IX by allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

All federal funding for those districts — a total of more than $50 million — will now be distributed by reimbursement only, meaning the districts will have to pay those expenses up front.

Nearly 7% of Denver Public Schools’ budget last year, or about $96 million, was federal funding, according to district budget documents.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Trump administration tells 40 states to remove gender identity from sex ed or lose federal funds

2025-08-26T21:11:05+00:00

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The Trump administration is threatening to pull federal funding from 40 states for a sex education program aimed at vulnerable teens unless those states remove references in their curriculum to gender identity and transgender people.

In a Tuesday press release, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the action reflected the Trump administration’s “ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology.”

The threat comes after California refused to change its curriculum last week and HHS terminated the state’s nearly $6 million-a-year grant.

The states that received notices to change their curriculum are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Withholding federal funds to punish states for teaching about gender identity is yet another way the Trump administration has sought to control what young people learn and advance the president’s view that there are only two sexes, male and female.

Through numerous civil rights investigations and lawsuits, the Trump administration is also seeking to prevent trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams and stop schools from letting trans kids use the bathroom or locker room that corresponds with their gender identity.

States will have 60 days to comply or risk losing their federal funds for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP.

PREP represents a small slice of sex ed nationwide, and provides most states with just a few million dollars a year. But it targets a particularly vulnerable group of teens and pre-teens who are at a higher risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. In California, many of the 13,000 young people who participate each year live in foster care, are incarcerated, or are experiencing homelessness.

Back in June, HHS told California that it was out of compliance with the federal law that established PREP, because its materials included instruction about what it means to identify as transgender and that gender identity is not always synonymous with the sex someone is assigned at birth. The agency subsequently reviewed curriculum used by other states — many of which use some of the same materials as California.

In the termination announcement, HHS also said that parts of California’s curriculum “could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.’” This appears to refer to the possibility that students might socially transition or pursue gender-affirming medical care.

California officials told HHS that they wouldn’t change their materials because they were medically accurate, previously approved by the agency, and compliant with federal law — which is silent on whether PREP should teach about gender identity. State health officials also said that changing the curriculum could prompt public schools that use the same materials to drop them, because California law requires sex ed to include information about gender identity.

A spokesperson for the state’s public health department did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about how it planned to address the funding gap. California health officials told the Trump administration they reserved the right to challenge the funding termination, but they have yet to do so.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Rural Colorado district takes aim at LGBTQ policy protections, seeks to join trans athlete lawsuit

2025-07-17T23:40:21+00:00

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A rural school district in southwest Colorado on Tuesday removed nondiscrimination policy protections for LGBTQ people, following a Trump administration push to eliminate such safeguards.

The school board in the conservative-leaning Montezuma-Cortez district unanimously approved changes removing references to “sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression” from the policy. Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the board introduced a policy that would ban transgender students from joining school sports that match their gender identity — one that could permanently replace an emergency version adopted by the board in June.

Such moves are growing more common in school districts around the country, spurred by new federal policies and a charged political environment that’s elevating culture war issues to the top of the agenda in some communities. Montezuma-Cortez, along with two other Colorado districts, three charter schools, and a Board of Cooperative Educational Services are now seeking to join a lawsuit over the issue of transgender student athletes.

District 49 in the Colorado Springs area spearheaded the lawsuit in May, suing the state and the Colorado High School Activities Association over policies that allow transgender youth to play on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

Court documents filed Tuesday indicate that the Montezuma-Cortez, Academy 20, and Colorado Springs 11 districts, along with Monument Academy, The Classical Academy, James Irwin Charter Schools, and Education ReEnvisioned BOCES, have asked to join as plaintiffs.

Sherri Wright, who represents western and southern Colorado on the State Board of Education and previously worked as a teacher in Cortez, weighed in against transgender girls on girls sports teams at the Montezuma-Cortez board meeting Tuesday.

“We do not need to endanger our girls,” she said, citing the possibility of injury if cisgender girls and transgender girls play sports together.

There’s no nationwide data showing the number of transgender girls who compete on girls teams at school or the number of injuries that occur in such situations.

Trump has targeted transgender rights since his first day in office, but many legal experts say his administration cannot, on its own, exclude transgender people from federal anti-discrimination law and that Colorado law, which includes protections for LGBTQ people, supersedes school district policy anyway.

Still, they say efforts to remove LGBTQ protections at the local level send harmful messages about who is valued and deserves protection from discrimination.

At a May school board meeting in Montezuma-Cortez, board member Mike Lynch said the policy change was needed because of Trump’s threats to withhold funding from schools that “support certain previously protected classes like sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender identity.” He later clarified that Trump has not threatened to withhold funding over protections based on sexual orientation. Still, the term wasn’t restored to the policy.

Lynch, who chairs the district committee that drafted the new nondiscrimination policy, said not every group must be explicitly named in the policy to have protection from discrimination.

Noting that the policy talks about unlawful discrimination, he said, “If it is unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, then the policy covers it.”

The policy adopted Tuesday now cites 10 instead of 13 protected characteristics in a section prohibiting harassment. The 10 include disability, race, creed, color, sex, marital status, national origin, religion, ancestry, or need for special education services.

Some community members objected to the nondiscrimination policy changes.

Emily Christenson, a parent in the 2,400-student district, said even though Colorado law contains protections based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, including the terms in school district policy is important.

“You may feel … that it’s redundant to list them there, but to remove only some of the protected classes from your policy clearly states that you condone harassment inflicted upon these groups of our community,” she said.

Cayce Hamerschlag, who spoke about both the nondiscrimination policy and the transgender student athlete policy, said the board is choosing to deny rights to some students with no legal requirement to do so.

“In the spirit of transparency,” she told the board, “perhaps you should change your slogan from ‘Every Student. Every Day.’ to ‘Certain Students. Some Days.’”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Trump administration threatens sex ed grant funding over gender identity in lessons

2025-07-02T21:26:49+00:00

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For decades, transgender teens rarely saw themselves reflected in lessons about sexual health.

That’s a problem, youth advocates say, because trans youth really need accurate information: They’re at a higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections and experiencing intimate partner violence.

In recent years, some health educators have worked to make sex education more inclusive of various gender identities. That could mean using gender-neutral language or incorporating trans people into the scenarios students learn about.

But the Trump administration, which supports the view that there are only two sexes, male and female, wants to put a stop to that.

On June 20, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told California that the state must remove all mentions of gender identity and trans people from the materials used in its federally funded sex ed program. Known as the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP, the program targets teens and pre-teens at high risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

The materials cited by the Trump administration include “Rights, Respect, Responsibility,” “Making Proud Choices!” and “Teen Talk” for middle and high school. A spokesperson for Health Connected, the maker of “Teen Talk,” declined to comment on Tuesday. Advocates for Youth, the nonprofit behind “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” and ETR, the creator of “Making Proud Choices!” did not respond to requests for comment.

California has 60 days to comply, or it risks losing a $6 million-plus federal grant.

“California was not only in violation of PREP’s terms but using federal funds to promote radical gender ideology and expose children to inappropriate, irrelevant content,” a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services department told Chalkbeat in an email.

More states could face similar demands. The HHS spokesperson told Chalkbeat that the department is actively reviewing the materials used by all PREP grantees, a list that includes nearly every state. And at least 23 other states have used “Making Proud Choices!” in their federally funded sex ed programs.

PREP represents a relatively small slice of sex education happening across the country. But some worry it’s a slippery slope from demanding California make these changes to ordering schools to remove gender identity and trans people from any curriculum purchased with federal funds. Already the Trump administration is waging war with several states over their inclusion of trans girls on women’s sports teams and has threatened to withhold federal funds from schools that teach “gender ideology.”

Beth Deines, a spokesperson for California’s public health department, said the agency is still reviewing the Trump administration’s demands, but that the state’s PREP uses models that are effective and rooted in evidence. California’s instructional materials are medically accurate, comprehensive, and age-appropriate, Deines added, and were “federally pre-approved” prior to the Trump administration.

Advocates for LGBTQ youth, meanwhile, worry that potential changes to California’s curriculum could deprive trans youth of critical information for their physical and mental health and further ostracize them at a time when they’re being targeted on many fronts.

If California does strip out the references to gender identity, it would affect not only trans kids, but their classmates, too, said Lisa Andersen, a historian who co-authored the book “Touchy Subject,” which chronicles decades of debates over sex education in American schools.

“We need to create an environment in which the school helps the student flourish but also moves them toward being able to be a citizen in a diverse society, and I think it’s really hard to do that if you’re not acknowledging any particular group.” Andersen said. “It’s simply hurtful to write people out of the curriculum.”

Why the federal government funds sex education

Congress created the Personal Responsibility Education Program in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act. Federal officials awarded $41 million to states for the program over the most recent three-year funding cycle.

The program is designed to reach young people who are at a higher risk of getting pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted infection. And a large-scale national evaluation found that PREP does successfully boost the share of young people who say they will use a condom or birth control if they’re sexually active.

California’s program educates 13,000 young people each year, state officials say. Its target audience includes teens experiencing homelessness, youth in foster care, alternative school students, teens in the juvenile justice system, and LGBTQ youth. In the state’s most recent data collection, 2.5% of participants identified as trans or nonbinary.

What complicates compliance with the Trump administration’s demand is that stripping out references to gender identity and trans youth would contradict California’s sex education law, which requires public schools to use materials that teach about gender identity and gender expression. Some California schools use the same texts that were singled out by the Trump administration last month. And advocates for inclusive curriculum say it’s not as simple as making a few edits, because this instruction is woven into all the lessons.

A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the office continues to review all of the president’s actions for compliance with the law, but said the office could not comment on any potential litigation. A California Department of Education spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration said at first it decided to conduct a medical accuracy review of California’s PREP curriculum. But federal health officials changed course, they said, when they spotted “gender ideology” in the materials, which they said falls outside the scope of the law governing PREP.

The law is silent on whether programs should teach about gender identity. But it includes other language that says the instruction should be presented in the appropriate cultural context for target audiences, which include “culturally under-represented youth populations.”

The language flagged by the Trump administration in the materials and teaching guides includes several explanations of gender identity and what it means to be transgender. Some examples include:

“All people have a gender identity. An adjective used to describe a person whose gender identity is incongruent with (or does not ‘match’) the biological sex they were assigned at birth is ‘transgender.’ … Other gender identities may include non-binary, agender, bigender, genderfluid, and genderqueer.”
“Gender identity is your inner sense of your gender—Do you feel like a guy? Do you feel like a girl? Do you feel like something different than a guy or a girl? Often gender identity matches a person’s body— someone with a girl’s body feels like a girl on the inside or someone with a boy’s body feels like a boy on the inside—but not always. Transgender is when a person’s inner feelings about gender identity don’t match the body.”

Talking about gender identity and trans identity in sex education is still fairly new, dating back mostly to the 2000s, Andersen found in her research. That helps explain why there’s still healthy debate about how best to teach those topics, Andersen said.

But the current political climate is making it especially difficult for schools and health educators to navigate.

“We don’t have a long history of working this out,” she said. “And we’re trying to figure it out during perhaps the most politically volatile period we’ve had in the last 100 years where we’re primed and ready to disagree with each other.”

This story was updated to reflect that the three curriculum makers for PREP in California declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Maryland district must let parents opt kids out of lessons on religious grounds, Supreme Court rules

2025-06-27T18:09:51+00:00

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Parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, have the right to opt their children out of lessons involving a set of books featuring LGBTQ characters and themes if the materials do not align with the families’ religious beliefs, the Supreme Court decided Friday.

The 6-3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor represents a win for the burgeoning parental rights movement, religious liberty advocates, and the Trump administration, which appeared before the high court to lend support to the parents’ case.

The Supreme Court ruled that the parents, who came from Muslim, Roman Catholic, and other Christian backgrounds, would likely be able to prove these books presented a burden on their faith and they should be allowed to opt out of the books while a federal appeals court continues to review their case. Previously, the school district had told the parents that its policy did not allow for opt-outs.

“The Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs, substantially interferes with the religious development of petitioners’ children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder [an earlier Supreme Court ruling] found unacceptable,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote on behalf of the majority. “The books are unmistakably normative. They are designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated, and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”

"Prince & Knight" is one of the LGBTQ-inclusive books that was added to Montgomery County Public Schools' English curriculum.

“Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly,” Alito continued. “The storybooks, however, suggest that it is hurtful, and perhaps even hateful, to hold the view that gender is inextricably bound with biological sex.”

In a dissent joined by the two other liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling threatened the role public schools play in teaching children of all faiths and backgrounds how to coexist in a multicultural society.

“That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality,” Sotomayor wrote. “Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.”

Advocates for inclusive curriculum and LGBTQ youth worry the ruling will lay the groundwork for parents across the country to opt their children out of any instruction that they say conflicts with their religious teachings.

That could require teachers to spend more time notifying parents about what they’re teaching, devising alternative assignments, finding space and supervision for children who opt out, and catching kids up if they miss other content during an opt-out.

Lawyers and scholars in the parents’ camp have said they do not think giving religious parents the right to opt their children out of lessons will dramatically change public education.

Most states allow kids to skip lessons related to sex education or human sexuality, while Texas already permits parents to opt their children out of any lesson for religious or moral reasons.

And a recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of K-12 teachers support parents’ rights to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation and gender identity at school — suggesting they wouldn’t be averse to working with families to accommodate such requests.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon applauded the ruling on social media. Eric Baxter, a senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who represented the parents in this case, said in a written statement that the ruling represented “a historic victory for parental rights in Maryland and across America” and “made clear that parents — not government — have the final say in how their children are raised.”

Montgomery County school officials and board members said in a joint statement that while the decision was not what they hoped for, they would determine next steps and “navigate this moment with integrity and purpose — guided, as always, by our shared values of learning, relationships, respect, excellence, and equity.”

Critics have said this ruling could open the door for many more opt-outs on religious grounds. During oral arguments, several liberal justices pointed out that parents have asked to opt out of all kinds of lessons for religious reasons over the last 40 years. That includes portrayals of supernatural topics like wizards and magic and world history and current events that parents viewed as unflattering to their religion.

Some worry schools would ditch certain content and lessons altogether to reduce the likelihood of opt-out requests — a move that would deliver yet another blow to efforts to make curriculum more inclusive.

Teachers might also decide to make LGBTQ-inclusive material optional, said Stacie Brensilver Berman, a clinical assistant professor at New York University who has written about teaching LGBTQ history and has helped teachers introduce potentially controversial topics in the classroom.

Supreme Court weighs right of religious parents to opt kids out of LGBTQ material

For example, teachers might decide to keep books with LGBTQ characters and themes on their classroom shelves, but forgo using those books in classroom read-alouds. Or they may recommend the books “to a student they know has queer parents or a student they know has relatives or friends who are trans and nonbinary, but not make it part of the curriculum,” she said.

Tiferet Ani, a former Montgomery County Public Schools teacher who sits on the board of History UnErased, a national provider of LGBTQ-inclusive history curriculum, worries that widespread religious opt-outs could send students the message that LGBTQ identities are taboo and further stigmatize students who identify with the content their classmates are skipping.

Mahmoud v. Taylor stems from a challenge raised by several religious parents in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools after the district added books with LGBTQ characters and themes to its elementary school English curriculum in 2022.

Among the additions were a book called “Prince & Knight,” which tells the story of two men who fall in love after they battle a dragon together, and “Love, Violet,” a story about a young girl who worries her same-sex crush won’t like the valentine she made her.

At first, the school district — one of the largest in the country and known for its racial, ethnic, and religious diversity — permitted parents to opt their children out of lessons related to the books. But eventually school officials said they’d received too many opt-out requests and would no longer grant them.

Many parents protested the decision and some sued, arguing that the books’ messages about sexuality and gender identity were at odds with their religious beliefs.

While the parents’ lawsuit continues, Montgomery County Public Schools must notify parents if one of the LGBTQ-inclusive books, or any similar books, are to be used “in any way,” the Supreme Court ruling notes, and parents must be allowed to excuse their kids from that instruction.

National reporting intern Norah Rami contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Amid Trump’s funding threats, a rural school district looks to remove LGBTQ policy protections

2025-06-09T20:58:46+00:00

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Citing President Trump’s threat to cut off federal education funding for school districts that provide protections for LGBTQ people, school board members in the Montezuma-Cortez district in southwestern Colorado are poised to remove sexual orientation and gender identity from the district’s nondiscrimination policy.

“Our district uses federal grant monies and Trump has indicated those grants are at risk if any district continues to support certain previously protected classes like sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender identity,” Mike Lynch, a school board member and the policy committee chair, said at a board meeting late last month.

The proposed policy changes in Montezuma-Cortez represent just one example of how some Colorado school districts are rushing to comply — or over-comply — with federal ultimatums based on questionable legal foundations. Many legal experts say the Trump administration cannot, on its own, exclude transgender people from federal anti-discrimination law and that Colorado law, which includes protections for LGBTQ people, supersedes school district policy anyway.

But efforts to remove protections at the local level send harmful messages about who is valued and who isn’t, they say.

“I think it does damage to queer students because it signals that this school district … doesn’t believe that these students are worthy of protection,” Scott Skinner-Thompson, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Montezuma-Cortez, a conservative-leaning district with about 2,400 students, has taken other steps to curtail LGBTQ symbols and school activities in recent years. The school board is scheduled to take a final vote on the proposed nondiscrimination policy on June 24.

MB McAfee, a retired social worker and district resident, said she doesn’t know of any case where federal funds were withheld by the Trump administration, but worries about that possibility, particularly when it comes to money for students with disabilities.

But she’s also angry about the proposed policy changes, calling them “another step toward exclusion.”

“If we do that,” she asked, “then what’s going to be next?”

School districts react to funding threats

Trump has targeted transgender rights since his first day in office. In January and February, he issued several executive orders on the topic, including one that describes sex as determined at conception and unchangeable and another that threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender girls to play girls sports.

The Trump administration has moved to strip federal funding from Maine because that state allows transgender girls to compete on girls’ teams. A judge blocked the federal government from withholding school lunch money while the case continues.

So far, no school district has lost money because of policies protecting transgender students. But Lynch emphasized that risk when he explained the proposed policy revision to the school board in May.

Asked by Chalkbeat what executive order or federal guidance required the removal of “sexual orientation” from the policy, Lynch later said by email that he’d mistakenly cited the term when he spoke to the board about federal dollars being in jeopardy.

For now though, “sexual orientation” isn’t being restored to the policy, he said.

Montezuma-Cortez isn’t alone in making changes spurred by the Trump administration. Officials from several Colorado districts, including Woodland Park and District 49 near Colorado Springs, have cited Trump’s executive orders in pushing policy changes or other efforts aimed at revoking protections for transgender students.

In May, District 49 sued the state and the Colorado High School Activities Association arguing that Colorado law and the association’s policy violate students’ constitutional rights by allowing transgender youth to play on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

Montezuma-Cortez school board members had little to say about the implications of the proposed nondiscrimination policy changes.

Asked about the legal or practical implications, Lynch said he’s not an attorney and doesn’t know. School board President Sheri Noyes did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment. Vice President Ed Rice declined to respond to specific questions from Chalkbeat, saying by email that the policy’s opening sentence “answers everything.”

As proposed, that sentence says, “The Board is committed to providing a learning and work environment where all members of the school community are treated with dignity and respect.” The current version of the policy says “safe learning and work environment” but the revision takes out the word “safe.”

Lynch said the district’s policy committee wrote the revised policy, but he declined to reveal who else is on the committee, except to say it includes two district staff members, two community members, and one teacher.

The proposed policy change also adopts language directly from a February Dear Colleague letter in which the U.S. Department of Education said many common practices under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion are actually discriminatory. Federal judges have temporarily blocked implementation of the guidance laid out in the letter.

The new district policy bars the consideration of race in all aspects of student, academic, and campus life, including scholarships. However, Lynch said that programs for Indigenous students are not subject to the ban on race-based programs.

A fraught history on LGBTQ protections

In recent years, the Montezuma-Cortez district has taken aim at a variety of LGBTQ-friendly policies and practices.

In February 2021, school board member Lance McDaniel was recalled after an uproar over his weekly donation of pizza to a middle school “Rainbow Club,” a lunchtime gathering for LGBTQ students and allies. Prior to the community vote, social media blew up with accusations that McDaniel was a “groomer” and “pedophile,” according to a story from Rocky Mountain PBS.

A month before McDaniel was recalled, LGBTQ pride flags were removed from the middle school classroom of a staff member who sponsored the Rainbow Club. The building principal said such “inflammatory icons” couldn’t be displayed in common spaces.

By the fall of 2021, the school board had passed a policy restricting clubs not officially sponsored by the school, including the Rainbow Club, from meeting during lunchtime — effectively ending the group’s run.

This April, four district officials were among more than 60 education officials from across the state to sign onto a letter demanding that the Colorado High School Activities Association adopt rules “to ensure that boys are not permitted to compete as girls in girls’ sports.” The Montezuma-Cortez signers were Lynch, Noyes, Superintendent Tom Burris, and Assistant Superintendent Eddie Ramirez.

McDaniel said he’s not surprised by the board’s move to change the nondiscrimination policy given its recent history

As for the rationale that the district could lose federal funding if it doesn’t change its policies, he said, “I think it’s a bunch of crap.”

“You can’t really say anything definitive about what Trump or his administration will do,” he said. “I see a lot of people in a lot of organizations bending their knee to acquiesce to his desires.”

McDaniel knows a portion of the community supports the board’s decisions, but said there’s growing opposition, both because of issues like the nondiscrimination policy and a spate of controversial teacher reassignments and departures, among other things.

Why executive orders aren’t the final word

Legal experts say Trump’s pledge to pull federal funding from districts that don’t comply with his executive orders or other policy demands is overblown.

“They’re doing a lot of saber rattling,” but the administration’s power to cut funding to school districts is limited, said Skinner-Thompson, of University of Colorado Boulder.

“Funding termination is a remedy of last resort,” he said. “To bring an enforcement action, the federal authorities are supposed to engage in negotiations, conciliation, and then, and only then, terminate funding.”

In addition, Skinner-Thompson said the administration’s interpretation of Title IX — its legal rationale for some executive orders threatening to withhold education funding — is flawed.

Title IX is a 1972 civil rights law that banned discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities. The law does not define sex and the courts generally have interpreted it to also ban discrimination based on sex stereotypes and extended protections to LGBTQ people.

“Title IX prohibits sex discrimination, and several federal courts … have concluded that the federal statutory prohibitions on sex discrimination include protections for sexual minorities,” he said.

He acknowledged some disagreement in the courts about transgender rights, but said it will ultimately be judges, not the president, who decide how to interpret the law.

“People have been reacting to the executive orders like it’s the final word, but that’s not the case,” he said.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Trump department investigating Jeffco policy on overnight trip assignments for transgender students

2025-06-03T00:51:09+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights announced Monday that it is investigating Jeffco Public Schools over the district’s policy on sleeping arrangements for transgender students on overnight school trips.

Jeffco’s policy says that in most cases, transgender students “should be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity.” It also says the needs of transgender students will be assessed on a case-by-case basis to maximize their social integration, ensure their safety and comfort, and minimize stigmatization.

The Education Department is launching an investigation under Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Under its contested interpretation of the law, the Trump administration has used Title IX to challenge transgender rights policies.

The Jeffco district “allegedly misleads parents by informing them that girls and boys will be separated for overnight accommodations without divulging that its definition of ‘girl’ includes boys who claim a female identity,” the department said in a press release.

Jeffco Public Schools said in a statement that its policy is grounded in Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, the regulations for which say transgender individuals should be allowed to use restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories that are consistent with their gender identity.

“Families always have the ultimate choice whether their student participates in any unique programming that involves overnight accommodations,” Jeffco Public Schools said in its statement. “We are unwavering in our commitment to the well-being of our students, staff, and families, and we strictly adhere to all Colorado state laws governing their treatment.”

Title IX does not prohibit “the degree of protection that the State of Colorado provides,” the district said.

This is the second Title IX investigation of a large Colorado school district since Trump took office in January. That same month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was investigating Denver Public Schools for converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom.

Jeffco’s policy on overnight accommodations for transgender students is also the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit filed by several district families. One family claimed their daughter, then 11 years old, was assigned to share a bed with a transgender student on an out-of-state overnight trip. The U.S. Department of Education’s press release cited the family’s claim, calling it one of “several disturbing reports” about Jeffco’s policy.

Jeffco also argued that it honors students’ requests “to room by themselves, with specific classmates, or with their parents,” and did so in the case of the 11-year-old. When she expressed discomfort at rooming with a transgender student, the trip organizers “quickly and discreetly” moved her to a different room, the district wrote in a court document.

The Jeffco investigation was one of two announced Monday in what the Trump administration has declared “Title IX Month,” marking the 53rd anniversary of the law. The other investigation involves the admission of a transgender woman to a University of Wyoming sorority, a case that was also the subject of a federal lawsuit.

“This Administration will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports, intimate spaces, dormitories and living quarters, and fraternal and panhellenic organizations,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the press release.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan Senate Democrats won’t consider a trans athlete sports ban. Will Trump target the state?

2025-05-30T21:40:19+00:00

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The Republican-controlled House passed two bills last week that would bar transgender girls from competing on girls sports teams. But Democrats, who control the Senate, say they will not consider the legislation.

“Our legislative agenda is long and attacking kids is not on it,” Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, told Chalkbeat in a statement.

Failure to take up the Republican-sponsored bills could draw unwelcome political attention to Michigan at a time when the Trump administration has targeted for investigation states that don’t comply with its view on Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on sex.

Since taking office for the second time, Trump has issued several executive orders targeting the rights of transgender Americans. One in January said the U.S. government would only recognize two genders, male and female, while another issued that month attempted to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. A February executive order called for schools to block trans girls from competing on girls sports teams.

Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that don’t comply with his executive orders.

Executive orders cannot override existing state and federal statutes, though, and there have been legal challenges to the constitutionality of Trump’s executive orders.

But the Trump administration’s threats to states that don’t comply with the order have stoked fears over how he intends to enforce it. Multiple federal agencies opened investigations into Maine this year after a heated exchange between Trump and the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, in which she promised to follow the state’s law protecting transgender rights.

In one of those federal cases, a judge issued an injunction to stop the government from freezing federal funds to the state. But there are two other open cases that have been assigned to the Department of Justice to enforce.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said other states are at risk of losing federal funding for Title IX violations, specifically singling out California and Minnesota. Officials in those states have said their civil rights laws preclude them from complying with Trump’s executive order. Bondi’s office announced Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into California.

Like some other states, Michigan recently expanded state protections from discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender identity and expression. The expansion of those protections two years ago has long been a signature issue for Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

She signed the expansion of the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act in 2023, saying in a statement that “Michigan is a place that will fight for your freedom to be yourself.”

It is possible what has happened in Maine could happen in Michigan, said Nancy Chi Cantalupo, associate professor of law at Wayne State University.

“But what is happening in Maine is in no way a success for the current administration at this point,” she said, noting that the federal government has never withdrawn funds from a state under Title IX or any other civil rights statutes it enforces.

“It’s not like there’s a light switch the federal government can use to just turn off federal funds at its whim,” she said. “There are a lot of steps it has to go through.”

Brinks did not respond to a question about whether she or others in the Democratic Party have concerns Michigan may be targeted by the Trump administration.

Whitmer’s office did not respond to questions about the bills.

In Michigan, a prohibition against trans girls competing on girls sports teams would affect few athletes statewide. The Michigan High School Athletic Association, the private organization that runs the state’s high school sports competitions, said there were no trans girls competing on spring sports teams this year. None played on winter sports teams, while two played on fall teams.

About 25 states have already passed similar laws restricting trans girls from playing on sports teams aligned with their gender identity.

Advocates for transgender rights say sports bills aren’t really about limiting the teams trans girls and women can play on.

“If this bill were just about sports, it wouldn’t be proposed in coordination with all of these other anti-trans bills [nationwide,]” said Kye Campbell-Fox, a research assistant and laboratory manager at Michigan State University, who studies the impact of legislation targeting the rights of trans kids. “This is a coordinated campaign to push trans people out of public life.”

Advocates say trans youth don’t feel safe as their rights are attacked

Though the Michigan bills have effectively died, advocates say lawmakers’ focus on the issue — and the language they often use to talk about trans athletes — is still harmful to all trans children.

The Michigan bills, for example, referred to trans girls as “biological males,” ignoring their gender identities. And some lawmakers have said that the presence of trans girls in locker rooms could lead to sexual violence against other girls.

Rep. Mike Harris, a Republican from Waterford, said during a hearing for the bills that he was concerned about the potential for sexual assault if trans girls use girls locker rooms.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to place biological boys and girls in the same room, to strip down naked next to each other,” he said.

There is no evidence to support the idea that trans girls will assault other girls, though there is evidence that trans populations face increased risks when they use bathrooms according to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric has emboldened some students and adults to feel freer to make hateful remarks, and LGBTQ+ youth are being affected by it.

“I’m hearing a lot of fear from youth,” said Jude Krajnyák, a regional coordinator for a research policy project at the Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health. “Things everyone else gets to take for granted — like playing soccer in middle school — are rights that are being taken away from us.”

Krajnyák said he heard from a trans girl in middle school who gave up on playing soccer because she said “it’s just not worth” the backlash.

Currently, the Michigan High School Athletic Association determines eligibility for trans girls to play on girls teams on a case-by-case basis. The executive director of the association, Mark Uyl, makes the determination based on a number of factors, including what gender is recorded on the students’ school documents and other paperwork. Students are also asked whether they’ve begun hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries.

“The MHSAA asks for documentation on therapy and surgery as our policy allows for a waiver to be both approved and denied — and part of that decision is based on where in the transitioning process a student is at the time,” Geoff Kimmerly, director of communications for the association, told Chalkbeat.

The policy went into effect in 2012, according to the association. It aligned with federal law during the Obama administration, as well as federal requirements from the Office for Civil Rights during Trump’s first term and Biden’s presidency.

“The MHSAA follows and will continue to follow all applicable state and federal laws,” said Kimmerly in a statement. “We are monitoring developments in this regard closely.”

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Conservative parent groups sue Colorado over transgender rights law

2025-05-20T01:58:41+00:00

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Four groups that oppose transgender rights sued Colorado on Monday over a new law that enshrines additional protections for transgender people in the state’s anti-discrimination law.

The federal lawsuit argues that the law’s requirements that schools and other entities use a transgender person’s chosen name and pronouns violates the First Amendment of the Constitution by forcing some speakers to say things they find objectionable.

The lawsuit is the second one this month to target Colorado’s protections for transgender people, following the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to eliminate such protections in schools and elsewhere. On May 9, a conservative-leaning Colorado Springs-area school district sued the state, arguing that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law violates students’ constitutional rights by allowing transgender youth to play on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

Both lawsuits have implications for how schools treat transgender students, from the names they are called in class to the sports teams they can try out for after school.

Monday’s lawsuit takes aim at House Bill 1312, which was signed by Gov. Jared Polis on Friday. The measure, which will impact school dress code, name change, and bullying policies, as well as rules for birth certificates and marriage licenses, represented a win for supporters of transgender rights. But now it appears parts of the law could be tied up in court for months or years.

The plaintiffs in the case include the Virginia-based conservative group Defending Education, which has challenged race-based initiatives and the teaching of issues related to race and gender in schools. Other plaintiffs include Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, Protect Kids Colorado, a health group called Do No Harm, and Travis Morrell, a Colorado dermatologist. They are represented by the Arlington, Virginia law firm Consovoy McCarthy.

The defendants in the case include Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and the members of Colorado’s Civil Rights Division, a group tasked with investigating alleged violations of the state’s anti-discrimination law.

Monday’s lawsuit argues that Colorado’s new law “punishes those who refuse to speak using chosen names and pronouns, and it does so in order to suppress traditional beliefs about sex and gender.”

Lawmakers who supported the legislation said it was about ensuring transgender people can make decisions that affirm their identities, as well as protecting them from discrimination.

Chris Kolker, a Democrat and cosponsor of the bill, said during a recent hearing, “I ask us not to get lost in a fog of fear. Let’s return to what this is about — keeping kids safe, preventing bullying, and ensuring our public systems reflect the dignity of all people.”

In the lawsuit, Defending Education said it “regularly litigates on behalf of its members to protect their First Amendment right to refer to individuals using biologically accurate pronouns and/or birth names.”

Referring to transgender people by their birth name instead of their chosen name is called deadnaming, and using pronouns other than a person’s preferred pronouns is called misgendering.

The lawsuit describes various types of speech that the new Colorado law could restrict and that plaintiffs want to continue using. For example, it notes that members of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, one of the plaintiffs, have called Rep. Brianna Titone, a Democratic state representative, “Brian Titone.” The group’s members have also said Dylan Mulvaney, a popular transgender social media influencer, “is a man pretending to be a woman. ‘She’ is actually a ‘he’ and does not know the experience of American girls.”

The law would make it impossible for the group to “effectively exercise their constitutionally protected right to speak in a manner that reflects their sincere belief that sex is immutable and fixed at birth,” the lawsuit states.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

District 49 sues Colorado and state athletic association over protections for transgender students

2025-05-13T04:30:04+00:00

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A Colorado Springs-area school district sued the state Friday, arguing that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law violates students’ constitutional rights by allowing transgender youth to play on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

The lawsuit, which also targets the Colorado High School Activities Association, is the latest volley in a battle over transgender student athletes in the conservative-leaning District 49. It could have implications for school sports across Colorado, putting what has generally been handled on a case-by-case basis up to a high-profile legal test.

Thursday, the day before the lawsuit was filed, the District 49 school board narrowly passed a controversial policy banning transgender middle and high school students from joining school teams that align with their gender identity. The policy, which applies to both transgender boys and transgender girls, was developed after President Trump’s February executive order that threatened to withhold federal funding from any school that allows athletes assigned male at birth to participate in girls’ or women’s sports.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on behalf of the district by a Colorado Springs law firm called First and Fourteenth. It names as defendants Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and the Colorado High School Activities Association, which oversees high school sports in the state.

The lawsuit argues that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, which includes protections for people based on gender identity, along with the activity association’s bylaws, put District 49 “in an untenable position.”

“Compliance with these state requirements would force the District to violate students’ constitutional rights and risk federal funding loss, while adherence to federal obligations exposes the District to state penalties including fines and athletic-program suspension,” the lawsuit says.

Noting that the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment bans discrimination based on sex, the lawsuit argues that allowing transgender girls to join girls teams deprives girls of athletic opportunities in violation of the amendment.

Transgender girls are those who were assigned male at birth, but identify as female.

The lawsuit also argues that girls’ and boys’ privacy rights under the Equal Protection clause would be violated if they had to share locker rooms with transgender athletes.

District 49 officials have presented little evidence that transgender athletes have posed a problem in the district.

School Board President Lori Thompson said in an interview last week that she knew of one instance of a transgender student in district sports. It was a transgender boy who sought to join a boys team. He was allowed to try out, but didn’t make the cut.

At a recent school board meeting, Peter Hilts, the district’s superintendent, told of a district high schooler who during a group discussion recounted how her varsity girls soccer team had played against a team from another district that included a “whole male.” That player scored twice on penalty kicks and the District 49 team lost. It’s not clear from the anecdote if the player who scored was, in fact, transgender.

Hilts mentioned he hadn’t encountered a similar situation during his 12 years working in the district.

For years, the Colorado High School Activities Association has recognized in its bylaws the right of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity. But association officials seemed to downplay that recognition after more than 60 Colorado school and district officials, including Thompson, Hilts and two others from District 49, sent the group a letter in April demanding it adopt rules “to ensure that boys are not permitted to compete as girls in girls’ sports.”

Subsequently, the activities association took a more noncommittal stance. At a recent event, the group’s lawyer described its position as “neutral” and said that determining eligibility for sports teams is a matter of local control.

The lawsuit seeks a ruling that prohibits the state or the activities association from requiring schools allow transgender athletes to join sports teams or use locker rooms that match their gender identities. It also seeks legal fees.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Backlash over culture wars brings new energy to NYC’s parent council elections

2025-05-09T21:56:31+00:00

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During the last Community Education Council elections in 2023, Manhattan parent Joseph Wallace was barely aware of the existence of his local parent council — much less who served on it or what happened during meetings.

That changed over the next two years as the council in Manhattan’s District 2, which runs from the lower tip of the borough to the Upper East Side, dove headlong into the culture wars consuming school boards across the country.

In early 2024, two council members spoke at a Manhattan town hall for the right-wing national parent group Moms for Liberty. Several months later, the council passed a resolution calling on the city Education Department to reconsider its policy allowing transgender girls to join girls sports teams, sparking months of sustained protest and media attention.

Both efforts — surprising for a parent group in deep blue Manhattan — were spurred by council members linked to the influential and polarizing local education advocacy group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, whose co-founder Maud Maron is a current member of the council and is running for re-election.

“What has upset me most is I thought it was kind of this innocuous council, and it turns out people are waging culture wars,” said Wallace, a parent at P.S. 51 in Hell’s Kitchen.

PLACE – which launched in 2019 to defend selective admissions policies and whose leaders have embraced efforts to rid schools of “gender ideology” and critical race theory – maintains the group is apolitical and interested primarily in rigorous education. But in New York City, as in districts across the country, national partisan political fights have increasingly made their way into local education debates, sharpening divides between parents.

District 2 CEC members Maud Maron (third from left) and Charles Love (second from right) at a Moms for Liberty event in January, 2024 on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Now, with a new CEC election cycle underway through May 13, there are signs of a growing backlash against what some parents see as an alarming rightward shift in the city’s education councils, spurred by PLACE’s success in propelling its preferred candidates into seats in 2021 and 2023.

In District 2, Wallace is part of an energetic movement to unseat PLACE candidates, with two organizing groups springing up this election cycle. Other efforts to counter PLACE-backed candidates have emerged in Brooklyn and Queens, and the progressive advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education endorsed candidates for the first time. Even PLACE seems to be feeling the shifting winds — making the surprise move not to endorse Maron, the parent leader who put the group on the map.

Maron’s response to being left off the group’s list: “Trans activists scare a lot of people into taking cowardly positions. Appeasement never works and I don’t scare so easily,” she wrote in an email.

Across the city, 1,346 candidates have tossed their hats in the ring for council seats, up from 1,107 in 2023, according to the Education Department. And parent leaders in multiple districts told Chalkbeat they’re seeing more energy and interest than ever before in this year’s CEC elections — propelled both by local concerns and urgent fears over the Trump administration’s efforts to target transgender and immigrant students, and efforts to cut federal funding for high-poverty schools.

“In this political climate, it’s very easy to feel powerless over a lot of things, and I just felt like this was something I don’t have to feel powerless over,” said Leila Colbert, a District 2 candidate.

Obstacles to voter turnout remain

It remains to be seen how effective or widespread the effort to challenge PLACE-backed candidates will be. CEC elections have notoriously low-turnout. In 2023, only 2% of eligible parents voted. Wealthier areas, like District 2, where parents have the savvy and wherewithal to navigate the voting process tend to see higher voter participation.

There are Community Education Councils for each of New York City’s 32 local districts, as well as four citywide councils, representing high schools, students learning English as a second language, and students with disabilities.

The councils are largely advisory but have the power to approve zoning decisions and can serve as a public platform and point of access to decisionmakers.

Councils in some districts, particularly in more conservative areas like western Queens and southern Brooklyn, are almost entirely composed of PLACE-backed candidates and opposition groups are supporting few challengers.

But the local anti-PLACE movement is getting a boost from the same political energy that has powered backlashes against conservative school board candidates in other parts of the country and the recent groundswell of progressive candidates entering local races to push back against Trump.

“We’ve been seeing it over the last really year-plus, and there’s reason to suspect that it will continue to snowball in the upcoming batch of CEC elections… especially in CEC 2,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College.

Amid that backlash, PLACE leaders are making a concerted effort to pull back from hot-button political issues. PLACE co-president Yiatin Chu said the decision not to endorse Maron, who is also running as a Republican for Manhattan District Attorney, was driven by wanting to reduce some of the “distractions” that created dysfunction in the District 2 council.

“With so much noise and culture wars on the national stage and in the city, it becomes distractions for what we’re trying to do,” Chu said. “Once you start veering into other issues … it’s not helpful for our advocacy.”

Maron, who was removed from the council by former schools Chancellor David Banks in 2024 for misconduct but reinstated after she sued the city, defended her “proven track record of protecting merit-based academics in NYC public schools and supporting District 2 families.”

“Improving the math curriculum does not conflict with addressing the harms of hormonal and surgical interventions, misleadingly called ‘gender-affirming care,’ or standing up for female student athletes’ rights to same sex sports,” she added, referring to medical treatment for transgender youth backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Other former PLACE leaders running for re-election also sought to distance themselves from Maron and the issues and groups she has embraced.

Craig Slutzkin, CEC 2 president and a former PLACE officer who is among the primary targets of the anti-PLACE organizing in District 2, wrote in an open letter that he has “never been a member of the MAGA movement” and is “not affiliated with Moms for Liberty.”

PLACE is “very, very narrowly focused on rigorous education” and “want[s] nothing to do” with the transgender sports issue, said Deborah Alexander, a candidate for the Citywide Council on High Schools, and a former long-time PLACE officer. “Personally, I would not remain in PLACE if that’s what PLACE was about,” she added, noting she has transgender and nonbinary family members.

Some critics have also questioned why many of PLACE’s former officers, including Alexander and Slutzkin, don’t mention their PLACE affiliation in official CEC candidate bios. Both Slutzkin and Alexander said they consider their PLACE advocacy separate from their CEC roles. Alexander, who is running as a Bronx representative to the Citywide Council on High Schools, added that she doesn’t think “the constituency of the Bronx has any idea who PLACE is particularly. Our reach doesn’t really go there much as much as we’ve tried.”

PLACE’s efforts to create distance from the transgender sports resolution — which was purely advisory and swiftly rejected by the Education Department — ring hollow to many critics.

“I think they’re trying to change the optics but I don’t think much has changed in the hearts and minds of PLACE,” said Gavin Healy, a current District 2 council member who voted against the transgender sports resolution.

PLACE is still endorsing six District 2 CEC members, including Slutzkin, who voted with Maron in support of the transgender sports resolution, along with the other council member who spoke at the Moms for Liberty event.

A new opposition emerges in District 2

Megan Madison, a children’s book author, said she first became aware of District 2’s CEC when one of its PLACE-endorsed members challenged the inclusion of a book she wrote about race in a central Education Department curriculum.

But she stepped up her involvement after the council passed its transgender sports resolution in March 2024, sensing an opportunity to tap into growing energy around defending transgender rights.

A group that called itself the “Aunties” began flooding council meetings, sometimes with hundreds of members, and accompanied by well-known figures like actor Elliot Page. Protesters speak during public comment, wave colorful banners, and sometimes drown out council members with chants and songs.

Over time, the protests morphed into a more organized effort to unseat Maron and other PLACE-backed candidates. Madison, who is not a public school parent, was shocked at the low levels of engagement and turnout in the last CEC election and saw room to bring in new voters.

Council members display a transgender flag at a District 2 CEC meeting in March, 2024.

The group has amassed a listserv in the thousands and got 60 volunteers to canvas and post flyers, Madison said. In recent weeks, another grassroots group called Families for Change NYC emerged to challenge PLACE-backed candidates. The group, which describes itself as a loose coalition of more than 75 parents and community members seeking candidates who represent the views of “ordinary parents,” has not disclosed the names of its members out of fear of harassment — a decision that sparked criticism from PLACE co-president Chu.

As the campaigning in the district has picked up, so has the dysfunction in the District 2 council. The body is often unable to pass resolutions, roiled by partisan splits, council members shouting over each other, and accusations that the protests have turned into harassment. Some members left meetings early, sparking accusations that they are trying to prevent votes.

The problems caught the attention of Congress members Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman, who, along with nine state and local elected officials, penned a letter last month urging the city Education Department to crack down on behavior that “violates the public trust, and disregards the basic principles of good governance and transparency.”

Slutzkin, the council president, said there is no mechanism to prevent members from leaving early, and that the elected officials’ letter contained multiple falsehoods.

He’s been appalled by some of the campaign tactics of PLACE opponents, including plastering dozens of flyers with a picture of his face around his child’s school, Slutzkin said. The Education Department office overseeing the elections sent a message last week saying that flyers “that disparage candidates, and which are placed near schools … represent a serious erosion of the fairness and integrity of the election process.”

Madison said the Aunties have tried to steer clear of personal attacks, but being on a council means being “public about your politics and therefore accountable to the public.”

Beyond the results of the election, Madison sees the publicity the group has generated — along with PLACE’s decision not to endorse Maron — as a sign that “we’re winning, little by little.”

District 2 campaign echoes citywide

While the energy of the PLACE opposition is concentrated in District 2, it has also reverberated in other parts of the city.

In District 30 in Jackson Heights, Queens, a group of parents called “D30 Parents Protecting Trans Children” organized to endorse a slate of candidates, motivated by what happened in District 2 and fears about the federal efforts to target transgender kids, said Hallie Iiannoli, one of the leaders.

One of the current members of the District 30 council who was endorsed by PLACE in 2023 and again this year asked PLACE to remove her from their list because she didn’t want to be associated with the District 2 resolution on transgender kids and sports.

“I know they’re strong on Gifted and Talented, which I’m strong on too. What I don’t believe in is being against trans [children],” said the council member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she didn’t want to speak publicly about endorsements.

In Brooklyn’s District 15, a long-running group called D15 Parents for Middle School Equity endorsed a slate of PLACE challengers for the second time, including in the Citywide Council for High Schools, or CCHS, which has become a stronghold for PLACE-backed candidates in recent elections.

Reyhan Mehran, the group’s founder, said she’s seen increased engagement during this election cycle, driven by the “outrageousness of what happened in CEC 2,” but is skeptical that there will be any major changes in the voting outcomes.

Julia Watson, a spokesperson for Alliance for Quality Education, said in an email the group decided to endorse this year “because of the harm we’ve seen in the past couple years when there are people in office that do not have all the kids’ best interest in mind.”

Debbie Kross, a former PLACE officer and current president of the CCHS, said the idea of running to unseat PLACE candidates because of concerns about what happened in District 2 or in an effort to push back against the Trump administration is both wrongheaded and naive.

“They’re just running out of spite,” she said.

“If the hope of these people is they’re gonna run and they’re gonna fight Trump, I mean, good luck,” she added. “Because we don’t have any of that power.”

But Madison, the organizer in District 2, said that while it’s true the CECs have limited power, diminishing their importance “has functioned to decrease engagement.”

PLACE itself has built influence and political power through its success in CEC elections, she added. “I think it does matter.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Following Trump crackdown, Colorado district approves transgender athlete ban

2025-05-09T21:43:14+00:00

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A Colorado Springs-area school board voted Thursday night to ban transgender students from middle and high school sports teams that match their gender identity.

The 3-2 vote in District 49, a conservative-leaning district with 27,000 students, came after impassioned testimony from both supporters and opponents of the new policy, called “Preserving Fairness and Safety in Sports.”

The high-profile decision in District 49, Colorado’s 10th largest, follows a February executive order from President Trump targeting transgender youth in sports and represents a shift that could soon be replicated in other districts in the state. But the new policy also raises the specter of a lawsuit over the ban and a host of questions about how the new rules will be applied.

Opponents of the policy say transgender students are at greater risk for bullying, isolation, and mental health issues, and that denying them access to sports teams that match their gender identity will only exacerbate those problems. Supporters say the policy protects girls from getting hurt by transgender players or losing out on playing time, wins, or athletic scholarships. Both sides seem to agree that transgender students represent a tiny fraction of team sports participants.

District 49 sues Colorado over state protections for transgender students

Starting next school year, District 49’s new policy will bar transgender girls from girls sports and transgender boys from boys sports. It’s not clear who will police the gender identity of student athletes.

In an interview earlier this week, District 49 Board President Lori Thompson said specific rules must be developed and suggested that a question about gender identity could be added to the required sports physical form.

She dismissed worries that surfaced during weeks of debate that the policy would mean school officials would be checking students’ genitals to determine which team they can join.

“That will not be happening,” she said at Thursday’s meeting.

But gender lines in school sports are already a bit blurry, highlighting potential inconsistencies in the new policy’s rationale that it’s unsafe for girls to compete with boys. For example, while tackle football and baseball are considered boys sports, girls are allowed to participate and have done so at District 49 high schools, according to high school athletic directors in the district. In addition, wrestling is considered a co-ed sport at District 49 middle schools, with boys and girls competing against each other.

It’s unclear if transgender boys — people assigned female at birth who identify as male — will be barred from District 49’s boys sports teams, even as girls are allowed to play on those teams, or if girls will be barred as well. In addition, it’s unclear how District 49 teams will handle competition against out-of-district teams that include transgender athletes: Will they play or forfeit?

For years, the Colorado High School Activities Association has recognized the right of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity. But that appeared to change after more than 60 Colorado school and district officials, including Thompson and three others from District 49, sent the group a letter in April demanding it adopt rules “to ensure that boys are not permitted to compete as girls in girls’ sports.”

At Thursday’s District 49 school board meeting, many district residents spoke out about the proposed policy.

A man named Kevin, whose children attended school in the district and whose grandchildren are now growing up there, said there’s no place for boys in girls sports.

“You can identify as who you want, but biologically, that’s the sport you play,” he said. “All this criss-crossing into sports, being in the women’s dressing rooms, bathrooms, and stuff like that, that’s a no-go.”

Holly Withers, the mother of two district students, said the policy seemed less about protecting fairness and safety and more about promoting an ideological agenda.

“Our students deserve schools that lift them up, not policies that single them out, and I hope that this board will choose to be remembered for leadership and not for extreme litigation,” she said.

Board member Mike Heil, one of two members who voted no on Thursday, said even if the policy is rarely used, it sends the message to transgender students that “we don’t value them.”

“I don’t think that’s who we need to be as a board,” he said.

Thompson, who voted for the policy, said, “If we don’t acknowledge physiological differences, women’s sports will cease to exist.”

But she also said she wants everyone to feel welcomed and included.

“There’s no way to make everyone happy,” she said. “That’s where you have to make tough decisions.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado transgender rights bill will mandate school policies about bullying, name changes

2025-05-08T20:53:31+00:00

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Colorado school districts will likely need to ensure their policies about student names and dress codes align with a transgender rights bill approved by lawmakers in the session’s final days.

House Bill 1312, known as the Kelly Loving Act, updates anti-discrimination laws in order to enshrine protections for Colorado transgender people, including ensuring they are called by their chosen name and affirming changes to marriage licenses and birth certificates. The bill now sits on Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’s desk. He has not indicated whether he will sign the legislation

The bill will impact schools in a few ways. It expands the definition of discrimination to include intentionally calling a person by a name they no longer use, which will affect school bullying policies. The bill also requires schools to allow all students to wear any clothing that’s allowed by a school dress code.

In addition, the bill says school district name-change policies should cover all reasons a student might adopt a name other than what they were given at birth. Bill sponsors said this change ensures districts can’t create restrictions to work around a 2024 law that says school personnel must call students by a chosen nonlegal name if the student requests it.

The Senate passed the bill on Tuesday, a day before lawmakers adjourned, by a vote of 20-14 with one member excused. The House adopted the bill last month.

More than 1,500 people provided oral or written testimony both for and against the bill during last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The legislation represents a win for supporters of transgender rights, at a time when the Trump administration and others are seeking to restrict or eliminate such protections.

Proponents of the legislation said transgender people deserve not to be discriminated against, and the bill ensures they can make decisions that affirm their identities. Advocates also said the fear and discrimination young people face can cause them distress and harm.

During several days of testimony, state Sen. Chris Kolker, a Democrat and cosponsor of the bill, said part of his motivation was because his oldest daughter asked why transgender kids in schools aren’t treated fairly and equally. He said the bill is about making sure all Coloradans feel welcome in the state.

“I ask us not to get lost in a fog of fear, let’s return to what this is about — keeping kids safe, preventing bullying, and ensuring our public systems reflect the dignity of all people,” he said last week during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting.

Democratic Sen. Faith Winter and Democratic Reps. Lorena García and Rebekah Stewart also sponsored the bill.

Republicans criticized the bill, as did some school board members across the state, who questioned whether it infringes on parental and educator rights and the ability of school boards to set their own local policies. Their arguments were similar to those made in opposition to 2024’s House Bill 1039 that required school personnel to address a student by their chosen name.

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican, echoed some of those concerns before the bill passed the Senate. She said the bill was pushed through too quickly without allowing parents the time to understand what it would require. She also said her constituents worried the bill doesn’t allow parents to make decisions for their children about name changes and other issues.

“Parents are worried,” said Kirkmeyer during the Senate’s final vote on the measure. “This is not just a simple bill about discrimination against transgender students and adults.”

After the bill passed the Senate, advocates and trans resource organizations said the legislation will ensure transgender people of all ages feel welcome in Colorado.

“The Kelly Loving Act is more than legislation, it’s a labor of love by trans people, for trans people. It is a people-powered bill that reflects the strength, resilience, and determination of our communities,” said Z Williams, a lawyer with social justice organization Bread and Roses Legal Center.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

As Trump cracks down on transgender athletes, a Colorado school district seeks new restrictions

2025-05-07T20:56:49+00:00

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At an April school board meeting near Colorado Springs, debate raged over a proposed policy to ban transgender students from playing on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

A high school student named Sadie, who spoke against the policy, asked why her district would need a blanket policy when a tiny percentage of student athletes are transgender.

A 60-year-old man who supported the policy and described himself as stronger than any woman in the building claimed a transgender girl could slam a ball into a girl’s head hard enough to put her in the hospital.

A father opposed to the policy said his son, a district student, has an extra X chromosome and suggested gender is more complicated than it seems.

He said of the proposed policy, “We’ve now created a situation where an adult is having a conversation with a minor concerning that minor’s genitalia. That’s gross, it’s disturbing, and potentially a crime.”

The recent discussion in the conservative-leaning District 49 is a sign of the times and foreshadows what’s to come in other Colorado school districts as federal and local officials target transgender youth in sports. It also highlights the shifting legal ground that school officials across the state are treading as they try to reconcile state law protecting transgender people from discrimination with recent executive orders from President Trump that aim to eliminate such protections.

Advocates for trangender youth say they are at greater risk for bullying, isolation, and mental health issues, and that denying them access to sports teams that match their gender identity will only exacerbate those problems. Supporters of policies banning transgender students from teams aligned with their gender identity say it protects girls from getting hurt by transgender players or losing out on playing time, wins, or athletic scholarships.

Colorado district approves transgender athlete ban

The policy under consideration in District 49 — “Preserving Fairness and Safety in Sports” — would apply at the middle and high school levels to transgender boys who want to join boys teams and transgender girls who want to join girls teams. It wouldn’t apply to sports that are considered coed, which at some schools includes wrestling. The policy appears likely to pass its final vote Thursday. It won preliminary approval in April in a 3-2 vote.

The policy cites a February executive order from President Trump that threatened to withhold federal funding from any school that allows athletes assigned male at birth to participate in girls’ or women’s sports. In an early test of that threat, the Trump administration settled with Maine and reversed its plan to withhold millions in funding for school meals after the state refused to bar transgender athletes from girls teams.

The three board members who supported it, along with District 49 Superintendent Peter Hilts, in April signed on to a group letter demanding the Colorado High School Activities Association adopt rules “to ensure that boys are not permitted to compete as girls in girls’ sports.”

Brad Miller, District 49’s attorney, acknowledged during the April school board meeting that adoption of the proposed policy could lead to a lawsuit. But he argued the district would win in court because the policy was carefully crafted to survive “any legal challenge under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.”

Waiting and worrying for transgender children

For parents with transgender children, policy debates like the one in District 49 are a worrisome reminder that their kids could be targeted with whispers, complaints, or worse for playing on teams that match their gender identity

Melissa, who lives in the Denver metro area and asked that her last name not be used to protect her family’s privacy, knows this fear firsthand.

Although her 6-year-old transgender daughter enjoyed playing soccer for two seasons, Melissa recently steered the kindergartner away from the sport.

“I’m just very concerned about the current political environment that she would be potentially singled out, even as young as she is,” she said.

Melissa instead signed her up for a dance class, which feels like a safer space these days and which the little girl also enjoys. Still, Melissa feels sad and guilty about the decision, knowing she wouldn’t have done the same thing for her son, who loves team sports like soccer and basketball.

“If her gender was not on the table, I probably would have signed her up for soccer this season,” said Melissa. “But … unless she’s really kicking down the door begging for it, I’m not going to continue to expose her to something that might be a major issue down the line.”

In the April letter to the Colorado High School Activities Association, more than 60 school board members, district leaders, and charter school leaders in Colorado urged the group to change its bylaws and guidance for schools to adhere to President Trump’s executive order on transgender athletes.

“Colorado’s schools and athletic programs, which rely on federal funding, cannot afford to ignore this clear shift in federal policy,” the letter said.

It also referenced Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law that banned discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities, saying, “Beyond compliance, however, our demand is rooted in a fundamental commitment to our female students.”

Currently, the Colorado High School Activities Association, which governs high school sports in the state, recognizes the right of transgender students to join school sports teams that match their gender identity and offers guidance to school districts on the topic.

But in recent weeks, the association has struck a more noncommittal tone. At an April meeting for members of the group’s legislative council, Alex Halpern, the group’s lawyer, described its stance on the letter from the District 49 officials and more than 50 other district leaders around the state as “neutral.”

“Our position is, and has been, that ultimately, the determination of who is going to be eligible to participate on a particular interscholastic team at a particular school is a decision to be made by that school as guided by its board of education and consistent with the principles of local control,” he said.

How many transgender student athletes are there?

It’s impossible to know how many transgender students in Colorado participate in middle or high school sports or how often conflicts arise because of it.

The Colorado High School Activities Association doesn’t collect data on transgender student athletes. A spokesperson for the group said its bylaws allow it to review a school’s decision on gender assignment for the purpose of athletic eligibility, but it has not been asked to conduct such a review in the 17 years the bylaw has been in place.

Officials in District 49, a 27,000-student district in El Paso County, didn’t offer much evidence that trangender girls are jeopardizing safety or fairness for cisgender girls, meaning those assigned female at birth.

Hilts, the superintendent, did provide one example during an April school board meeting. He told of a district high schooler who during a group discussion recounted how her varsity girls soccer team had played against a team from another district that included a “whole male.” That player scored twice on penalty kicks and the District 49 team lost.

Although Hilts said he hadn’t heard of a similar situation during his 12 years working in the district, he said the anecdote informed his thinking about transgender athletes.

“That’s a real example,” he said. “As a general practice of policymaking, I give a little more weight to real examples.”

It’s not clear from the anecdote if the player who scored was, in fact, transgender or if the District 49 team would have won the game if that player had not participated.

Lori Thompson, president of the District 49 school board, said she knew of one instance of a transgender student in district sports. It was a transgender boy who sought to join a boys team. He was allowed to try out, but didn’t make the cut.

Thompson said the policy is not meant to disrespect or disenfranchise one group of students, but acknowledged that a transgender student might feel disenfranchised if they are barred from a team.

Thompson likened the policy to proactive protection in case of unforeseen disasters.

“You don’t buy homeowners insurance once your house is burned down,” she said.

Connie Lloyd, a district resident who spoke at the April meeting, cast doubt on the need for the policy.

“Is this even an issue in D49?” she asked. “How many transgender females are playing on female sports? How many transgender males are playing on male sports? Is this an issue, or is it just something made up in Washington?”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court to rule on right of religious parents to opt kids out of LGBTQ material

2025-04-18T01:05:20+00:00

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When the devout Muslim parents of a second grader learned their son would be reading a story at school about a prince who falls in love with a knight, they asked to opt him out.

The story about a man who marries another man after they team up to vanquish a dragon went against their religious teachings, the parents said. They wanted an alternative assignment.

The book in question, “Prince & Knight,” was one of several books that Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools added to its English curriculum in 2022 as part of a district initiative to put more books featuring LGBTQ characters in elementary school classrooms.

At first, the second grader was allowed to sit outside the classroom during discussions of the book. But a few days later, the district’s school board decided parents could no longer opt their kids out, later citing the volume of opt-out requests. Teachers would also stop informing families when they used one of the LGBTQ-themed books in class.

Many parents spoke out against that decision. The second grader’s parents and other families sued Montgomery County Public Schools to reinstate the opt-out option. Two federal courts let the no opt-out policy stand. Now, the Supreme Court — with a conservative majority that’s likely to be sympathetic to the burgeoning parental rights movement — is set to weigh in. Oral arguments in the case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, are scheduled for Tuesday. A decision is expected by June.

At the heart of the case is a longstanding tension between the power of parents to direct their children’s education and the authority of public schools to set their own curriculum. The high court’s ruling could decide whether parents have the right to opt their children out of any content that they see as at odds with their faith — and how far schools must go to accommodate them.

The case comes as Democrat-led states such as New Jersey, Illinois, and California have adopted curriculum that’s more inclusive, especially on topics of gender and sexuality. Meanwhile, Republican-led states like Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana have passed new laws that give parents more insight into what their kids are learning and the ability to opt out of certain lessons.

If the Supreme Court sides with the school district and decides parents don’t have the religious right to opt out, some say that could open the door to schools adopting curriculum without much regard for parent or community feedback. The views of minority parents, especially, could be ignored.

If the parents prevail, some worry schools would remove certain content altogether to lessen the chances of opt-out requests. That would be a set-back for schools and families that support efforts like those in the Montgomery County district to make curriculum more inclusive.

A ruling for the parents also could upend school operations, some legal and education experts say. It could force already stressed teachers and principals to send notifications, devise alternative assignments, and catch kids up if they miss other content during an opt-out.

“Do you have all the parents list out all the things that they believe at the start of the year, so you know and can tailor what you teach?” said Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California who’s studied Americans’ views on opt-out policies. “It’s not hard to see how it could spiral out of control really quickly and really undermine the ability of public schools to perform their basic core function: teaching kids.”

Case centers on religious rights, LGBTQ inclusion

Several Montgomery County parents said in court filings that exposing their kids to the new books at school violated their right to free exercise of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.

“Our son loves his teachers and implicitly trusts them,” wrote one second grader’s parents who follow Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox teachings. “Having them teach principles about sexuality or gender identity that conflict with our religious beliefs significantly interferes with our ability to form his religious faith.”

Lawyers for the parents say the books’ positive portrayals of LGBTQ characters and themes indirectly pressure kids to adopt that thinking. But they say what their parents want is different than laws like Florida’s that bar teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation in certain grades.

“Our parents aren’t asking for an LGBTQ-free classroom,” said Colten Stanberry, one of the attorneys at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who is representing the parents in the Supreme Court case. “They are not saying the books can’t be on the shelves. They are specifically challenging instruction,” such as reading the books in class and talking about them with teachers.

In a 2-1 ruling, a federal appeals court sided with the school district. Making kids read books that don’t align with their religious teachings is not a violation of families’ rights, they wrote, because they weren’t forced to change their beliefs or actions. Parents were still free to talk about the picture books with their children and teach them what they wanted, the judges wrote.

That interpretation follows how federal courts have ruled in other similar cases.

Montgomery County Public Schools officials have said they adopted the set of LGTBQ-inclusive books as part of a broader effort to make the district’s curriculum more culturally responsive with texts told from multiple viewpoints. The district is known for its racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, although that diversity hasn’t always equaled harmony.

Similar efforts, according to court documents, included the addition of books about the Black civil rights icon John Lewis and a novel about a Chinese-American immigrant family.

Teachers were expected to use the books as they would any other part of the curriculum. That could mean reading them aloud or putting them in classroom libraries, the district said in court filings.

The books were meant to teach critical reading skills and not for instruction explicitly about sexual orientation or gender identity, the district said.

In addition to “Prince & Knight,” the stories included “Pride Puppy!” an alphabet book for preschoolers and kindergartners about a dog that encounters various scenes at a Pride parade, and “My Rainbow,” in which a Black mother sews a colorful wig for her transgender daughter. And in “Love, Violet” a young girl worries about whether her same-sex crush will like the valentine she made her.

The children's book "Pride Puppy!" by Robin Stevenson follows a playful puppy through a Pride parade and the alphabet. Montgomery County Public Schools removed the book from classrooms after deciding it required instruction that went beyond a reading lesson.

The district also gave teachers guidance about how they could respond to potential questions or comments from students. If a student said being gay is wrong and not permitted in their religion, teachers could respond: “I understand that is what you believe, but not everyone believes that. We don’t have to understand or support a person’s identity to treat them with respect and kindness.”

In another instance, if a child asked about what it meant to be transgender, a teacher could say: “When we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong.”

Still, some parents and school leaders worried the books used unfamiliar words without defining them. Others questioned whether it was appropriate to show kids in romantic relationships, regardless of their sexual orientation. The district eventually pulled “Pride Puppy!” and “My Rainbow” from classrooms, the Washington Post reported, because kids may not have understood the texts without explicit instruction on vocabulary outside the bounds of the lesson.

“There’s reasonable discussions to be had about what’s age appropriate in curriculum,” Polikoff said. But, Polikoff, who is gay, said this case is more about: “Does acknowledging that gay people exist burden other people’s religious views? Where is the line here?”

How a ruling for the parents could affect schools

If the justices side with the parents in this case, it could give families “broad authority to request opt-outs along a wide array of different issues,” said Justin Driver, a constitutional law scholar and professor at Yale Law School.

If the teacher wants to give a pop quiz about a book most kids have read, they’d have to write a completely different test for kids who opted out, Driver said. Teachers could end up refereeing “dueling free exercise claims” from parents with opposing religious beliefs. Teachers would have to avoid stigmatizing children who’ve opted out, as well as children who see themselves in the content other kids are skipping.

Given past court decisions, it’s unlikely the justices would confine opt-outs to certain topics or student grade levels, Driver added.

“Just because some people may be uneasy with this sort of material today, it doesn’t mean that the federal judiciary should be commandeering local control over public schools,” said Driver, who co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Montgomery County Public Schools.

"Prince & Knight" by Daniel Haack tells the story of two men who battle a dragon and fall in love. Some Montgomery County parents objected to their kids reading about a gay relationship and marriage on religious grounds.

Glenn Branch, the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, has seen how this can play out.

Sometimes it’s easy for teachers to come up with alternative assignments. When parents object to their kids dissecting animals, Branch said, teachers can swap in a plastic or virtual model.

But when religious parents object to their kids learning about evolution, there really isn’t a substitute, Branch said. Evolution comes up so many times in biology class — from learning about the structure of a cell to taxonomy to genetics — that teachers would need “revolving doors” for kids to cycle in and out. That would be disruptive for their classmates, too.

“It would be kind of like saying: ‘Well, we’re not going to do fractions,’ in a math course,” Branch said.

Lawsuit’s supporters: Opt-out right isn’t burden on schools

Lawyers and scholars in the parents’ camp, meanwhile, say giving parents the right to opt out of certain content on religious grounds wouldn’t dramatically change public education.

Nearly all states permit opt-outs for sex ed or lessons on human sexuality, they note. Texas permits parents to opt their kids out of lessons on any topic for religious or moral reasons.

“A lot of school districts are, in fact, already doing what the parents are asking for here,” said Stanberry, the parents’ attorney.

Douglas Laycock, a constitutional law scholar and law professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and the University of Texas, said he did not expect schools to be flooded with opt-out requests. Laycock, who co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the parents, added that the topics parents will likely object to are predictable: sex and evolution.

If students skip broad swaths of the curriculum, that shouldn’t come without consequences, he said. For example, a student could opt out of evolution lessons, he said, but then “you can’t get credit for biology.”

Still, he can imagine a scenario in which schools get overloaded with parents’ opt-out requests.

“If you have large numbers of people demanding alternative assignments for lots of different parts of the curriculum, at some point it’s going to become unworkable,” he said. But if parents’ requests are limited to a smaller piece of the curriculum, as he believes they were in Montgomery County, schools should be able to make that work.

The reason the school district got so many opt-out requests, he added, is because the curriculum was age-inappropriate and lacked broad community support.

Stanberry, too, could imagine another case in which the school district’s responsibility to educate children — especially in core subjects like reading and math — could trump a parent’s religious right to skip that content.

“When it comes to matters that are particularly sensitive to religion, especially matters of human sexuality, gender identity,” he said, “that’s a place where parents should get to decide.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

A Maine pole vaulter cleared the bar to win the state title. Waiting below was Donald Trump.

2025-04-12T00:05:31+00:00

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The winning pole vault at Maine’s Class B girls’ track and field championship in February missed the state record by 7 inches. But it was high enough to catapult Maine to the top of President Donald Trump’s enemies list.

Two weeks before that competition, Trump had signed an executive order aimed at “keeping men out of women’s sports.” The order threatened to withhold federal funding from any school that allowed athletes assigned male at birth to participate in girls’ or women’s sports.

The pole vaulter who clinched the girls’ state title was a trans athlete from a school district of 1,850 in the suburbs of Portland on Maine’s southern coast.

That same day, a Republican state legislator shared the 10th grader’s picture on Facebook, later calling it “unfair, unsafe, and unacceptable” that she had been allowed to compete. Conservative news outlets boosted the story.

The issue came to a head a few days later at a White House governors luncheon, where Trump told Maine Gov. Janet Mills that she better comply with his executive order or Maine wouldn’t get any federal funding. “See you in court,” Mills replied curtly.

That viral exchange set off a battle over not just who is protected by Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in education, but how far the president can take his aggressive and unusual approach to civil rights enforcement to reshape American education.

The Trump administration launched two overlapping civil rights investigations that rapidly determined Maine had violated Title IX. Maine officials say they are complying with their state’s human rights law, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, and don’t plan to back down. Now the Trump administration is taking Maine to court and moving to strip the state of its K-12 education funding — an unprecedented step.

That move could instill fear in states and schools that have policies similar to Maine’s. Educators and officials could now be wondering if they’ll be the focus of such an investigation themselves, and whether they’re ready to risk hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to hold onto those rules and beliefs.

What’s happening in Maine comes as the Trump administration wages war with numerous colleges and several state K-12 leaders over antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, respectively.

Federal officials are conducting at least 18 other investigations into school districts, state education agencies, and state athletics associations over policies involving transgender students, according to a tracker compiled by Education Week. There’s now a Title IX special investigations team tasked with wrapping up investigations quickly and preparing them for litigation.

Those backing the Trump administration’s actions say the president’s position — far from being radical — is supported by the law, common sense, and the general public.

Teresa Manning, the policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative education policies, said the phrase “on the basis of sex” in Title IX should be interpreted by its “plain meaning” that there are two sexes, male and female, and those don’t change.

“What the Trump administration is doing is simply maintaining the status quo of how Title IX has been interpreted for 50 years,” Manning said. “It’s not like the executive orders are anything new.”

Seth Galanter, who served in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Biden and Obama administrations, said a big reason the Maine case matters is how it will “affect trans athletes and their lives, and their ability to participate in sports.”

But he also believes the outcome of the dispute matters for all kinds of students.

“This is really an administration that is trying to bully people and schools to do what they want by discarding all the protections and norms that usually accompany a civil rights investigation,” said Galanter, who worked in the Education Department until January. “If they can do that successfully around trans kids, then they can do it around kids with disabilities, or English learner kids, or other kids who really need federal protection.”

Why trans girls playing sports is key issue for Trump

Trump made the participation of trans athletes on girls’ and women’s sports teams a signature issue of his presidential campaign. He and his supporters have said that athletes who were assigned male at birth have an unfair physical advantage over their competitors whose birth sex was female.

When trans girls medal in sporting competitions, they say, it takes honors away from cisgender girls and could reduce their shot at a college scholarship. Some cisgender girls feel uncomfortable undressing in front of trans girls in the locker room.

“A sport I had loved and had put my heart into became a sport that was painful and a constant reminder of the physical abilities that I do not have,” the Maine 12th grader who tied for second place in the girls’ pole vault championship wrote in an opinion piece for the Portland Press Herald. “How were we expected to compete with someone who would always physically dominate?”

Advocates for trans athletes, meanwhile, say it’s crucial for kids to be able to play on teams that correspond with their gender identity so they feel included at school. Trans kids are at a much higher risk for depression and suicide, and playing sports can help with self-esteem and mental health.

“Leadership, teamwork, being a good loser and a good winner — all those great benefits that sports provide, which is why sports are an important part of your education — that needs to be available to all of our students, including our transgender students,” said Sarah McDaniel, who has a trans son and is the president of the Portland chapter of PFLAG, which supports the families and friends of LGBTQ people.

Trump’s executive order focused on student athletics wasn’t his only directive focused on gender. On the first day of his second term, he also signed an executive order stating that the federal government would recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that the definition of “sex” under federal law did not include gender identity.

That helped form the policy backbone for his early February directive about trans athletes.

In addition to its threat to strip federal funds from any educational program with policies deemed “unfair to female athletes”, the executive order expressed the Trump administration’s opposition to “male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”

President Trump signed an executive order in early February seeking to ban trans girls from playing on girls' and women's sports teams. He was joined by supporters like Riley Gaines (center), a former competitive swimmer who has advocated for excluding trans women from women's athletics.

That executive order also urged athletics organizations and states to change policies that allow trans girls to compete in women’s sports, even if they “reduce the testosterone in their bodies below certain levels or provide documentation of ‘sincerely held’ gender identity.”

Manning said the Trump administration’s swift approach to enforcing Title IX matches the issue’s urgency: “The threat to these women is happening right now. It is, right now, a violation of Title IX.”

It’s also a “political no-brainer,” Manning said, pointing to polling from January by the New York Times and Ipsos that found 79% of American adults do not think trans women should be allowed to compete on women’s sports teams. That finding mirrors other recent polls.

Trump administration takes unusual civil rights approach

The federal government’s treatment of Maine is unprecedented, multiple legal experts told Chalkbeat, from the way it carried out its investigations to the severity of the consequences it has imposed.

The Education Department has a backlog of civil rights cases and recently fired hundreds of civil rights attorneys. But it chose to open the Maine investigation unprompted by any complaints.

While any agency that gives federal funds to an educational institution can enforce Title IX, the Education Department typically leads the charge because it has the most expertise. But in this case, the Department of Health and Human Services, which usually investigates medical schools and hospital training programs, opened the first investigation, followed by the Education Department.

Both decided Maine had violated Title IX within a few weeks — though these kinds of investigations typically take many months to conclude.

Neither federal agency requested any data or documents or attempted to interview anyone from the Maine Department of Education before issuing their findings, said Danna Hayes, a spokesperson for the Maine attorney general’s office, which is representing the state’s education agency.

The Education Department’s draft agreement contained five pages of demands, including stripping any trans girl who’s ever placed in a Maine girls sports competition of her title and giving it to the athlete behind her with an apology letter. Maine should have received 90 days to consider that proposal, according to the agency’s manual. Maine got just 10.

There’s a clear process for investigating potential civil rights violations, said R. Shep Melnick, a professor of American politics at Boston College who’s studied Title IX and civil rights. The Trump administration has “done none of that.”

“I’ve been critical of OCR in the past under Biden and Obama for using investigations basically to get schools to do what they want without following these procedures, but this is far worse,” Melnick said.

The Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies targeted Maine, too.

Neither the Education Department nor the Agriculture Department responded to Chalkbeat’s questions regarding the Trump administration’s Title IX enforcement strategy and its probes in Maine.

In response to a list of questions, Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for HHS, directed Chalkbeat to a two-sentence social media post from March 28 in which the department said it had referred its Maine Title IX investigation to the Justice Department. “HHS will continue to protect women’s sports and keep the promises of Title IX,” the post states.

Who gets to define ‘sex’?

Many biologists now think sex is more complicated than the male and female binary. But Title IX is “completely silent” on the issue of transgender athletes and does not spell out whether schools should require trans athletes to play on teams that correspond with their birth sex or their gender identity, Melnick said.

Congress could pass a law to define sex under Title IX. Or the Trump administration could go through the lengthy formal rule-making process. The Biden administration tried to define sex to include gender identity in a rule, but a federal judge threw it out. A separate Biden administration proposal that ultimately could have allowed high schools and colleges to restrict the participation of trans athletes never made it across the finish line.

The Trump administration has said Title IX “forbids” trans girls from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and allowing them to do so is an outright violation of the law.

But multiple civil rights experts told Chalkbeat that’s not how Title IX is enforced under the 1979 policy interpretation that governs the Education Department’s civil rights investigations.

It’s a Title IX violation if girls lack equal access to athletics in the aggregate. For example, an investigator concerned about whether girls had the same access to athletic gear as boys would look at the equipment used by all teams, not just the tennis team.

“Identical benefits, opportunities, or treatment are not required, provided the overall effects of any differences is negligible,” the 1979 policy states.

On top of that, there are federal court rulings in two cases, one in the Ninth Circuit and another in the Fourth Circuit, that have upheld the rights of trans girls to play on teams that correspond with their gender identity.

Those cases are ongoing. But the Trump administration hasn’t said why the 14 states bound by those decisions should not follow them, Galanter said.

“It’s just completely unclear what their legal theory is here,” Galanter said.

Issue of trans athletes continues to divide Maine

On Friday, the Maine attorney general’s office told the Trump administration that the state wouldn’t agree to the Education Department’s Title IX resolution. Maine offered no counter-proposals.

“Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” Maine’s assistant attorney general, Sarah Forster, wrote.

In response, the Education Department said it had referred the case to the Justice Department and would start the administrative process to take away Maine’s K-12 education funding. That includes discretionary grants and formula funds, the department said, which covers Title I dollars for high-poverty schools and IDEA grants for children with disabilities.

“Governor Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom — be careful what you wish for,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said Friday in a statement. “Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”

Hayes, of the Maine attorney general’s office, declined to comment further, and the Education Department did not respond to follow-up questions from Chalkbeat.

Galanter worried a Justice Department lawsuit against Maine could make even school districts and states with gender-affirming athletics policies “really scared to have trans kids play sports, or even worse, have kids who people think are trans play on sports teams.”

“There is no way to enforce gender that isn’t gross, weird, a complete invasion of privacy,” said Bre Danvers-Kidman, the executive co-director of MaineTransNet, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of transgender people in Maine. Kids think: “I don’t want to have to show somebody my junk to play softball.”

The issue continues to divide people in Maine.

Republican state lawmakers introduced several bills to restrict the participation of trans athletes on sports teams. Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, said the issue is “worthy of a debate” but that for now, she will defend the state’s current laws.

Maine's Greely High School was thrust into the national spotlight after a Republican state legislator posted a photo on social media of a trans student at the school who won a state pole vaulting championship.

Hundreds of people recently turned out to a rally to support trans youth outside Greely High School, where the winning pole vaulter is a student, including several of her classmates.

Maine School Administrative District 51, which includes Greely, did not sign a resolution agreement with HHS, but the school district responded to the Education Department’s probe.

The district had less than two weeks to reply to dozens of requests, said Melissa Hewey, the attorney representing the district, including for rosters of every girls sports team and any trans athletes playing on them, and a breakdown of how the district’s fields and equipment compare for boys and girls.

Maine has a long tradition of standing up for what it believes in, “even in the face of political pressures,” said Danvers-Kidman, who’s listened to how angry this situation has made trans kids in meetings across the state.

For their sake, Danvers-Kidman hopes Maine stands its ground.

Chalkbeat national editor Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

As Trump dismantles gender-affirming policies, Chicago LGBTQ+ students and staff mobilize

2025-04-03T22:40:00+00:00

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In the last few months, Milo can’t help but notice how the mood among his fellow students at Chicago’s Jones College Prep has shifted.

What’s led to the change isn’t a development at the school itself, which is relatively friendly to queer and transgender students and where Milo, a senior, leads the Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA. Instead, it’s how President Donald Trump’s administration and others have moved to restrict the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and transgender people in particular, including students.

In response, GSA clubs in Chicago Public Schools are mobilizing to support students as well as staff during a difficult and volatile period. The groups are emphasizing self-care and helping people understand the political and policy changes taking place. Students in them are also organizing public events and speaking out about curriculum, student behavior, and ensuring policy that affirms LGBTQ+ students is actually used in schools.

CPS currently has a robust set of guidelines for supporting trans and gender nonconforming students and staff. But ultimately, schools and other systems that serve students “need to make it clear that queer and trans kids are a priority to them and their support goes beyond just words” and don’t just treat them like “talking points,” said Milo. (Chalkbeat is using first names for Milo and other students in this story to protect their privacy and safety.)

“When members of our community are being targeted, that ripple is felt throughout the entire community,” Milo said. Chalkbeat is only using students’ first names for safety and privacy reasons.

In his first day in office, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders, including one declaring that the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female. The U.S. Department of Education has also tossed out protections for gender identity in schools adopted by the Biden administration and told educators they must share information about students’ gender identity with parents.

Before too long, Chicago and the state felt the effects of these dramatic policy shifts. In early March, two conservative groups filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Illinois State Board of Education and Chicago Public Schools, targeting the extension of Title IX policies to include gender identity. The federal Education Department promptly opened an investigation.

On Thursday, the department told states that in 10 days, they must certify that their schools aren’t engaging in what the Trump administration believes are illegal efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. States that don’t comply will lose their federal education funding, the administration said.

There is movement afoot to bolster current policies focused on supporting students like Milo.

A tentative contract agreement between the Chicago Teachers Union and the district announced earlier this week includes a commitment to having one staff person in each of the district’s 18 geographic networks provide support to GSAs and LGBTQ+ students, staff, and families. It also allows for schools to have a staff member volunteer to serve as a “Gender Support Coordinator.”

Corey Lascano, a CPS teacher and GSA advisor, said she expected conservative groups to leverage the Trump administration’s revisions to Title IX policies to target LGBTQ+-affirming policies in districts like CPS, which is why these new provisions are important.

Lascano said a lot of her conversations with students have focused on protecting themselves, both now and in the future.

“I had a conversation just today with a student regarding where they are going to college and what safety looks like for them in a state like Florida or Texas,” Lascano said. “To some degree, they can’t fully be themselves without getting pushback.”

That kind of support and counseling from teachers means a lot to students like Maggie, a Kenwood Academy student and GSA member.

In the wake of the 2024 election, Maggie said more teachers began being vocal about their support for LGBTQ+ students and posting signs with slogans such as “Trans Rights Are Human Rights.”

“Sometimes it can be really hard as a queer student to know what teachers to trust,” they said, “so being able to have teachers who are very vocal is important.”

School staff play important role for LGBTQ+ students

Some state and local education leaders have made it clear that Trump administration policy does not match theirs.

In February, Illinois Superintendent Tony Sanders publicly reaffirmed the state’s commitment to teaching the contributions of LGBTQ+ Americans throughout history in accordance with the state’s Inclusive Curriculum Law.

Sanders’ letter came in response to a letter from the federal Education Department advising educators that their schools were at risk of losing federal funding if they continued with diversity initiatives.

But that’s not necessarily enough for teachers like Lascano. She said CPS needs to stand firm in its stance to stand with LGBTQ+ educators and communities by enforcing the state law about inclusive curricula, not just highlighting it.

“You can have the most inclusive curriculum in the world, but [it doesn’t mean anything] if your principal is telling staff members they don’t need to teach any of the lessons with a trans character in it because it would violate their right to believe in only two genders,” Lascano said.

Milo said he’s taking a course called Gender and Sexuality in History, but wants to see LGBTQ+ histories and experiences integrated more into standard courses.

“Students shouldn’t have to choose an elective to learn their own history,” he said.

There’s a similar dynamic about how students and staff act and the resources available to them.

Julio Flores, program director for the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, an organization that advocates families with LGBTQ+ youth experiencing challenges at schools, said he has received several requests from schools seeking professional development to be proactively supportive.

“Some young people are not wanting to use they/them pronouns for a nonbinary person because they think the executive order says they don’t have to,” said Flores, referring to Trump’s directive.

There’s been a rise in students’ casual use of homophobic, transphobic, and ableist language, said Julie Merrell, Kenwood’s GSA adviser. They noted that the increase they have observed has been incremental.

“It’s not like one day it was amazing and now it’s bad,” they said. “Students have dealt with being misgendered and deadnamed and made to feel like they can’t be themselves my entire teaching career.”

As an out nonbinary educator, Merrell said they are misgendered constantly by colleagues, including support staff members.

“I think that cis allies really need to show up by calling each other in and educating each other, so the work isn’t always on trans students and staff who are feeling increased anxiety at this moment,” Merrell said.

In addition to districtwide resources for reporting Title IX violations, Kenwood has an anonymous reporting system where students can report incidents — including allegations of homophobia or transphobia — to the principal.

“I don’t know how seriously the staff take it, but students don’t seem to take it seriously or trust it,” Maggie said.

There are other issues that official policy doesn’t always capture. Merrell said there are challenges to implementing student gender support plans when staff or administrative capacity is an issue. And community resources are not always equally accessible, Lascano noted.

“The North Side has very strong support and coalitions and organizing, but on the South Side and the West Side, community resources are more limited,” she said. “We need parents who are actively supporting queer and trans teachers, actively supporting their schools’ GSAs.”

Still, Lascano hopes that official moves like the language focused on LGBTQ+ students in the preliminary CTU contract — which she helped to write as part of a committee — represents progress.

“It ensures another layer of safety not just for queer and trans staff but for students as well,” she said.

In March, the CPS Office of Student Health and Wellness hosted an event called the Galaxy Summit that was a gathering “to learn about and celebrate the galaxies of gender, sexuality, and love” open to all students in 5th through 12th grade across the city, which teacher and GSA advisor Lindsey Williston brought students from her school to attend.

“They know it’s a bigger world, but to see it all in one room gives them comfort,” Williston said.

That’s the kind of community building that gives Milo hope.

“In a big city like Chicago, these connections are all around us and send a really strong message of support to people who might not be able to find that themselves,” Milo said.

Students say what they need from the adults in their school communities is quite simple: believe them.

“We know who we are,” said Maggie from Kenwood. “If we say ‘I think I’m trans’ or ‘I think I’m gay’ or ‘I think I’m bi,’ we mean it, and we deserve to be heard.”

Schools must share child gender identity info with parents, Trump Education Department says

2025-03-29T18:54:26+00:00

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Schools cannot withhold documents that discuss a child’s gender identity from parents, the U.S. Department of Education said in a Dear Colleague letter to educators.

The Friday letter said many schools and states have misinterpreted federal student privacy laws in ways that prevent parents from knowing when their child is going by a different name or pronouns at school.

Advocates for LGBTQ youth say that most schools try to involve parents but not all parents are safe or supportive.

The letter said many school districts have formal or informal policies of treating “gender plans” — plans that support students who want to socially transition at school — as something other than educational records so that they do not have to share them with parents.

That practice violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which lays out students’ privacy rights in school and also gives parents access to students’ educational records, according to the letter from Frank Miller Jr., acting director for the Student Privacy Policy Office in the Education Department. All information that a school maintains about a student, with a few narrow exceptions, should be considered an educational record and shared with parents, Miller Jr. wrote.

The letter also addresses how schools should handle cases in which one student makes a serious threat against another.

The line between parental rights and students rights has been a fraught one in the debate over transgender rights at school. The letter comes as the U.S. Department of Education has opened investigations into California and Maine for alleged FERPA violations related to policies that call for schools to respect students’ chosen names and pronouns. President Donald Trump has also used executive orders to attack transgender rights on numerous fronts.

Dear Colleague letters are not equivalent to federal law or regulations, but do represent a presidential administration’s interpretation of the law.

In a cover letter, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said some schools, by using students’ preferred names and pronouns and generally respecting their new gender identity, have set children and teenagers on a path toward medical transitions that they later regret.

“The practice of encouraging children down a path with irreversible repercussions — and hiding it from parents — must end,” McMahon wrote. “Attempts by school officials to separate children from their parents, convince children to feel unsafe at home, or burden children with the weight of keeping secrets from their loved ones is a direct affront to the family unit. When such conduct violates the law the Department will take swift action.”

Written records related to a student’s gender identity, as well as school counseling records, would be considered educational records, said LeRoy Rooker, who oversaw FERPA administration at the U.S. Department of Education for 21 years and is now a senior fellow at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. That means parents have the right to see those records at the K-12 level until a student turns 18.

That’s not a new interpretation of the law, Rooker said, though the issue is more prominent now than in the past. FERPA doesn’t require schools to notify parents about changes in a student’s gender identity or reveal information that isn’t part of a written record, but schools can’t withhold records that parents request.

California law prohibits school districts from requiring parental notification. Maine’s policies, which are guidelines and not requirements, state that schools should respect students’ gender identity, even if parents don’t agree. The guidelines don’t directly address parental notification or withholding information.

Sarah McDaniel, president of the Portland, Maine, chapter of PFLAG, an advocacy group for parents and allies of LGBTQ people, said it’s not true that schools are encouraging children to become transgender behind their parents’ backs.

Any policy on parental notification has to prioritize students’ safety, she said.

“Parents who are unsupportive can be extremely unsupportive, to the point that they kick their kid out of the house,” said McDaniel, who is the mother of a trans son who came out in high school. “A high schooler who is scared to tell their parents what their pronoun is, they know their parental situation and they should not be forcefully outed.”

The Education Department has also targeted Maine for policies that allow transgender athletes to compete on teams that align with their gender identity and threatened to withhold federal funding.

Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, a group that supports the legal rights of LGBTQ students, called the letter “the latest intimidation tactic” to suppress support for gay and trans youth in school.

“When Linda McMahon says ‘parents’ rights,’ she’s not talking about every parent,” she said in a statement. “LGBTQ+ students and their parents are wondering why what’s left of the Education Department is so focused on pushing a climate of exclusion instead of advancing a vision where every student is set up for success.”

Schools’ approaches to gender identity vary

Around the country, states and school districts have adopted a range of policies and laws about students’ requests to change their names and gender identity.

Indiana requires schools to notify parents of any student request to use a different name, pronoun or gender. Some school districts there won’t use a different name or pronoun without parental permission.

Colorado state law requires school districts to respect non-legal name changes. But school districts have a range of policies on parental notification. In some conservative communities there, school districts still require parental permission for a child to go by a different gender at school.

New York City policy says situations in which students don’t want parents to know about their gender identity should be handled with care on a case-by-case basis.

Michigan’s non-binding state guidance has a similar provision, noting that privacy considerations vary by age.

A number of parents have sued their school district, alleging that officials withheld critical information about their child. The courts have generally sided with the school districts, and in some cases, the situation has been more complicated than initially presented.

Trump used his joint address to Congress to highlight the case of January Littlejohn, a Florida parent who accused her school district of carrying out a “secret gender transition.”

According to Politifact and other media accounts, court records later revealed that Littlejohn informed her child’s teacher that the child identified as nonbinary and wanted to use they/them pronouns. In an email, Littlejohn said the child could take the lead at school, even though she and her husband would not change what they called the child at home.

The school initially denied Littlejohn access to a support plan that had been developed but eventually shared the document.

A federal judge dismissed Littlejohn’s lawsuit. The family is appealing.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that involved a Wisconsin school district’s gender support polices because none of the plaintiffs had a child in the school district who had changed their gender identity without a parent’s knowledge. The case involved a theoretical harm, rather than an actual family.

Through executive orders, the Trump administration has attempted to ban transgender service members from the military, refused to issue identity documents with updated gender markers, and threatened hospitals that provide gender-affirming care. All of these orders have been challenged in court, with litigation ongoing.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with information from LeRoy Rooker, an expert in FERPA.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools, Illinois State Board of Education face federal Title IX investigation

2025-03-20T22:40:37+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday that it will launch an investigation into Chicago Public Schools, the Illinois State Board of Education and suburban Deerfield Public School District 109 for alleged violations of the Title IX, federal law that prohibits sex discrimination.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights investigation comes in response to a federal complaint filed earlier this week by conservative groups against the district and Illinois’ education department. Those groups — the Defense of Freedom Institute of Policy Studies and the Liberty Justice Center — say that state and district policies are “forcing students to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and overnight accommodations with members of the opposite sex, based solely on self-declared ‘gender identity’.

The investigations put a state with outspoken progressive leadership in the crosshairs of a Trump administration that has shown it will use the threat of losing federal funding to influence policy in schools. Any violations of Title IX could result in a loss of federal funding, the department said in its press release. The investigation also comes at an awkward time: President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that calls for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. Abolishing the agency would require approval from Congress.

It’s unclear how that would affect programs that benefit vulnerable students. The Education Department administers Title I, which provides extra money to high-poverty schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which supports special education.

Districts in Illinois, including CPS, as well as the state, have adopted policies that are meant to affirm and protect the identities of its LGTBQ and gender non-conforming students. In Chicago, for example, that includes allowing students to be addressed by the name and pronouns that match their gender identity. It also allows students to use the locker room or bathroom that matches their gender identity.

Even though the department has only just announced its investigation, the department’s press release includes a quote from one of the complainants that triggered the inquiry: the Defense of Freedom Institute, a right-leaning think tank focused on education and labor issues.

The federal complaint filed earlier this week says that state and district policies violate the privacy rights of other students. The groups also claim that the state prevents schools from telling parents about students’ gender identities.

Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement that Title IX was created with the understanding that “males and females, especially minors, have a right to be free from compelled exposure of their bodies or from engaging in intimate activities — like changing their clothes in a locker room — in front of the opposite sex.”

Jaclyn Matthews, a spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education, said the department cannot comment on matters involving the federal Office of Civil Rights.

Chicago Public Schools said in a statement that any complaint will be reviewed and responded to “in a timely manner.”

In a statement, Deerfield Public Schools said it complies with Illinois state law, which “prohibits all public school districts from discriminating on the basis of sex, including gender identity, and mandates that students must be permitted access to the locker room and bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.”

The district also said that it is “sensitive” to the privacy needs of its students and said it added five private changing stations at its two middle schools that are available for all students, giving them “multiple options” outside of the locker room.

Under former President Joe Biden, new rules in Title IX were created to protect gender identity. Schools were considered in violation of student rights if they prevented students from, for example, using bathrooms that matched their gender identity or if teachers did not use a student’s chosen name and pronouns. Those changes prompted Republican-controlled states to sue the Biden administration.

After a federal judge overturned Biden’s Title IX rules in January, schools reverted back to the rules in place during the first Trump administration, which do not include protections for LGBTQ students.

The investigation announced Thursday is part of a broader effort from the federal government to clamp down on policies that districts view as protections for their LGBTQ and gender nonconforming students.

Last month, the department announced a Title IX investigation into the Maine education department, as well as an individual school district — a process that could offer clues about what is ahead for Illinois.

This week, the Trump administration announced that Maine had violated Title IX and listed its proposed remedies, which includes forbidding “males to participate in any athletic program, or access any locker room or bathroom, designated for females and that meaning of words such as ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are to be understood ‘in the context of the facts that there are only two sexes.’” State officials were given 10 days to respond.

The Democratic governors of both Maine and Illinois have picked public fights with Trump. On Thursday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker criticized Trump’s executive order to dissolve the U.S. Department of Education.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Appeals court hears arguments from Catholic preschools, state in Colorado universal preschool case

2025-03-18T22:48:41+00:00

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Lawyers for the state of Colorado and for a pair of Catholic parishes each made their case Tuesday before a federal appeals court in an ongoing lawsuit over whether Catholic preschools must abide by state non-discrimination rules in order to receive state funding.

The case is arguably the most high-stakes of the lawsuits that have been filed against Colorado’s universal preschool program, which launched in August 2023. If the Catholic parishes win the appeal, it’s possible Colorado children could be shut out of some publicly funded preschools because they or their parents identify as LGBTQ.

Nick Reaves, an attorney representing the Catholic parishes, argued that Colorado has “barred the door to the Archdiocese” participating in the state program, which provides 10 to 30 hours per week of free preschool to the state’s 4-year-olds.

The Catholic parishes have said they can’t participate because the state’s non-discrimination rules could force them to enroll preschoolers from LGBTQ families in conflict with their beliefs and in violation of their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

“If Colorado has made virtually every preschool in the state free except a handful of religious preschools,” Reaves told a three-judge panel in Denver on Tuesday, “we are talking about discrimination or a lack of neutrality toward religious preschools.”

But Colorado Deputy Solicitor General Helen Norton argued that the state’s non-discrimination rules apply to all preschools in the state-funded program — religious and secular — and therefore, the rules don’t discriminate against religious preschool providers.

The Catholic parishes, she said in court Tuesday, “ask this court to do what no appellate court has ever done: Create a First Amendment right for publicly funded schools to exclude or expel children because of the children’s or parents’ protected status.”

The three judges who heard the case in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals — Judge Gregory Phillips, Judge Veronica Rossman, and Judge Richard Federico — didn’t immediately rule.

Colorado’s universal preschool program is serving nearly 70% of the state’s 4-year-olds in about 2,000 participating preschools this year. That includes 40 religious preschools, five of which are operated by Catholic Charities of Denver, the charitable arm of the Archdiocese of Denver.

Lawyers for the two Catholic parishes at the center of the lawsuit have said that the Catholic Charities preschools were allowed to participate because they have a different mission than the rest of the Archdiocese preschools, which is to serve the poor.

The lawsuit began in August 2023, when St. Mary in Littleton and St. Bernadette in Lakewood sued the state. They argued that rules barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity prevented their preschools from joining the new universal preschool program.

U.S. District Court Judge John L. Kane largely ruled against the Catholic parishes in June 2024. He wrote of Colorado’s non-discrimination rules: “The purpose of the requirement is not to invade religious freedom but to further the implementation of a strongly embraced public value.”

Lawyers for the preschools promptly appealed.

In court Tuesday, Reaves said Catholic preschools are being harmed by the status quo. Enrollment is dropping, he said, and one preschool has closed. He didn’t name which one, but Wellspring Catholic Academy, the preschool associated with St. Bernadette, closed in December.

Reaves argued that Colorado’s universal preschool program allows enrollment exceptions based on other protected characteristics, such as income, by allowing the participation of Head Start preschools that exclusively serve low-income families.

“We’re not asking Colorado to kick out the Head Start programs,” Reaves said. “All we’re saying is if you give those preferences, you have to consider religion.”

But Norton disagreed with Reaves’ characterization. To interpret the participation of preschool programs that save seats for children from low-income families as deviating from the non-discrimination rules would be turning the meaning of those rules on its head, she said. The only preferences the universal preschool program currently allows are based on factors such as whether a preschooler is the child of a teacher or the sibling of a current student.

Judge Phillips asked Norton what would happen if the court ruled against the state and struck down all of those preferences. In that case, Norton said, 4-year-olds applying to the program would be matched with preschools based on the program’s “default algorithm,” which she said would match students randomly or on a “first come, first served” basis.

Chalkbeat senior reporter Ann Schimke contributed to this report.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Despite Trump’s threats, withholding federal funds from schools easier said than done

2025-02-27T22:03:50+00:00

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This story was originally published in the Maine Morning Star and is republished with permission.

Despite President Donald Trump’s threats and several investigations launched by his administration into Maine’s protections for transgender athletes, withholding federal money from schools is easier said than done.

Hours after a tense exchange between Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills over the state’s policy regarding trans athletes, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights initiated an investigation into the Maine Department of Education and a southern Maine school district for failing to comply with its interpretation of federal law and an executive order barring trans girls from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

For decades, Title IX has been enforced almost exclusively by OCR, which upholds specific federal laws that protect students and employees at institutions receiving federal funds from discrimination based on race, sex, or gender. These laws include Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that protects against sex discrimination, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that protects against racial discrimination.

Recently, the Trump administration has been advancing an alternative interpretation of these laws and has used OCR to threaten to cut federal funding to Democratic states, including California, Minnesota, and Maine, that have enshrined protections for trans students.

But OCR’s protocols, the actual text of federal law, and Maine’s state laws will together provide the state a substantial bulwark against possible funding cuts, an expert on the agency said.

“It’s not easy for OCR to legitimately cut off funding,” said Rachel Perera, a fellow in the governance studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at national think tank the Brookings Institution. “Repurposing OCR’s work to terminate federal funding for these more expansive interpretations of current federal law is going to be an uphill battle.”

Perera said cutting off federal funds to state education departments is almost unheard of for any reason, let alone an OCR violation. In fact, OCR has never withheld federal funds as a result of an investigation, according to Perera as well as an investigation by USA Today.

Although the Trump administration is interpreting Title IX to exclude trans athletes from sports and schools facilities, there is nothing in the actual law that mentions trans students. On top of that, OCR — an already overworked, understaffed department — has historically had limited authority as well as a significant backlog of cases to investigate, which Perera said makes any drastic outcome, such as withholding funds from Maine, highly unlikely.

All of that means that Maine is in a strong position to push back against the federal government, as long as current laws and procedures apply.

“I think institutions, states, and universities who want to stand up to them have the current interpretations of federal law on their side and current policies and regulations that dictate how OCR works on their side,” Perera said. “How much those things matter — as much as they have in the past — is still an open question.”

The Maine Department of Education agrees with that assessment.

“The Maine DOE does not believe that the federal government can legally withhold funding from Maine schools — either for athletic programming or more generally — as a means of coercion for compliance with an Executive Order,” said spokesperson Chloe Teboe in a statement.

In addition to the OCR investigation, the Trump administration expanded its probe into Maine through the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, which the Bangor Daily News reported had only each launched one previous Title IX investigation. The University of Maine System had not received the USDA letter as of Tuesday, according to system spokesperson Samantha Warren. The agency’s public statement announcing the investigation “notably makes no allegations of any wrongdoing,” Warren said.

OCR claims Maine in ‘irresolvable conflict’ with federal law

In a letter sent Friday to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin, OCR’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said the agency plans to expeditiously investigate whether the state has been denying equal opportunities to female student athletes while having policies that allow “males to participate in girl’s interscholastic athletics, thereby depriving girls and young women of equal athletic opportunities.”

Surrounded by young athletes, President Donald Trump signs an executive order barring trans athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports at any level.

According to the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, “a potential Title IX violation occurs when a covered entity denies female students female-only intimate facilities, such as sex-segregated locker rooms and bathrooms,” Trainor said.

OCR said Maine’s Education Department might be knowingly defying federal law, citing the department’s response to Trump’s executive order asking schools to continue complying with Maine Human Rights Act, which protects trans students from discrimination in schools.

“OCR’s initiation of a directed investigation is not itself evidence of a violation of federal civil rights laws and regulations,” Trainor said. “However, MDOE’s posted statement … appears to acknowledge that it is knowingly taking a position in irresolvable conflict with federal law and instructing schools throughout Maine to do the same.”

The Cumberland-area school district that is under investigation is following Maine DOE’s guidance, according to a letter posted by Superintendent Jeff Porter on Feb. 10. The Office for Civil Rights cited that letter and “credible local reporting” by the Maine Wire, a conservative blog published by the Maine Policy Institute, as reasons to investigate Greely High School.

What OCR can and can’t do

OCR investigates thousands of complaints each year, and they typically take months or years to resolve. In the course of its investigation, the office conducts interviews and reviews documents. If investigators find that a student or staff member was discriminated against, the office can require that districts make changes, such as altering policies, conducting staff or student training, or assessing school climate. These changes are often outlined in a voluntary resolution agreement. If the agency being investigated does not want to comply, it can get the Department of Justice involved, which can then result in the investigation being settled in federal court.

“So there’s lots of opportunities for institutions to forestall the possibility of having their federal funds terminated, and then to have the federal courts weigh in in a much more definitive manner,” Perera said.

Mills seems prepared for this route. In a statement issued in response to the OCR investigation on Friday, the governor said, “I imagine that the outcome of this politically directed investigation is all but predetermined. My administration will begin work with the attorney general to defend the interests of Maine people in the court of law.”

Like much of the federal government, OCR is currently in flux, with employees ordered not to investigate thousands of pending complaints alleging race and sex-based discriminations.

Almost all OCR investigations were historically initiated due to complaints filed by agencies or individuals turning to the civil rights agency for help. But since Trump took office, those have taken a back seat and the office has pursued proactive “directed investigations,” ordered by the administration.

The Maine probe is an example of a directed investigation.

Title IX open to interpretation

The Trump administration dismantled former President Joe Biden’s expansion of Title IX to protect trans and gender nonconforming students, reverting to a 2020 version of the law that does not explicitly say anything about trans students and can’t be applied to exclude trans athletes from sports, Perera said.

“So I think they’re also out on a limb there, where they are interpreting the law in a way that doesn’t reflect the law, which gives Maine more opportunity to push back,” she said.

Rewriting Title IX would need approval from Congress, making it unlikely the law would be amended quick enough to allow OCR a clearer path to declare that Maine is guilty of sex-based discrimination, she said.

And while national law remains open to interpretation, Maine’s law is clear: Trans rights are protected in schools and beyond by the Maine Human Rights Act. And Maine Attorney General Frey and Mills have promised to abide by the act and enforce those protections despite federal threats.

“Fortunately,” Frey said in a statement ahead of the investigation announcement, “the rule of law still applies in this country, and I will do everything in my power to defend Maine’s laws and block efforts by the president to bully and threaten us.”

NYC parents push for statement from schools chancellor opposing Trump executive order on race, gender

2025-02-04T01:43:25+00:00

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Five days after President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order seeking to limit how schools support gender nonconforming students and teach about racism, New York City’s educational leaders have yet to issue a systemwide public response, sparking concerns from some parents and educators.

The executive order targeting “radical indoctrination” threatens to withhold federal funding from schools that support students in gender transitions or that teach about the prevalence of racism in American life.

Some education lawyers have questioned whether the order is lawful or enforceable, given the significant power of states and localities to control their own curriculum. Several states and districts have already sent out communications to families and educators pushing back on the order.

New York’s state Education Department issued a statement Monday sent to school staffers saying the executive order is “antithetical” to the U.S. Congress’ history of protecting vulnerable students through legislation. “We denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders,” the statement continued. “Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.”

But the response in the nation’s largest district — long a national leader in efforts to teach about racial inequity and support gender nonconforming students — has so far been more muted. The city Education Department has not sent any systemwide communication to families or educators, and it hasn’t issued specific guidance for administrators about the executive order, according to families and school staff.

Brooklyn mom Eliza Hittman, whose fifth-grader identifies as nonbinary, said she’s in multiple parent chats where there is a “tremendous amount of agitation” over the lack of communication from administrators.

“The silence is alarming,” Hittman said.

Asked at two recent parent town halls what the city is doing to protect LGBTQ+ students, New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos reaffirmed that city schools do not tolerate any kind of hate.

“Our schools are expected to be safe spaces,” she said Monday at a town hall for District 30 in Queens.

Mark Rampersant, the chief of safety and prevention partnerships, added that New York City is one of the only school districts that has hired someone overseeing ways to foster inclusion for LGBTQ students. “Regardless of what happens on the top, we remain committed to ensuring the physical and well-being of every single one of our students,” he said.

But some parents and educators said the Education Department has not circulated that message widely enough at a time when fear is spreading quickly.

“What we need from our city leadership is … to give clarity and certainty and comfort in this time of chaos,” said Justin Krebs, the parent of a nonbinary child in Brooklyn’s District 15. “Instead, we’re hearing nothing from city leadership on this front.” He added that the city periodically sends notices to all families and he would “love to get that email” reiterating the city’s protections for LGBTQ+ students.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Bronwstein didn’t say whether the agency plans to issue a systemwide statement, but said, “We are evaluating the Executive Order to determine if it will have any impact on New York City Public Schools.”

Brownstein said, “we remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive, and affirming environment where every student can thrive.” She added that the Education Department will ensure ”our school environment remains free from harassment, intimidation, and/or bullying, and free from discrimination of any kind.”

When asked whether she was concerned about the potential loss of federal funding, Aviles-Ramos said at a town hall last week, “We do not know what lies ahead in terms of federal funding,” which makes up about $2 billion of the Education Department’s annual budget.

Some parents and teachers want stronger message of support

Jo Macellaro, a Bronx teacher who identifies as nonbinary, said the lack of a clear public statement from the city sends educators “the message … that we don’t have your back, we’re not going to protect you.”

Absent that assurance, some teachers may decide they can’t take the risk of violating the executive order, Macellaro added. The Parent-Teacher Association from P.S. 139, a Brooklyn elementary school, wrote in a Monday letter to Aviles-Ramos that it’s “disconcerting that we have not received any sort of statement from you or other city or state leadership about this.”

Some parents suspect the city Education Department’s response is constrained by Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last fall on federal corruption charges. Trump has said he’s open to the idea of pardoning the mayor, and the U.S Department of Justice is reportedly weighing dropping the prosecution against Adams, who has pledged not to publicly criticize Trump’s policies. Adams has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Gavin Healy, a Manhattan parent and member of the Community Education Council in District 2, said he thinks Adams’ political situation may be limiting the Education Department’s ability to respond. “I think doing what’s right for the students is hostage to the mayor’s legal issues and courting of the Trump administration.”

Existing policies offer strong protection for transgender students

The city Education Department’s policy on transgender and gender expansive students, which dates back more than a decade, instructs staff to address students by their preferred pronouns at school. It gives schools some discretion not to inform parents when a student is socially transitioning in cases where a family doesn’t accept their gender identity and allows students to use bathrooms and join sports teams that are consistent with their gender identities.

When Manhattan’s community education council in District 2 passed a resolution last year urging the city to reconsider its sports policy for transgender students, then-Chancellor David Banks rebuked the proposal as “despicable” and reaffirmed the city’s policy.

Krebs, the Brooklyn parent of a nonbinary student, said he’s not worried about his own child’s school. But in a system this large, without clear instructions from city leadership, some schools and educators might be reluctant to run afoul of the executive order, he said. Krebs drew an analogy to reports that NYU’s Langone Hospital halted gender-affirming medical care for some patients following a separate executive order banning the practice for people under age 19.

Some schools may “start complying in advance, the same way NYU Langone has,” he said, “when a school says, ‘You know what, to be on the safe side, we’re going to stop calling kids by their pronouns.’”

Johanna Miller, director of the education policy center at the New York Civil Liberties Union, noted that Trump’s executive order charges federal agencies with developing an enforcement plan, and it’s hard to say for sure how the order would be carried out until that happens. The executive order specifically mentions practices like using students’ preferred pronouns, referring to students as nonbinary, and allowing them to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identities as ones that may run afoul of the order. It also targets concepts like white privilege and unconscious bias.

But Miller said that state laws preventing bullying and harassment remain on the books.

“If an educator in New York State reads this executive order from Trump and decides on their own that they’re not going to comply with New York laws, they would be legally liable in that situation for not complying with the law,” she said.

Taking matters into their own hands

Some parent leaders are trying to push the city to issue a more forceful response.

Faraji Hannah-Jones, a member of the Community Education Council for District 13, told Aviles-Ramos at a town hall last week that he doesn’t “think that this office is ready for the shitstorm that is coming.

“I want to know, does your office have a backbone on these issues?” he asked.

Aviles-Ramos responded it’s “very sad to hear there’s a lack of faith in this administration.” She pointed to its work developing new curriculum including Black studies curriculum, for example.

Reached by phone Monday, Hannah-Jones said he’s been sounding the alarm about Trump’s education plans for months and has gotten little response from city officials. The Education Department is more “concerned about bringing us in a back room to have a conversation than having one in public,” he added.

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a parent in East Harlem and former member of the Panel for Educational Policy, an oversight panel for the city Education Department, drafted a mock resolution opposing the executive order that she hopes local Community Education Councils will modify and adopt.

“It’s our time to raise our voices,” she said.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Trump executive orders on DEI and schools big on drama, but impact will take time to emerge

2025-02-03T23:57:09+00:00

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With a series of sweeping executive actions, President Donald Trump is seeking to remake K-12 education in a conservative image. In the process, he’s pushing legal and political boundaries on how far the federal government can reach into American classrooms.

But the executive orders on their own have little power to radically and rapidly change an American school system in which states, school districts, and even individual schools have traditionally called the shots on everything from what kids learn to which restroom transgender students use.

Some conservatives are cheering the new approach — one they believe better reflects the views of most Americans. Many left-leaning education advocates and those who champion traditional public schools say the executive orders have little legal power.

It will likely take months for the full impact of the executive orders to be clear.

In the first two weeks of his second term, Trump said the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, which could have big implications for transgender students’ rights. He wants to root out “radical indoctrination” in American classrooms and send more federal funding to private school vouchers.

He also cleared the way for immigration arrests at schools, and sought to freeze certain federal funds for schools and early childhood programs. The administration continues to selectively block payments to programs it deems not aligned with its values or policy priorities in the face of numerous legal challenges.

Taken together, these actions show the Trump administration is ready to lean on various levers of power — from the bully pulpit to federal investigations to threats of withholding funding — to convince or coerce schools to comply with its worldview, whether or not the federal government has the legal authority to do so. Disappointing national test scores and state-level wins for Republicans could also be fueling Trump’s ambitions to stake a greater political claim on K-12 education.

“The president is responding to what he feels like the voters who put him in office feel strongly about,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank whose policy proposals are often embraced by Trump. “It sort of changed the mission statement on these issues of gender, race, down to school choice, and beyond. That’s an important starting point.”

Trump likes Indiana schools. Are they winning the war on ‘woke’ he wants to fight?

Some effects were swift. The U.S. Department of Education removed hundreds of documents from its website related to diversity and equity initiatives and suspended at least 50 staffers. Civil rights staffers are now enforcing 2020 Title IX rules, which don’t offer explicit protections for trans students as did now-defunct rules issued under President Joe Biden. And some schools have seen attendance dip among immigrant students whose families worry they could be detained by immigration agents during school dropoff.

Some of the high-profile orders have had little or no tangible effect on schools so far. They direct federal agencies, not states or districts, to develop plans over the next several months. At the same time, some observers worry schools will preemptively make changes to their teaching or programs — even if they aren’t legally required to.

The executive orders “have a lot of power to create chaos and fear and confusion, and that’s real, immediately,” said Ary Amerikaner, a former Education Department official and the executive director of Brown’s Promise, which conducts research and advocacy on school desegregation and school funding. Yet she also said Trump’s actions were “mostly bluster” that lacked “a lot of power to actually affect what’s happening on the ground, because they can’t change existing law.”

The orders leave a lot of room for interpretation, several education policy experts said. Forthcoming guidance and federal grant notices could help fill in blanks.

“I want details,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, who oversees advocacy and governance for The School Superintendents Association. “How do these proposals continue to roll out?”

The executive actions also highlight an ongoing tension in the Trump administration’s approach to K-12 education.

Trump and his allies have said they want to shrink the size and role of the federal Education Department, if not abolish it entirely. Trump is reportedly preparing an executive order to diminish the department’s size. But his orders so far indicate a certain desire to wrest power from local schools by dictating what they can and cannot teach about topics such as systemic racism, white privilege, and gender identity. Numerous laws prohibit federal officials from deciding what program of instruction or curriculum a school uses, which some state officials have been keen to point out.

The incoming education secretary has been tasked with issuing several reports on how various executive orders could be carried out. Yet attempts by Trump officials to directly control daily school decisions could quickly trigger lengthy court battles.

“They’re not the nation’s school board,” Ellerson Ng said.

Trump order has potential effects on classroom instruction

Some worry Trump’s executive order seeking to withhold federal funds from schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology” or “gender ideology” has the potential to alter classroom instruction and cut support for trans students.

The order defines “discriminatory equity ideology” as any classroom instruction that treats people “as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability.” It has the same acronym — DEI — as the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts Trump is seeking to eliminate throughout the federal government.

“Gender ideology,” meanwhile, includes any instance in which a school recognizes that a child can be a gender other than the male or female sex they were assigned at birth. It targets classroom instruction, as well as counseling for students and school policies, such as those asking teachers to use the name and pronouns that correspond with a child’s gender identity.

The order seeks to stop schools from teaching that people can be inherently racist, sexist, privileged, or oppressed based on their race, sex, or other characteristics — taking direct aim at concepts such as white privilege and unconscious bias. It also seeks to bar teaching that the U.S. is fundamentally racist, a concept that about 1 in 3 students says comes up often at their school, a recent nationally representative survey of high schoolers found.

Students displaced by the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles read in their new classroom at Nora Sterry Elementary School. Disaster recovery assistance is just one way federal funds support K-12 schools. The Trump administration has pledged to use federal money as a lever to get compliance with its policy priorities.

The language mirrors the text of several state laws that target critical race theory, an academic concept that says racism is embedded in the U.S. legal system and government policies.

Eighteen states already have laws or official policies that prohibit similar lessons. But there is reason to believe some teachers will self-censor or face new pressures from their district or school leaders. It’s happened before.

A 2022 national survey, for example, found that 1 in 5 teachers in states without official limits on teaching about racism and sexism were asked to curtail discussion of hot-button social and political topics.

“This administration is clearly thriving in a culture of creating fear,” said Amerikaner, of Brown’s Promise. “The thing that I think is most important for educators and administrators on the ground is to not take the bait.”

Similarly, advocates for LGBTQ students are advising schools they don’t need to change their policies because of the president’s order.

“School districts need to be aware that LGBTQ students’ rights have not changed,” said Brian Dittmeier, the director of public policy at GLSEN, an organization that works to create safe school environments for LGBTQ youth.

Are Trump’s executive actions about DEI and immigration changing your school? Take our survey.

Trans kids and other LGBTQ students still have various protections under the U.S. Constitution and federal civil rights laws. And state laws that protect LGBTQ students remain in effect in those states.

Executive orders don’t reverse case law, Dittmeier said. Regardless of shifting Title IX regulations, court cases such as Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board held that transgender students have a right to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. And the U.S. Supreme Court found in Bostock v. Clayton County that discrimination against gay or transgender people is a form of sex discrimination, although pending cases have the potential to change the legal landscape.

In a Jan. 31 letter to education officials, a Trump official said the reinstated 2020 Title IX rules do not protect students from discrimination based on sex stereotypes.

Still, schools that fail to protect LGBTQ students’ rights in an effort to comply with Trump’s executive order could be subject to lawsuits and civil rights complaints, including in the 26 states that have their own civil rights processes, Dittmeier said.

Landscape for education civil rights complaints could change

To Butcher, of the Heritage Foundation, the executive order about “discriminatory equity ideology” is asking schools to follow existing anti-discrimination laws.

He envisions, for example, that there could be a federal civil rights investigation if a school grouped students into affinity groups by race or limited discipline for Black and Hispanic students as a way to meet internal “ratios” and avoid suspending too many students of color. That could have prompted a civil rights probe under now-rescinded Obama administration guidance.

How exactly the Trump administration will monitor whether schools are violating the executive order remains to be seen.

Conservative parent groups file frequent federal civil rights complaints objecting to teacher diversity programs and student affinity groups. Under Trump, these complaints could get a friendlier reception.

Even under the Biden administration, the Los Angeles school system was forced to overhaul a program to promote Black student achievement in response to such a complaint.

The Trump Education Department has already taken a step on a related issue: It has dismissed 11 civil rights complaints related to alleged book bans, which the agency labeled a “hoax.”

Some states with similar prohibitions set up a reporting process so parents, school staff, and others can flag materials or lessons that may not comply with state law.

But creating a national reporting tool would be logistically challenging and time-consuming, said Butcher, who wants to see the Department of Justice take the lead on investigating with help from state education officials and state attorneys general.

“Not every report or accusation is accurate,” Butcher said. “There is a lot of follow up that has to be done. That, I think, is beyond the scope of what Washington should be doing right now, especially at the Department of Education, if the goal is to be winding it down.”

School districts may also decide to be extra cautious with their budgets to avoid the risk of losing federal funds if they somehow violate a presidential order.

Sarah Abernathy, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, which tracks federal investments in education on behalf of several groups, said she’ll be listening for school district discussions about laying off staff or ending programs to comply with a federal order — or get ahead of one.

She also worries schools will be afraid to talk about it publicly for fear of drawing any attention to themselves. On a recent call with members of her organization, Abernathy asked for examples of how the presidential orders could affect K-12 schools financially and all she heard was “crickets.”

“I don’t think anyone in the education world wants the administration using them as an example of something that is wrong,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump Education Department revives DeVos-era Title IX sex discrimination rules

2025-01-31T18:19:41+00:00

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President Donald Trump’s administration told schools Friday that Title IX law barring sex discrimination will once again be subject to federal regulations from over four years ago.

The move effectively eliminates protections for gender identity in schools adopted by former President Joe Biden’s administration.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter intended for school leaders, an official with the U.S. Department of Education wrote that enforcement of Title IX is now based on “the principles and provisions of the 2020 Title IX Rule.” That means Title IX enforcement will no longer be based on the regulations adopted in 2024, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrote.

The Trump Education Department’s guidance comes in the wake of a Jan. 10 ruling by a federal judge that tossed out Biden Title IX rules.

In explaining the department’s rationale, Trainor cited an executive order Trump signed earlier this month that defined sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” The 2020 rules developed under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos treated sex as a binary, but did not define it.

“President Trump ordered all agencies and departments within the Executive Branch to ‘enforce all sex-protective laws to promote [the] reality’ that there are ‘two sexes, male and female,’ and that “[t]hese sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” Trainor wrote. “Title IX must be enforced consistent with President Trump’s order.”

The 2024 regulations were praised by transgender students and LGBTQ advocates as enshrining critical protections related to student pronouns and transgender students’ school facilities such as restrooms. But critics said Biden’s rules improperly distorted and expanded Title IX’s stated protections against discrimination “on the basis of sex.”

Trump made criticisms of transgender rights a key element of his 2024 campaign, and schools have become a battleground for LGBTQ rights and related cultural issues in recent years.

Trainor’s letter technically does not carry the same force of federal law or regulations. But it does indicate the administration’s general view of the issue, and also conveys how the department’s Office for Civil Rights will approach relevant Title IX investigations into schools. Those two factors could heavily influence how school districts approach the matter.

In his letter, Trainor said open Office for Civil Rights investigations initiated under the Biden Title IX rule “should be immediately reoriented to comport fully with the requirements of the 2020 Title IX Rule.”

The 2020 regulations were controversial due to how they addressed sexual assault complaints. Unlike the Biden administration, the 2020 rules did not say that Title IX protections extend to gender identity.

In his letter, Trainor said the January decision from U.S. District Court Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky correctly ruled against the Biden administration’s position that “discrimination on the basis of sex also includes discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, and sexual orientation.”

However, discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes has been struck down in previous court rulings. Those decisions have also formed the basis for legal protections for gender identity.

It remains to be seen how the Trump Education Department’s view of sex stereotypes, which could cover a broad set of issues in schools, influences its enforcement of Title IX.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

Trump’s targeting of transgender rights creates uncertainty about Colorado laws protecting students

2025-01-30T04:36:01+00:00

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President Trump’s targeting of transgender rights as he begins his second term is raising questions about the potential impact on Colorado laws meant to protect transgender students, including a new one that requires educators to use students’ chosen names.

Several school districts, the Colorado Department of Education, and the state Attorney’s General’s Office provided a variation of the same answer when contacted by Chalkbeat: We don’t know yet whether there will be an impact but we are searching for answers.

While experts said executive orders of the kind Trump is using can’t override state laws, they conceded that the legal landscape under Trump is uncertain. Meanwhile, advocates said the orders are seeding fear in the transgender community, which they said was likely the intent.

“I’m receiving a lot of emails from the community about, ‘What does it mean? How does it impact us?’” said Jax Gonzalez, the political director at LGBTQ advocacy organization One Colorado.

“And that is the point of those executive orders,” Gonzalez said. “Those are about scaring people and repressing movement-building.”

Trump has acted quickly to enact his political agenda, including trying to unwind protections for LGBTQ students. An executive order the president signed last week, on the day he was inaugurated, says that the United States only recognizes two sexes, male and female, and that the sexes “are not changeable.” The order rescinded Biden-era guidance on supporting LGBTQ students.

Already, one Colorado school board has passed a resolution echoing that language. On Wednesday, the Woodland Park school board directed the district’s superintendent to update any district policies, procedures, and facility usage guidelines “to be consistent with knowledge that there are only two sexes, male and female.”

This week, the Trump administration froze — and then potentially unfroze, after legal challenges — all federal grant funding to purge the government of what it called “wokeness” and “transgenderism.” Trump signed another executive order on Wednesday blocking federal funding from K-12 schools that teach “gender ideology.”

Ian Farrell, an associate professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, said that while the power of the president is limited and Congress ultimately controls U.S. spending, “we live in a weird time where the correct legal answer and what the [U.S.] Supreme Court will say is the correct legal answer are potentially massively different things.

“We’re in an era where there is genuine uncertainty about whether the rule of law will be upheld,” Farrell said. “That should concern everybody.”

Some districts adopted name change policies begrudgingly

Colorado has in recent years extended legal protections based on gender identity. In 2021, a state law protecting people from harassment and discrimination was expanded to explicitly cover gender identity. The state’s anti-bullying law also includes gender identity as a protected class.

Last year, lawmakers approved and the governor signed a bill that protects K-12 public school students who request to use a name other than their legal name at school. Under the law, it is considered discrimination in Colorado for an educator to refuse to use a name chosen by a student to reflect their gender identity.

The idea came from students. The Colorado Youth Advisory Council, a group of 40 students from across the state, helped draft the bill. Both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office are controlled by Democrats, and the bill passed mostly along party lines.

“Colorado prides itself so much on being welcoming, where people are free to be themselves and how they live,” state Rep. Stephanie Vigil, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said at a legislative hearing last year. “We feel like it’s important to act on that.”

Many Colorado school districts have adopted policies to comply with the name change law.

But some did so begrudgingly — and with caveats.

The Woodland Park district, which drew national attention in 2023 for becoming the first district in the country to adopt the conservative American Birthright social studies standards, was one of the first districts to discuss adopting a policy in the wake of the name change law.

One school board member, David Rusterholtz, made clear at a May meeting in which the policy was discussed that the district was “forced” to respond.

He called HB24-1039 “a very bad law” and a violation of his virtues, values, and “Biblical worldview.” He questioned how the law would help a child who he said had been taken up by what he termed “social psychosis.”

It’s unclear whether the resolution adopted by the Woodland Park school board Wednesday that echoes Trump’s language about two sexes will affect the policy the district adopted to comply with the name change law.

Neither a district spokesperson nor school board members responded to questions from Chalkbeat seeking clarification.

“We need to stick with science, and the science has always been that there are two sexes,” Rusterholtz said during Wednesday’s meeting. “We need to teach our children the truth. It doesn’t mean we’re going to accept any kind of bullying.”

Other school boards shared Woodland Park’s concerns about the state’s name change law.

Several board members in El Paso County’s Widefield School District 3 said at a meeting in September that the law amounted to “compelled speech” and “government overreach.” A district spokesperson said last week that district leaders had not yet discussed the potential effects of Trump’s executive orders on district policy.

Members of the District 49 school board in Colorado Springs had similar objections to the law.

“The state apparently feels that it can hand down this unconstitutional mandate and tread upon the First Amendment-protected rights of teachers and staff by compelling them to say things that may be against their personally held conscience-based religious beliefs,” District 49 board member Deb Schmidt said at a meeting in November.

District 49’s policy has several caveats. It says a student’s parents must consent to a non-legal name change by signing a form. It limits students to one name change per year and says the district can say no if a name “is vulgar or offensive, obscene, or is used for misrepresentation.”

The policy also allows what it calls “an accommodation to conscience-based objections to compelled speech” — that is, exceptions for those who object — as long as the accommodation does not result in “substantial increased costs” to the district.

Lori Thompson, president of the District 49 school board, said in an email to Chalkbeat that the board was discussing with the school district’s lawyer how Trump’s executive orders might impact the name change policy. She noted that District 49’s policy has a clause that says it will be “immediately voided in its entirety” if the state law is found to be unconstitutional.

“The one thing that will not change,” Thompson wrote, is that “D49 will not withhold information about a student from their parents or legal guardians.”

Other districts express support for LGBTQ community

Other districts, including Denver Public Schools, Jeffco Public Schools, and Boulder Valley School District, have adopted name change policies that don’t require parental consent. They simply note that refusing to call a student by their chosen name is considered discrimination.

Several such districts said they are taking a wait-and-see approach to how Trump’s executive orders could affect laws and policies meant to protect transgender students.

In a letter to staff on Friday, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero said the district remains committed to following state and federal laws protecting LGBTQ staff and students.

“We value and affirm all DPS humans,” read an information sheet from the district’s legal department that was linked in Marrero’s letter. “You belong here.”

A Boulder Valley School District spokesperson pointed to a resolution passed by the Boulder school board in December that says the district “shall do everything in its lawful powers to protect our LGBTQ students and community members,” among other vulnerable groups.

But attacks on such protections have already begun. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights said it is investigating Denver Public Schools for converting a girls’ restroom at Denver’s East High School to an all-gender restroom.

Locally, there has been at least one lawsuit over the state’s name change law. Two parents sued Brighton-based 27J Schools for allegedly violating their constitutional rights by allowing their child to use a different name and pronouns at school without their consent. The parents sought to block the state and the school district from enacting the name change law.

A federal judge on Friday rejected the parents’ attempt, in part because the 2024 law wasn’t in effect when their child asked to use a different name and pronouns at school in 2022 and 2023.

“Despite the claim that ‘the District is socially transitioning their children,’ the District is not the decision maker at issue: the student is,” U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney wrote in her ruling. “The Law and Policies only require the District to follow the student’s chosen name and pronouns and to provide support.”

District Superintendent Will Pierce said in an interview that the district won’t change its policy on student name changes in light of the Trump executive orders — at least not yet. Like many other district leaders, he’s closely watching the legal landscape for guidance.

“There’s not a lot of clarity about what we’re supposed to do next,” Pierce said. “Our response is to do what we always do and try to find a place where every student feels welcome and receives dignity when they walk through the door. They matter.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Trump wants to withhold money from schools teaching ‘discriminatory equity ideology,’ gender identity

2025-01-29T23:39:54+00:00

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President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Wednesday seeking to withhold federal funding from K-12 schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology” or “gender ideology.”

The order defines discriminatory equity ideology as anything “that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups” rather than as individuals. That includes the idea that people can be inherently privileged or oppressed because of their race or gender, which likely targets concepts such as white privilege.

The language is similar to the text of several state laws that have sought to limit teaching about systemic racism and sexism and targeted “critical race theory” — though the order does not use that term.

“Gender ideology,” as defined in an earlier executive order, includes any acknowledgement of gender identities besides the male or female sex that a person is assigned at birth.

The news was first reported early Wednesday by the Daily Caller.

Federal funding accounts for about 8% to 10% of funding for K-12 schools but can represent a much larger portion in high-poverty schools and districts.

It’s unclear what exactly would rise to the level of teaching these concepts. But the executive order’s targeting of education issues related to race and gender illustrates the administration’s keen interest in pushing schools away from teaching certain subjects in certain ways — a desire Trump began expressing strongly towards the end of his first term.

Trump executive order seeks to steer federal funds to private school vouchers

Trump and other critics of critical race theory often have used the term as a catchall for everything from efforts to diversify the teacher workforce to curriculum revisions that better incorporate the perspective of Black Americans in lessons about slavery and the founding of the country. Some conservatives see course materials that refer to systemic racism or white privilege as evidence of critical race theory in K-12 schools — a viewpoint that would likely carry over to “discriminatory equity ideology.”

Trump and his supporters have used the phrase “gender ideology” to describe teaching about gender identity and the existence of transgender people. In an earlier executive order, Trump sought to define sex as a binary — male or female — that cannot be changed. On Tuesday, Trump issued another order seeking to curtail gender-affirming care for trans children and teens.

It’s also unclear whether the federal government has the authority to do this. Federal law prohibits federal officials from telling schools what they can and cannot teach. The American education system is set up such that decisions about what kids should learn are made at the local level.

On top of that, several states require schools to teach ethnic studies and to include a diverse range of perspectives in their lessons. Seven states require schools to include lessons about LGBTQ history or issues, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks such laws. Trump has previously said he wants to shift authority over education to the states, in tandem with his stated desire to close the U.S. Department of Education.

Similar efforts to restrict lessons about sexism, racism, and bias at the state level have faced legal challenges at the state level for being too vague. A settlement in Florida over the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law found that students and teachers couldn’t be prohibited from discussing LGBTQ issues, so long as it wasn’t part of formal instruction.

The order could stoke fear and confusion among educators and school officials, many of whom already operate under a state law or district policy that limits what they can teach about certain hot-button topics. Eighteen states have laws or official policies limiting lessons on racism and sexism, according to a tracker maintained by Education Week. Some states also restrict lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, or require parents to give permission for their children to learn about these topics.

How exactly the federal government would monitor what’s being taught in classrooms across the nation’s some 13,000 school districts is also an open question. Some states with laws limiting instruction about racism, sexism, and gender identity have set up websites or processes where parents can review curriculum and report lessons or teachers that they think are out of compliance.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into a Denver high school that converted a girls’ restroom to an all-gender restroom based solely off a local news report, rather than a formal complaint. That probe could be a preview of how the federal government might deal with schools that the Trump White House believes are ignoring or somehow flouting the executive order, without a time-consuming complaint or investigative process.

The order directs the incoming secretary of education to provide the president with a plan within 90 days on how to end lessons on these topics.

Trump nominated Linda McMahon, the former CEO of the WWE professional wrestling franchise, to head the U.S. Department of Education, though her confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled.

The order also reinstates the 1776 Commission, which was set up during the first Trump administration to promote “patriotic education” and to challenge lessons that present “America’s story solely as one of oppression and victimhood rather than one of imperfection but also unprecedented achievement toward freedom, happiness, and fairness for all.”

Experts said the report produced by the commission, composed of conservative thinkers and academics, whitewashed and distorted American history. Former President Joe Biden disbanded the commission shortly after he took office.

This story has been updated to reflect the contents of the executive order signed by Trump.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Trump education department investigating Denver Public Schools over all-gender restroom at East High

2025-01-29T00:22:12+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights announced Tuesday that it is investigating Denver Public Schools for recently converting a girls' restroom at Denver’s East High School into an all-gender restroom.

“The alarming report that the Denver Public Schools District denied female students a restroom comparable with their male counterparts appears to directly violate the civil rights of the District’s female students,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a press release.

“Let me be clear: it is a new day in America, and under President Trump, OCR will not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” Trainor, among a wave of new additions to the department, said in the release. “I have directed OCR’s Denver regional office to investigate this matter fully.”

A Denver Public Schools spokesperson said Tuesday afternoon that the district had “not formally received the notice of investigation” from the Office for Civil Rights.

In a follow-up statement Tuesday evening, the district said it was “unprecedented for the Office for Civil Rights to admittedly initiate its own investigation, into a single bathroom, as a result of local media coverage rather than in response to a filed complaint requesting their involvement.

“DPS is committed to educational equity, and we will continue to honor the needs of our students,” the district’s statement said.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education. But the announcement of the investigation into Denver Public Schools shows the Trump administration now intends to use departmental power to advance another centerpiece of his successful candidacy: opposing transgender rights and inclusion of transgender people in public life.

In his first week in office, Trump rescinded Biden-era guidance about supporting LGBTQ students in schools and used his executive power to roll back protections for transgender people. That included issuing an executive order that says that the United States only recognizes two sexes: male and female.

In announcing the East High investigation, the education department released a letter from Trainor addressed to Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero and dated Tuesday that cites a January news story on the all-gender bathroom from local TV station 9News.

The 9News story says students at East High, Denver’s largest high school, requested the all-gender restroom, but that at least one East High parent had raised concerns at a Denver school board meeting.

Denver Public Schools spokesperson Scott Pribble told 9News that adding the all-gender restroom was a matter of convenience for students and that “there’s no agenda to it.”

“It was becoming a problem for kids that were trying to go to the bathroom during passing period,” Pribble told 9News. “They were running out of time, being late to the next class because the one or two single stall bathrooms that they had to accommodate this just wasn’t enough for the need that was out there.”

Pribble told 9News that it was easier to convert a girls’ restroom to an all-gender restroom because girls’ restrooms already have toilets that everyone can use.

East High posted an announcement about its new all-gender restroom on its website in early January. It notes that the “stalls are designed for privacy, with 12-foot-tall partitions to ensure comfort and security,” and says the school has “developed a plan to supervise, monitor, and maintain cleanliness, just as we do with all restrooms.”

Denver Public Schools said in its statement Tuesday evening that the all-gender restroom “was added as the result of a student-led process that reflects our commitment to inclusivity and student voice, leadership, and empowerment, providing a welcoming space for all.

“This restroom serves all students, including those who may feel uncomfortable in gender-specific facilities and aligns with our values of supporting every student,” the district said.

The statement notes that East High has designated restrooms for female and male students in addition to the all-gender restroom.

Other Denver schools have all-gender restrooms, too. The Denver school board passed a resolution in 2020 mandating that each school in Denver have at least one all-gender restroom.

But when the board switched to a new form of governance in 2021 that necessitated converting previous resolutions into new policies, the all-gender restroom resolution appears to have been left out. There is currently no Denver Public Schools policy mandating all-gender restrooms, though a district spokesperson said the district does still convert and install them.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Trump executive orders on immigrants, transgender rights could echo in American schools

2025-01-21T03:10:26+00:00

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As President Donald Trump took office for a second time, he almost immediately used his executive power to roll back rights for transgender people and immigrants — actions likely to reverberate in American schools.

Trump’s 29-minute inaugural address described a nation in decline, where “the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.” He said his administration would reverse course and declared: “The golden age of America begins right now.”

That description of a faltering America extended to the nation’s schools.

“We have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them,” Trump said. “All of this will change starting today, and it will change very quickly.”

Trump has pledged to rapidly reshape the federal government using executive orders. At a post-inauguration rally at the Capital One Arena, Trump signed nine executive orders — the first rescinding dozens of Biden-era executive orders that protected LGBTQ Americans and promoted opportunity for people of color. Trump tossed the pens he used to sign the orders to his cheering supporters before leaving the arena for the White House.

Back at the Oval Office, he signed additional orders changing the meaning of birthright citizenship to exclude the children of undocumented women, defining sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification,” suspending enforcement of the TikTok ban, and pardoning his supporters who tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump signed a total of 41 executive orders Monday evening.

The impact of those executive orders will depend in part on how the federal government enforces them and in part on how state and local leaders and advocates respond. Executive orders must have some basis in law, and past orders have been challenged successfully in court. Vague orders can prove difficult to enforce.

What teachers want Donald Trump to know about their schools and their jobs

Trump used his inaugural address to say the federal government would recognize just two genders, male and female, as defined by a person’s biological sex assigned at birth. An executive order issued later Monday was titled, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.” It defines sex as describing unchanging physical characteristics and states that federal documents cannot use gender as a synonym for sex.

Under the order, laws that extend protections on the basis of sex cannot be interpreted in ways that include transgender people, and federal agencies must remove all documents that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.” Civil rights law will be interpreted to “ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex.”

The order also withholds federal funding from programs that recognize the existence of transgender people. It’s not clear how broadly such an order would be applied and how it might affect schools that respect transgender and non-binary students’ gender identities or use inclusive curriculums.

Trump made opposition to transgender rights and inclusion in public life a centerpiece of his campaign, alongside anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The move to define sex in ways hostile to transgender rights comes just after a federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX rules, which had made protections for transgender students more explicit. Changing the federal definition of sex could make it harder for transgender students to defend their rights or pursue civil rights complaints.

Trump also wants to end birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and repeatedly found by the courts to apply to all people born in the United States, with the exception of children born to foreign diplomats, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

Trump did not mention this plan in his inaugural address, but one of the executive orders he signed Monday evening declares that the children born to undocumented mothers and to mothers with certain temporary immigration status will not be considered citizens of the United States unless their father is a citizen or legal resident. The order also directs officials to not issue documents such as passports or Social Security numbers to those children, starting 30 days from the time of the order.

This order is almost certain to be challenged in court.

Such an executive order would not, on its own, prevent children with immigrant parents and those who are themselves undocumented from attending public school. The 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe requires schools to educate all students in their communities, regardless of immigration status.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank closely tied to Trump, has called on states to challenge that decision. Earlier this month, Oklahoma ordered schools to start collecting information on the immigration status of families with children enrolled in public school, but a number of school districts immediately said they would not comply.

Executive orders touch on federal workforce, free speech, immigration

The first executive orders Trump signed rescinded 78 presidential actions by his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, prevented issuing new federal regulations, and froze all federal hiring, with exceptions for the military, “until full control of the government is achieved.”

U.S. President Donald Trump concludes his inaugural address after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Trump pledged to use executive authority to take drastic actions to stop immigration at the southern border and roll back transgender rights.

Among the Biden executive orders rescinded in Trump’s first official act Monday were orders guaranteeing LGBTQ students the right to an educational environment free of discrimination and an initiative to help colleges and universities that serve a large share of Hispanic students make better use of existing federal programs. The executive order also directs the heads of all federal agencies to root out programs that support diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.

He also ordered the federal workforce to work full time in the office, starting immediately, a move that could prove disruptive for employees who need to make changes to child care or elder care; withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords, and ordered the restoration of free speech.

The free speech executive order appears aimed at stopping federal efforts to get social media companies to combat misinformation. It bars the use of federal resources to facilitate restrictions on speech. Conservatives have argued that federal protections for transgender students limit the free speech rights of teachers and classmates who don’t accept those students’ identities.

It was not immediately clear what implications the free speech order would have in a country divided over removing books from public school libraries and appropriate limits to on-campus protests.

In his inaugural address, Trump said he would declare a national emergency at the southern border and reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy that prevents asylum seekers from entering the United States to have their claims heard. Within minutes of the speech, migrants who had pending appointments at the border got messages that those appointments had been canceled.

Many executive orders are expected to facilitate enhanced immigration enforcement. Around the country, schools are sharing messages of support with families who could be caught up in enforcement actions and encouraging parents to make sure their children’s emergency contacts are up to date in case caregivers are detained. Some school systems are also clarifying how they will respond if immigration agents seek entrance to their buildings, with many saying they will consult their attorneys and only allow agents with signed judicial warrants to enter their schools.

Current policy limits immigration enforcement near schools, but media reports in December suggested Trump may rescind the “sensitive locations” policy.

Many teachers won’t teach the inauguration. That’s a loss for students, this ‘civics nerd’ says.

The president also promised to “end the chronic disease epidemic and keep our children safe, healthy and disease-free.”

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to withhold funds from schools that require students to be vaccinated, something that it’s not clear he has the authority to do. His nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a noted vaccine skeptic who tried to block the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine at the height of the pandemic.

Trump also redesignated career employees in “policy-influencing positions” as political appointees, who are easier to hire and fire at the president’s discretion. This move could have major implications for the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. In the first Trump administration, the president and his allies contended that career bureaucrats who make up the core of the federal workforce undermined many of their initiatives.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Federal judge tosses Biden Title IX rules that protected transgender students

2025-01-10T01:53:53+00:00

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A federal judge in Kentucky has vacated the Biden administration’s Title IX rules nationwide, meaning they are no longer in effect anywhere in the country.

The decision released Thursday represents a blow to LGBTQ students and their allies. They believed the new Title IX rules could serve as a bulwark against state laws allowing teachers to not use students’ chosen names and pronouns and barring transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky comes on the cusp of a second Trump administration, which observers expected would rescind the rules through a longer, more bureaucratic process. President-elect Donald Trump made opposition to transgender rights a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign.

Reeves’ decision means that Title IX rules finalized in 2020 under the first Trump administration are once again the law of the land. Those rules, developed under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, were controversial in their own right because they changed the sexual assault complaint process in ways that favored the accused. Those rules assumed that Title IX treated sex as binary and declined to further define it. In response to public comments at the time, the department said people of any gender identity should be protected from harassment on the basis of sex but did not single out transgender individuals for protections.

DeVos also withdrew Obama-era guidance and stopped investigating complaints about bathroom access.

In his ruling, Reeves found that the Biden administration overstepped its authority by interpreting laws against sex discrimination to include gender identity. Reeves, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, also found that the rule “offends the First Amendment” because teachers who refuse to use students’ names and pronouns could have faced discipline.

Congress passed Title IX in 1972 to ban discrimination in education “on the basis of sex.” Courts have repeatedly found that Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, decisions that have formed the legal backbone for protections based on gender identity. But Title IX also allows for sex-segregated programs and facilities. Reeves said that makes including gender identity contradictory.

“The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex — throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless,” Reeves wrote in his opinion.

Title IX ruling could create confusion for schools

The Biden administration’s update to the rules made it explicit that Title IX should cover discrimination against gender identity, following similar guidance in effect during the Obama administration, as well as various court rulings. Denying students access to bathrooms that align with their gender identity or persistently misgendering students likely would have represented a violation of their rights under the Biden rules.

When the Biden Education Department announced the rules in April following extensive public comment, LGBTQ advocates cheered. But Republican attorneys general and conservative parent groups almost immediately filed lawsuits objecting. When the rules went into effect in August, court rulings had already blocked implementation in more than half the states.

Thursday’s ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the states of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia.

“This is a huge win for Tennessee, for common sense, and for women and girls across America,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking. Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office next week.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

The Biden Title IX rules did not address sports participation. In draft rules, the administration proposed that younger students should be able to participate freely on sports teams that align with their gender identity, but that schools could adopt restrictions based on fairness and safety for older students and at more competitive levels. With intense controversy over the rules and Republicans who oppose transgender women’s participation in women’s sports poised to control the federal government, the Biden administration withdrew the proposed rules in late December.

Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, said it’s not impossible the federal government could appeal the decision and seek some sort of emergency intervention. But it’s hard to imagine the Trump administration continuing the case.

“This court decision is so damaging and really disregards that students are still experiencing discrimination at high levels,” she said.

Patel said it’s important for students and officials alike to understand that students still have rights to a safe school environment, and the ruling doesn’t prevent states or school districts from adopting policies that go beyond the floor set in federal law.

The new ruling also throws out noncontroversial aspects of the new Title IX rules that were not challenged in court, including protections for pregnant and parenting students and procedural changes that gave districts more flexibility in how they responded to complaints.

But Reeves wrote that the challenged provisions dealing with transgender rights and gender identity “fatally taint” the entire set of rules, and that it was not the court’s job to rewrite them to bring them into compliance with the law.

States where the Biden Title IX rules were blocked continued to use the 2020 rules and won’t really see any change from the ruling, said Kayleigh Baker, an attorney and senior consultant with TNG Consulting and an advisory board member of the Association of Title IX Administrators.

But school districts in states not under an injunction — generally those with Democratic leadership — have invested time and money in revamping their procedures and training staff.

“Now it feels that that work was for naught,” she said. Baker said she’s also frustrated on behalf of people whose rights are now less clear under the law.

These school districts may also have cases under investigation or that have already been decided using the 2024 procedures and frameworks, Baker said. The ruling doesn’t address how those cases should be handled, and school district officials should consult with their attorneys, she said.

The Trump administration could also propose more changes to Title IX or Congress could take action.

“We may not yet be done with changes in the regulatory landscape,” she said.

Clarification: This article has been updated to remove a portion of a quote that gave an incorrect impression.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Many LGBTQ kids need support following Trump’s reelection. This Kentucky school librarian has advice

2025-01-03T12:00:00+00:00

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When Amber Faris was studying to be a journalist, a visit to a high school classroom for a college assignment prompted a pivot. She became an English teacher instead.

“This is the energy that I am looking for,” Faris recalls thinking to herself as she observed the class. “I always felt very passionate about journalism and speaking truth to power. But I was like: I could do that with young people.”

After two decades of teaching, Faris switched it up again last year, this time to become the library media specialist at her Lexington, Kentucky, high school, which is part of Fayette County Public Schools.

One of Amber Faris' favorite book displays this year featured the singer Chappell Roan.

Now Faris is recommending books on Dunbar High School’s morning news, hosting reading challenges for students and staff — like last year’s 24 for 2024 — and crafting elaborate displays to entice teens to check out new titles. In recent months, that’s included an homage to the singer Chappell Roan and a collection of banned books draped in yellow caution tape.

Her community hasn’t seen the kinds of book challenges happening elsewhere in Kentucky, but Faris keeps tabs on them in case she ever needs to defend her catalog.

“That’s the hill I’ll die on,’” she said. “I’m a huge supporter of: We have to have books to support all of our children’s identities and perspectives. It builds empathy, it builds character. … This library is seen as the safe space, and I want to keep it that way.”

Amber Faris uses creative book displays, like this one of banned books, to get students interested in new titles.

Faris has also been the sponsor of Dunbar’s Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA, for nearly two decades, a position that gives her insight into how support for LGBTQ students in Kentucky has improved — and come under fire.

Her district, for example, is working to make sure each high school and middle school has its own GSA, and GSAs get funding so they can pay for activities like guest speakers and field trips. GSA sponsors meet monthly, and there’s a district official who oversees LGBTQ equity issues.

“Having people at your district show up and say: ‘This is the right thing to do,’” really matters, Faris said.

But there are limits. Last school year, when LGBTQ high schoolers tried to gather to voice how their schools could better protect them from harassment and discrimination, the district canceled the forum. That was likely due to a 2023 Kentucky law that prohibits instruction and presentations about gender identity and sexual orientation.

Instead, students attended a voluntary event with their parents’ permission. It was hosted at Dunbar. At the time, Faris told her school’s student newspaper she felt like “our LGBTQ+ students are just kind of being brushed aside and treated like second-class citizens.”

Chalkbeat talked with Faris over the course of two interviews — one in mid-November and another in mid-December — about how the students in her school’s GSA are responding to Donald Trump’s reelection, how she helps teens figure out what they might want to read, and what’s on her holiday reading list.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you make the switch from teaching English to being a school librarian?

The library had always been my place. It was just kind of a natural progression.

I love doing research. I’ve always, even with my freshman, taught [students] how to do a database search, how to cite, and how to back up your thesis with evidence. I knew that that was really transferable to the library.

I’ve always been a massive proponent of reading for pleasure and trying to read what high school students read. I read between 125 and 150 books a year. I had outside reading as a part of my class. I don’t care what it is. We would read together, every day, for 15 minutes, and I would read with them.

I always tell people: Scroll less, read more.

How do you approach student requests for book recommendations?

I do a lot of what I call ‘five-minute manias’ with them. [Those are] like book tastings. I put out a bunch of different books from a bunch of different genres and authors. I’ll just have them grab a book that looks interesting and read the title. Does that look interesting? Okay, read the back cover. Do you still like it? Okay, read the inside cover. Read the first sentence, and then have them share why they either liked it or they didn’t. And then have them read the first page.

School librarian Amber Faris hosts reading challenges and book clubs to get students interested in reading diverse books.

A lot of times, that’s all they needed to know that that was something that they could actually get into, which helps them find books.

How are students in your GSA responding to Trump’s reelection? How are you helping staff to support LGBTQ students?

The day after the election, I did a: ‘Hey, I know some of you all may be feeling not so great, so I’m here if you want to talk about it.’ They were all just so happy to have that space.

I just let them vent. Of course, there’s a lot of venting about not feeling safe. We have some kids at our school that are trans, that are definitely wondering how their health care is going to move forward or if it’s going to be stalled.

There’s a lot of fear and frustration. But we have each other. They know they have people at school who care about them.

Part of my job is to make sure that everybody in our school is thinking about the LGBTQ kids and how we can help them. I sent an email [the week after the election] about being aware that this can be really hard for these kids, and to watch out for them, because they’re already at such a high [risk] for suicide and depression.

I shared an article from The Washington Post about how calls to crisis lines [from LGBTQ youth] were up like 700% [after the presidential election]. I’m just reminding people: We have a GSA, it’s Mondays after school, they can contact me. And I reiterated at GSA that we have two mental health specialists. I’m like: It’s okay to go talk to your therapist or the mental health specialist about your feelings, because your feelings are valid, and I know you’re afraid, and that’s okay.

It’s hard in a district like ours, where we definitely live in a pretty blue dot in a red state. A few of them may live in purple neighborhoods, but for the most part, we’re pretty accepting. We’re a college town. They know that they have options to go to colleges that have accepting housing and programs.

I have not heard them say anything just yet like: ‘We want to do X [in response to the election].’ But I feel like the younger ones, it’s been more of: ‘I can’t wait to vote. I can’t wait to be able to have my voice heard.’

What are some of your favorite books to introduce students to and why?

This is a holiday one that I’ve recommended, and it’s called “Finding My Elf.” It’s by David Valdes. It’s a male-to-male queer book.

It’s [about] a high school kid who went to NYU to be the theater major and has come home from college, and is just flunking out. Small-town kid that thinks New York is gonna change them, and then they’re just floundering. And they’re trying to tell their single dad that things aren’t going well, and they might lose their scholarship. Then he gets this job as an elf — if you imagine like Santaland Diaries.

It’s definitely kind of an enemies-to-lovers, not-everything-is-what-it-seems [story]. I love how it dealt with mental health and expectations of your parents and first-generation [college-going] type stuff.

We want to spread Black joy and queer joy. And yes, there’s tons of books out there that have awful things happening in them that kids need to read, too. But books like what I’m talking about: It’s an easy read, it’s short, but it’s funny, and it’s sweet, and it deals with realistic issues in a meaningful way without it being cheesy. Those are the types of books that I’m looking for.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee panel still waiting to hear first book appeal under 2022 school library law

2024-12-11T12:00:01+00:00

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Two years after Tennessee lawmakers made it possible to ban books from school libraries statewide, not a single book challenge has been heard, let alone approved.

And no complaints are waiting to be considered, either.

Since early 2023, parents, students, and school employees have been able to challenge library content by submitting an online form to the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission.

But only three appeals have been filed with a commission that this year hired its first full-time staff at an annual cost of $500,000, in part to manage anticipated book appeals. All three appeals were withdrawn within a month.

“It’s been surprising,” said Commission Chair Linda Cash, about the lack of appeals before the state panel.

Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed Gov. Bill Lee’s school library law in 2022 to establish a local review process to make sure books and materials are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels” of the students who can access them.

A few months later, lawmakers approved a second measure creating an appeals system so that book complaints can go before the state’s existing textbook commission if the complainant isn’t satisfied with a decision by a local board or charter school. That law gave the commission unprecedented authority to ban certain books statewide, or to restrict them to certain grade levels in all Tennessee schools.

The school library legislation came after Tennessee emerged as one of the first states to restrict classroom discussions about race, gender, and bias. That the commission, two years in, has not considered any book ban complaints is evidence that school library debates are playing out locally instead of at the state level, with conservative parents getting mostly what they want.

Rep. Jerry Sexton, a Republican from Bean Station who co-sponsored the bill to create a book appeals process, said at the time that school libraries needed to be purged of content that he deemed as “pornographic” and “obscene.” His proposal also would have required schools to provide the commission with a list of books in their library collections.

When pressed on the House floor by Democratic Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville about what the state should do with any banned books, Sexton said: “I would burn them.”

But Senate sponsors, who originally wanted the textbook commission simply to develop library guidance for schools, were more measured about approving any legislation that could ignite a wave of book removals. The Senate and House ultimately approved a compromise bill to establish the appeals process, without requiring schools to submit lists of their library books to the state.

“I think these appeals to the state will be rare,” Sen. Mike Bell, a Riceville Republican, said at the time. “I can’t imagine it being more than a handful – five a year, 10 a year.”

To help with the appeals process, the commission hired its first full-time staff — an executive director, staff attorney, and administrative assistant.

Cash, the chairperson who lobbied for state funding to staff up, said the administrative help was needed and overdue, regardless of whether the commission received book appeals.

Linda Cash, who chairs the Tennessee Textbook Commission, is also director of Bradley County Schools and the state's 2025 Superintendent of the Year.

The unpaid, all-volunteer, 13-member textbook panel still has its core responsibilities of approving state textbooks and instructional materials and establishing contracts with publishers to guarantee availability to schools at the lowest price. (The body just completed the latest textbook adoption cycle to align classroom materials with Tennessee’s science standards. The panel will look next at textbooks for career and technical education, then social studies.)

As also required under the 2022 law, the commission last year issued library guidance, not only for itself as the state’s appellate body, but for school districts and charter schools to follow to make the local review process more consistent.

Cash, who is also the chief of Bradley County Schools, never expected the commission to receive a flood of library book appeals. But she anticipated the state panel would have acted on at least some after two years.

Instead, book banning action escalated at the local level after lawmakers voted this spring to expand the governor’s “age-appropriate” library law to prohibit materials that offend conservative sensibilities, especially related to sexual content and LGBTQ issues. The law now includes a broad checklist of the kinds of content deemed unsuitable, including nudity, descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, and excess violence.

As a result, at least 1,100 books were removed locally during the first few months of the academic year, according to a statewide survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians. Hundreds more have been pulled since the survey was conducted. Leaders with the librarians group believe those numbers are conservative.

The vast majority of the removals were handled preemptively by school officials and librarians without going through local complaint processes that had been in place for years. Those processes generally allowed students, parents, or educators to flag their concern with a school librarian and eventually take unresolved matters to the local school board that took into consideration a recommendation by an ad hoc review committee of educators and parents.

“I think that’s unfortunate,” Cash said of some unilateral book removals under the stricter library law.

The commission’s library guidance, issued in 2023, called for local schools to adopt and follow a thoughtful process for receiving feedback about library materials.

“We have professional librarians who do an excellent job of looking at books and bringing concerns before committees of educators and parents to screen them,” Cash said.

On the other hand, Cash believes the library laws have made school officials and librarians more attentive to the concerns of parents and increased scrutiny of book collections for age-appropriateness.

“Parents want to be heard and listened to,” she said. “When we don’t do that, I think that’s when we begin to have issues.”

Former Sen. Jon Lundberg, who co-sponsored the bill that ultimately opened the door to statewide book bans, said he’s not surprised that the textbook commission has yet to hear its first challenge of a local library decision.

“It wasn’t that bad decisions were being made about library books,” said the Bristol Republican. “We just decided to establish a process, in case there ever was a need.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Amid fear, trans students and families plan for Trump’s second term

2024-11-26T21:54:01+00:00

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On the Saturday after the election, Cheryl Suydam headed to an impromptu meeting of parents of trans kids. The gathering was called by the local chapter of PFLAG, an advocacy group that supports LGBTQ+ people and their families, to discuss their feelings after American voters elected a president who ran on an openly anti-trans platform.

“Every single person in that room was absolutely terrified,” Suydam said.

Suydam and her husband are the parents of three daughters, including a 15-year-old who is transgender. They live in Asheville, North Carolina, a more progressive community in a state that is less so.

About two dozen parents seated around a living room discussed changing their children’s legal names while they still could, starting medical treatment while it was still available in other states, and moving to more welcoming communities.

“It was cathartic to connect with others living this same experience and feeling the need to mobilize in some way,” Suydam said.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, ban gender-affirming care for minors, investigate whether such care should be available even to adults, roll back the Biden administration’s Title IX changes that gave transgenders students more legal protections at school, and punish schools that teach what Trump calls “left-wing gender insanity.”

“Teachers are wondering: What resources will I be able to use to keep kids safe? And that’s not just LGBTQ kids, but all students,” said Scott Miller, co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Caucus of the National Education Association.

Students and teachers in Republican-led states that have passed anti-trans laws have experience resisting those laws, said Craig White, director of Supportive Schools at the Campaign for Southern Equality — and they have lessons for people in the rest of the country if the federal government pushes those policies into more states.

Many anti-LGBTQ+ policies are vague, leaving room for districts and teachers to take a more supportive approach and for students to keep exercising their free speech, White said. Activists are also contesting those laws in the courts.

Since Trump’s election, White said he has been overwhelmed with calls from people who want to organize.

“My weeks have not just been doom and gloom,” White said. “Within just a couple of days, I’ve seen people turning towards energy and activism and organizing. I have not even been able to keep up with the number of people contacting me and saying, ‘Okay, we’re ready to take action. What do we do now?’”

Students move to secure documents, treatment before inauguration

In Texas, Mandy Giles works supporting families of trans children. Since the election, she’s received many messages expressing fear and seeking advice.

“Parents of trans kids and young adults have been scared for a long time in Texas, but there has been a feeling that there was some level of federal protections that now may be going away,” Giles said.

She runs a monthly support group in Houston. The first meeting after the election had the most attendees ever — but at least half of the families in the meeting said they will be moving out of state soon.

“Some families have been with us since the beginning,” Giles said. “We had some tearful goodbyes because we knew we wouldn’t be seeing each other again before the end of the year.”

In North Carolina, Suydam has found support locally despite hostile state laws. The state has restricted discussions of gender and sexuality in elementary schools, banned gender-affirming care for minors, and barred transgender youth from competing in middle, high school, and college sports.

“It’s an incredible community,” Suydam said. “As soon as my daughter came out, we contacted the school, and they quickly started using her preferred pronouns and name.”

Her daughter, whose name she asked to withhold to protect her privacy, started hormonal therapies before state legislators passed a bill in 2023 to ban gender-affirming care to minors. The law allowed minors who already were under treatment to continue. But her daughter had to stop swimming after legislators passed a law that students can only join sports teams for the genders they were assigned at birth.

“She used to be a competitive swimmer and has only competed as a female,” Suydam said. “Since these laws were passed, she has stopped because they gave people the freedom to talk openly against trans athletes. So, it never felt safe to talk to her teammates or the parents of the teammates about the fact that she was trans.”

The family is preparing for the coming months. “I’m actively updating all of her documentation to reflect her name and gender now and in the next few weeks while I still can,” Suydam said.

Trump’s election means that any hopes of federal protection to counter state laws have disappeared. People are thinking about how they can protect themselves and their family members, advocates said.

Ben Cooper is an attorney based in Columbus, Ohio, who has provided free legal advice at a legal aid clinic for LGBTQ people since 2016. Since the election, he said he’s seen more people rushing to get their names and gender markers changed in legal documents.

This type of change is regulated by state law, but advocates fear the Trump administration may adopt policies that affect federally issued documents like passports.

“My advice is: If you’ve been thinking about adjusting your documents, then there’s no time like the present,” Cooper said.

Milo McBrayer, 17, who identifies as transmasculine and queer, is also considering fast-tracking his documents before Trump takes office.

“I am also thinking of going out of state to start gender-affirming care,” said Milo, who also lives in Asheville. “Because of North Carolina’s ban, I didn’t plan to do it before I turned 18, but now I don’t know if my ability will go away after Trump takes office.”

Milo said that he has also become more active in local groups that support trans people “as a way of building a stronger support system.”

One of those is the Pansy Collective, a group of LGBTQ+ artists, who recently organized a “bug-out bag” workshop. The workshop covered information about how to be safe and what to bring if you need to escape quickly, whether that’s fleeing a natural disaster such as Hurricane Helene or moving across state lines to access gender-affirming medical care.

“The workshop was mostly about reducing anxiety by providing educational resources,” said Riley, an organizer with the group who asked that his last name not be published.

Bullying a major concern for transgender youth

Last year, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey estimated that 40% of students who identify as transgender or who are questioning their gender identity suffered bullying at school. Advocates worry the election may exacerbate hostile environments in some schools.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, 25 states have no specific protection for LGBTQ+ students in their anti-bullying laws, and two states — Missouri and South Dakota – actively ban schools from including LGBTQ+ students in their anti-bullying policies.

Even in states such as North Carolina where students have some protections from bullying, ensuring that schools respect the law is not always easy.

“In my old school, people just had the audacity to yell slurs at you walking down the hallway,” said Milo, who transferred to a charter school for his senior year. “And even though I was being bullied pretty heavily, the school refused to do anything about it because it was about me being trans. And that has turned into a political issue, not a human rights issue.”

In his new school, The Franklin School of Innovation, he feels much more comfortable and has found community among other queer students.

Even in liberal states like California, trans students and their families can have difficulties. Juliet Stowers is an elementary school teacher in Orange County, California, and the parent of a 16-year-old trans girl. She said that it is not rare to hear anti-trans rhetoric in her district, and many parents complain about the presence of trans kids in schools.

“Some days, it can be debilitating,” she said. “Trump is saying that we, as teachers, are offering hormones or performing surgeries when we have to pay for the pencils in our classrooms.”

Stowers said she’ll continue working in the community to support other educators, parents, and kids.

“My daughter is terrified, but I’ve been telling her, ‘Don’t worry, there are many people ready to fight. We are ready to fight,’” she said.

Across the country, Milo feels similarly.

“I felt very failed by the adults in my country,” he said of the election results. “So, I have been spending a lot of time grieving. But I have also been trying to do a lot of community work by helping my friends as much as I can, sharing resources to cope with this situation, and talking about it openly.”

Wellington Soares is Chalkbeat’s national education reporting intern based in New York City. Contact Wellington at wsoares@chalkbeat.org.

List of nearly 400 purged library books is circulating among Tennessee school districts

2024-11-16T00:10:49+00:00

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One Tennessee school district’s list of nearly 400 books removed from library shelves, including titles by authors ranging from Dr. Seuss to Toni Morrison, is being used by other school systems as a possible template to follow.

Administrators for Wilson County Schools directed the district’s librarians to pull the books a month ago. This week, leaders with Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools sent its librarians the same list to consider when reviewing their collections.

A third large suburban district, Rutherford County Schools, instructed its librarians this week to remove around 150 titles — 51 of which overlap with the list in neighboring Wilson County.

The removal there came at the request of school board member Frances Rosales, who told Chalkbeat that she used the Wilson County list and reviews on the website Book Looks as the basis for her request.

The purges come under Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 “age-appropriate” school library law, which lawmakers expanded this year to prohibit public school libraries from having books with “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual content, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

Sponsors of the changes, enacted amid national “culture wars” fueled in part by pro-censorship websites, say their goal is to protect students from obscene content and give families more control over their children’s education.

But the changes have also created a climate of fear, confusion, and self-censorship for school leaders and librarians, prompting some to revise or ignore their own review processes and preemptively pull titles from their shelves.

Graphic novels and books containing LGBTQ+ topics for high schoolers are among the casualties, as are classics like Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” about a young African American girl who longs for blue eyes, and popular children’s picture books like David Shannon’s “No, David!” and Seuss’ “Wacky Wednesday.”

“This law was designed to catalyze book banning,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “We should not be surprised now that we are seeing the mass removal of books in response to this censorial legislation.”

Tennessee law likely faces a constitutional challenge

Tennessee’s original 2022 law, championed by the governor, required districts to publish the list of materials in their library collections and periodically review them to make sure they are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials.” Each community was to define what is considered age-appropriate based on local standards.

This spring’s revisions by the legislature added a definition of what’s “suitable” — including verbiage about sexual content, nudity, and violence that could be interpreted to prohibit literary classics like “Romeo and Juliet,” historical novels such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and encyclopedias containing photographs of nude statues.

The law is expected to be challenged in court over its vague wording, a lack of compliance guidance from the state, and the uneven way the law is being applied across Tennessee.

Among groups tracking its implementation are the ACLU of Tennessee and some publishing companies.

In Florida, several large publishers sued education officials there in August over a 2023 state law prohibiting sexual content in school libraries. They argued that the law had ignited a wave of book removals in violation of the First Amendment.

‘Creating an unofficial statewide book ban list’

A survey conducted this fall of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles had been pulled statewide under the revised law during the first few months of the academic year.

“I’ve removed 300 books in the first month of school,” one librarian anonymously told the organization.

Since the survey, the number of titles pulled across Tennessee has ballooned “from a trickle to a tidal wave,” said Lindsey Kimery, a Nashville school library supervisor who is one of the group’s leaders.

“If Wilson County’s list is being shared around, and district leaders see it as a cheat sheet so that they don’t have to conduct their own reviews, it’s creating an unofficial statewide book ban list,” Kimery said.

A spokesman for the Clarksville-Montgomery district, which serves about 38,000 students near the Kentucky border, emphasized that Wilson County’s roster was being used “as a resource, not a mandate” for its own librarians.

“We are not directing you to immediately remove all of these titles from your library collection,” curriculum leaders told principals last week, according to talking points from the meetings that the district shared with Chalkbeat.

“However, we are providing this list as an example of books already vetted by Tennessee educators and strongly encouraging you and your library-media specialists to review the list and consider, if you have these titles in your collections, whether these materials violate state law.”

Books in violation must be removed, the principals were told.

In Rutherford County, where 150 books were removed this week, the school board voted Thursday night to give librarians time to review the titles and come back with a formal recommendation on whether they should be permanently removed or returned to the shelves.

“I don’t believe we intentionally have pornography in our schools, but I do believe that some books with questionable content have trickled in,” said Rosales, who told Chalkbeat that she “put a lot of thought and research” into her request to remove 150 titles.

She added, however, that “our librarians are experts, and we need to give them time to review these books and give us a report.”

Other school systems conducting library reviews reported that Wilson County’s list isn’t factoring into their work.

A spokesperson for Knox County Schools said the East Tennessee district is collaborating with its librarians and legal team to identify books for possible removal and will provide its schools with a list in the weeks ahead.

Below, you can view the list of books removed by Wilson County Schools.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New research puts a cost on school board conflict: $3.2 billion last year alone

2024-10-23T04:01:00+00:00

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Heated debates on topics like LGBTQ rights, critical race theory, and book bans have dominated school board races in communities across the country and consumed hours of time at public meetings.

Those “culture war” debates also exacted real financial costs on districts, in the form of extra security at meetings, extra staff time to respond to voluminous public records requests, and staff turnover, a new study says.

The study, which involved a survey of 467 superintendents, attempts to put a dollar amount on the impact of all this conflict. Based on their answers, researchers estimated that districts nationwide spent $3.2 billion in the 2023-24 school year responding to “culturally divisive conflict.” Districts with high levels of conflict spent three times as much on average as districts with low levels of conflict.

Researchers surveyed superintendents across the country during the summer of 2024. Later, they carried out in-depth interviews with 42 of them to deepen their understanding of the survey results. Those superintendents described evening meetings that stretched into the early-morning hours and harassment campaigns that started online and reduced staff to tears.

“The length of board meetings has grown from 90 minutes to five and a half hours, and much of this time is taken up by speakers claiming that local schools ‘are indoctrinating kids’ with ‘ideologies around sexual health,’ even as the district uses state-approved curriculum,” one superintendent from a Western state told researchers.

Another superintendent said that after an incident in the school was featured on national conservative news websites, her office started to receive multiple calls a day, and the district’s social media channels were “effectively bombed … full of messages of hate.”

“My 60+ year-old administrative assistant was bombarded with phone calls to the point where she wanted to quit,” she told researchers. “She was crying because of the things that people would call and say into the telephone — none of whom were local.”

The biggest cost: staff turnover

Researchers sorted districts into low, medium, and high levels of conflict, based on how often the districts were challenged on library books, teaching about race and racism, and policies protecting LGBTQ students, as well as how often those conflicts featured threats, violent rhetoric, or misinformation.

To quantify the financial impact of cultural conflict, the researchers asked how much money each district had to spend on security, media and communication, social media support, legal fees, community relations, improving school board relations, government relations, and other areas to manage the impact of the conflicts.

The most significant financial impact associated with conflict was staff turnover: 29% of the superintendents reported that teachers and other members of staff had left the district due to the stress caused by the conflicts in the school boards. Even superintendents were affected: 42% of the district leaders who looked for a new job in the last year reported that their decision was related to school board conflict, stress, and politics, according to the recently released report.

While districts with low levels of conflict spent, on average, $148,190 last school year to replace departing staff, districts with high conflict spent, on average, $460,824.

High-conflict districts spent an average of $56,300 on legal fees and $40,600 on security, with indirect costs reaching even higher, the study found.

“The superintendents in the interviews spoke in such compelling ways about how the attacks on the public schools and educators created a stressful environment, where educators felt less committed and felt less public commitment toward them and hence were open to thinking about either leaving the profession or leaving that locality,” said John Rogers, education professor at UCLA and lead investigator on the study.

Rogers has led a number of other studies on the impact of political conflict generated by conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty. The most recent report aims to follow up on that previous research.

“I had been hearing and then seeing news reports as well that suggested that things were easing off a bit,” Rogers said. “That differed from what I had been hearing from superintendents, who were saying they were still having these issues.”

The survey found that more than a quarter of districts reported high levels of conflict in the last school year.

School board conflicts started flaring during the COVID-19 pandemic when some parent groups objected to policies such as mandatory masking. Later, their focus shifted to criticisms of how schools taught about race or policies regarding LGBTQ students.

The researchers differentiated the disruption caused by these conflicts from what they called healthy participation in public meetings. The unhealthy conflicts start, they wrote in the report, when the discussion “violates democratic principles, with a particular emphasis on threatening behavior, violent rhetoric, and the spread of misinformation.” The report calls for communities to “uphold norms of respect” as people debate issues.

“I think that civic energy brings strength and vitality to our public schools,” Rogers said in an interview. “We want to have multiple, different, diverse voices engaged in the process of figuring out what public schools should do and how they do it. I would draw a distinction, though, between encouraging participation in our public education system and fomenting conflict in an anti democratic way.”

How conflict takes money out of the classroom

The researchers’ goal with putting a cost on the culture wars was to call attention to how they are detracting from students’ learning and well-being. Money spent managing conflict is not available for programming and services, Rogers said.

The costs identified by the survey are related exclusively to the last year, but Rogers said that the long-term financial and social costs may be much larger.

“These conflicts have already undermined social trust in schools and educators,” Rogers said. “When that happens, it takes a while to rebuild it. So as we move forward, I think part of the project needs to be efforts to foster social trust between educators and the communities they’re serving at some level.”

Wellington Soares is Chalkbeat’s national education reporting intern based in New York City. Contact Wellington at wsoares@chalkbeat.org

‘Beloved’ and five other library books banned by one of Tennessee’s largest school systems

2024-09-20T03:58:42+00:00

In one of Tennessee’s book banning hot spots, the Rutherford County Board of Education voted Thursday to remove six books from high school libraries, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the horrific realities of American slavery.

Also removed were Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a coming-of-age novel in which a supporting character is gay, and “Wicked,” Gregory Maguire’s popular retelling of the classic “Wizard of Oz” tale.

But Sherry Shahan’s “Skin & Bones,” which delves into eating disorders, failed to get enough votes for removal and will stay on high school library shelves in Rutherford County Schools, a suburban district south of Nashville with about 50,000 students.

The votes came amid a politically charged national climate and debates in Tennessee over what constitutes age appropriateness versus censorship.

Tennessee legislators recently revised Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 school library law to expand the definition of what books are prohibited. The goal, they said, is to ensure the materials are appropriate for the ages and maturity levels of the students who can access them.

But instead of holding public votes on questionable material as Rutherford County’s board did Thursday, the revised law has created confusion for librarians and school leaders, prompting many to quietly pull controversial books from the shelves. A recent survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles have been removed statewide under the changes, with more under review.

Rutherford County’s board voted one by one on seven books under review at the request of board member Caleb Tidwell, who cited “sexually explicit” content that he believes crossed the line of local community decency standards.

The votes came in a packed meeting room after two hours of public comment and debate, with more than a dozen citizens speaking both for and against Tidwell’s proposal. Some who opposed the books read several passages aloud.

Also removed were two novels by Sarah J. Maas, “Queen of Shadows” and “Tower of Dawn,” and Yaa Gyasi’s “Homegoing.”

The decisions came after several board members expressed confusion over which state laws and policies to follow in making their decisions: the state’s criminal obscenity law that calls for review of the material as a whole, or the revised school library law that prohibits sexual content either “in whole or in part.”

Members also voted against considering a compromise from Stan Vaught, a newly elected board member who proposed creating mature reading areas within school libraries requiring parental approval for access. The seven books in question would be placed there, he said.

The ACLU of Tennessee, which sent a Sept. 16 letter urging board members to keep all seven books, said Thursday’s votes represented the viewpoints of a vocal minority who wants to ban books that address race, racism, LGBTQ+ rights, and marginalized groups.

'Beloved' is Toni Morrison's haunting novel about sexual violence and the brutality of American slavery. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

“Rutherford County students will pay the price and be at a significant disadvantage compared to their peers across the state and the U.S. who have access to these materials and are developing the critical thinking skills needed for college and beyond,” Kathy Sinback, the organization’s executive director in Tennessee, said in a statement.

But Tidwell, who called for the books’ removal, said the decisions were a “win for the protection of minors,” and he hinted that more library books will be reviewed.

“While there is likely more work to do, tonight was a step forward,” he said after the meeting.

The district already removed 29 titles earlier this year, as well as one last year, Mike Curato’s “Flamer,” a graphic novel about a gay teenager struggling with his identity.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated which character in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” identifies as gay.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Inside Colorado’s high-stakes preschool lawsuit pitting religious liberty against LGBTQ rights

2024-09-19T19:31:39+00:00

At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door to greater public funding for private religious schools, a lower court ruling in Colorado could have big implications for the separation of church and state in education.

At the center of the case are two Catholic preschools in suburban Denver that want exemptions from state non-discrimination rules based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The parishes that run the preschools sued the state last year because they didn’t want to have to admit LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families if the preschools joined Colorado’s popular new state-funded preschool program.

A federal judge largely ruled in the state’s favor in June. But the preschools are now appealing — and the case could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado case is one of several unfolding across the country, including in Maine and Vermont, that ask whether religious schools are bound by state non-discrimination rules if they join state-funded programs.

If the Catholic preschools win, it’s possible Colorado children could be shut out of some preschools because of their or their parents’ identities.

Brittany, the mother of a 7-year-old transgender girl, choked up as she talked about the lawsuit.

“It’s so upsetting that there’s so much hate for our kids,” she said. “These kids are just kids. They don’t have a political agenda.”

Brittany’s daughter Naomi is an art-loving, tree-climbing second grader who enjoys reading “Captain Underpants” books and playing pretend with her little sister, who is 4.

The Denver family, who asked that their last name not be used to protect their privacy, is the kind that could be affected by the outcome of Colorado’s Catholic preschools appeal. And if the case — or another one like it — ends up at the Supreme Court, the decision could have a nationwide impact.

Katie Eyer, a law professor at Rutgers University, said, “There are so many of these cases that are currently working their way up through the courts,” she said. “Whether this particular one lands on [the Supreme Court] docket remains to be seen, but it is certainly the type of case that they’ve shown quite a lot of interest in in recent years.”

Colorado invited religious preschools to join state program

As Colorado leaders prepared to roll out universal preschool in the fall of 2023, they invited public and private preschools across the state to join the program. Among them were St. Mary Catholic Virtue School in Littleton and Wellspring Catholic Academy of St. Bernadette in Lakewood, the two schools now at the center of the lawsuit.

The “mixed delivery” approach — meaning both public and private schools can participate — is common in states that fund large preschool programs. In Colorado, it helped ensure there were enough seats available for all of the families that wanted one. This year, about 41,000 4-year-olds are getting half- or full-day tuition-free preschool through the program.

Dozens of religious preschools have joined Colorado’s universal preschool program, including those with Methodist, Lutheran, Jewish, and Muslim underpinnings. One participating preschool is Catholic: St. Columba Catholic Montessori Preschool in Durango.

Experts say that families choose religious preschools for lots of reasons, ranging from a shared faith to factors such as a convenient location, open slots, and high ratings.

But the Archdiocese of Denver wouldn’t let most of the 36 preschools it oversees sign off on the state’s non-discrimination agreement, a requirement to participate.

The big sticking point was the agreement’s protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Officials from some religious preschools, including from St. Mary, raised their concerns during regular meetings with state preschool leaders before the program launched.

That’s when state leaders mentioned an idea they’d come up with to allow religious preschools who joined universal preschool to reserve some or all of their seats for members of their congregations, according to testimony from the trial last January. But the archdiocese didn’t like that solution because it didn’t want to limit preschool enrollment to only parish members, an archdiocese official testified.

The Catholic preschools instead wanted the state to exempt them from the parts of the non-discrimination rule covering sexual orientation and gender identity. Other religious groups, including an Orthodox Jewish group and a conservative Lutheran group, also expressed interest in exemptions in a letter to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. State officials refused to grant them, saying non-discrimination protections were part of state law.

“In a sense, church leaders want to have their cake and eat it too,” said Bob Shine, associate director of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic group based near Washington, D.C. that advocates for LGBTQ inclusion.

“They want public funding because in most cases the church cannot sustain a lot of its educational or charitable efforts now, so they need the government money, but they don’t want any of the conditions that come with [it].”

In Denver, the archdiocese this month announced the impending closure of Wellspring and two other Catholic schools due to declining enrollment and financial problems. Last year, the archdiocese closed a K-8 school in Aurora.

Wellspring Catholic Academy of St. Bernadette in Lakewood is one of two Catholic preschools that sued the state of Colorado.

Archdiocese allows some preschools to join state program

While the Denver Archdiocese barred most of its preschools from signing the non-discrimination agreement and joining the state preschool program, there were exceptions. Five preschools under the Archdiocese umbrella signed the form and joined. All serve low-income families and are operated by Catholic Charities of Denver, the Archdiocese’ charitable arm.

Rick Biekers, executive director of early childhood education programs at Catholic Charities of Denver, said the five preschools use a secular curriculum and are open to all families in need.

“We absolutely serve anyone who comes to our doors,” he said in an email.

Lawyers for the Catholic preschools said during the trial that the reason Catholic Charities preschools were allowed to participate in the state preschool program is because they have a different mission than the rest of the Archdiocese preschools. That is, to serve the poor.

In contrast, the other Archdiocese preschools are dedicated to “raising the next generation in the faith,” said Joseph Davis, one of the preschools’ lawyers from the Washington, D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, during the trial.

Another lawsuit over Colorado’s non-discrimination rules

In June 2023, about two months before the Catholic preschools filed their lawsuit, an evangelical Christian school in the southern Colorado town of Buena Vista sued the state.

Busy Bees Preschool, part of Darren Patterson Christian Academy, had signed the state’s non-discrimination agreement and joined the universal preschool program. But school leaders, who are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom based in Scottsdale, Arizona, said they feared the state rules on sexual orientation and gender identity would force the preschool to hire employees who don’t share its faith and change school policies related to restrooms, pronouns, and dress codes.

The lawsuit is similar to the Catholic preschool lawsuit, which also cited concerns about hiring LGBTQ employees. But unlike the Catholic preschools, Darren Patterson leaders say all children are welcome to enroll in Busy Bees, including those from LGBTQ and non-Christian families.

In October, Darren Patterson won a preliminary injunction that blocks Colorado from punishing the school for policies that don’t align with state non-discrimination rules.

Federal District Court Judge Daniel Domenico, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote in his decision that those rules force the preschool “into the unconstitutional choice of abandoning religiously motivated practices or foregoing otherwise available public funding.”

No trial date has been set.

Supreme Court grows more sympathetic to religious liberty claims

In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has become more conservative and more sympathetic to religious liberty claims, often at the expense of arguments favoring a strict separation of church and state.

In a landmark 2022 Maine case called Carson v. Makin, the high court ruled that religious schools can’t be excluded from publicly funded programs if secular private schools are allowed to participate. But the court didn’t clearly address whether states could require those religious schools to agree to non-discrimination rules in order to participate.

“That then tees up this tension,” said Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center. “The religious schools are arguing, … ‘Having to abide by those non-discrimination policies violates our religious rights.’”

In the Colorado case, Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane, who was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter, disagreed with the Catholic preschools on that point in his ruling.

He wrote of Colorado’s non-discrimination rules: “The purpose of the requirement is not to invade religious freedom but to further the implementation of a strongly embraced public value.”

Scott Skinner-Thompson, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder, said of the opinion, “He makes absolutely clear that it is constitutional and unproblematic for states and local governments to apply LGBTQ non-discrimination provisions to recipients of state funds.”

Sarah Taitz, constitutional legal fellow at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said court decisions often hinge on whether states apply the rules in a “neutral and generally applicable” way.

In his 101-page opinion, Kane concluded the state met that threshold.

Kane did give the Catholic preschools a narrow win in the case — exempting them from rules banning discrimination based on religion. He did that because of Colorado’s decision to let religious preschools prioritize children from their own congregations. He said the state can’t have it both ways — allowing the congregation preference, which is based on religion, while telling participating preschools they can’t discriminate based on religion.

Mom of trans daughter relieved by ruling on LGBTQ inclusion

Brittany, Naomi’s mother, said she and other parents she’s talked to were relieved by Kane’s decision upholding protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

“We were really happy that the ultimate ruling that came out was that you can’t discriminate against our community,” said Brittany, who runs a monthly park play group for transgender children and started the Denver chapter of the national group TransParent

“That just felt really, really nice to hear, even though we kind of think it shouldn’t have been an argument to begin with,” she said.

Brittany said her family was lucky because when Naomi came out as transgender at age 4, the teachers at her private preschool were supportive. They even helped with her daughter’s social transition at school, including the switch in pronouns and her name change. The family has found the same openness at their public elementary school in Denver, where Naomi is in second grade and their 4-year-old attends preschool through Colorado’s universal preschool program.

In both kindergarten and first grade, Naomi told her entire class — with teachers facilitating the conversation — that she was transgender and answered questions from classmates.

“She came home happy and excited and said, “Mom, I told my whole class that I was trans and they’re all still my friends,” she said.

When sharing about her daughter’s gender identity, Brittany said, “It’s never the kids that we worry about.”

Brittany said her in-laws are practicing Catholics and when she and her husband broke the news about Naomi’s gender identity, they felt a twinge of uncertainty.

“Specifically because of their faith, we weren’t sure what their reaction was going to be,” she said. “They just told us that they love her no matter what and have been champions for her and other kids like her.”

Catholic preschools want to avoid “conflict” and “confusion”

The Catholic preschools in the Colorado case describe their refusal to enroll children from LGBTQ families as a way to avoid confusing children who might hear one thing from their parents and another from their preschool teachers.

An Archdiocese education official addressed a slice of those potential conflicts at the trial — noting that teachers at the Catholic preschools wouldn’t use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns, or let them wear uniforms or use bathrooms not associated with their gender at birth.

But it’s unclear what other conflicts might arise, for example, if a preschooler’s parents are gay. During the trial, Avery Coats, co-principal at one of the Catholic schools, described the preschool’s instruction related to gender and sexual orientation as age-appropriate.

“We do this in vocabulary like mommy and daddy and marriage and family,” she said.

Coats referred an interview request from Chalkbeat to Kelly Clark, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Denver. Clark did not respond to repeated email requests from Chalkbeat asking about such conflicts.

Nick Reaves, an attorney from Becket, sent an emailed statement on behalf of the Archdiocese, saying in part, that Colorado has excluded Archdiocese preschools and the families they serve from the universal preschool program “simply for staying true to their faith.”

Amanda Henderson, director of the Institute for Religion, Politics & Culture at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, said the possibility that children from LGBTQ families will encounter contradictory perspectives at school isn’t a new dilemma.

“Let families navigate that on their own,” she said. “LGBTQ families have been navigating a culture that was counter to their family for a long, long time.”

Ish Ruiz, assistant professor of theology at Pacific School of Religion, said keeping children from LGBTQ families out of Catholic preschools won’t prevent other students from asking about or sharing what they see in their daily lives.

“That 4-year-old will show up to the classroom … saying, ‘My friend Tommy who doesn’t go to this school has two mommies or two daddies,’ or ‘I have an uncle who’s married to his husband,’” he said. “You cannot sanitize the school from reality.”

Catholics have diverse opinions on LGBTQ issues

Despite guidance crafted by the Archdiocese of Denver that calls for the exclusion of LGBTQ students and families from some schools, not all Catholics agree with the stance.

“The church is not a monolith,” said Ruiz. “The church, in and of itself, has a lot of internal disagreement on the matter.”

Henderson said diverse opinions within the church create a thorny job for the courts.

“It becomes really difficult when a specific court is defining … what a religious belief is or whose religious belief is prioritized over others,” she said.

Beth Mueller Stewart and her husband Dan Stewart are practicing Catholics who disagree so strongly with the Catholic preschools’ argument, they urged the Archdiocese to drop the lawsuit.

In a May letter to Aquila and other church officials, published on the New Ways Ministry web site, the couple described the “tough position” they were in.

“The lawsuit forced us to ask: ‘Do we keep our child at Wellspring Catholic Academy and seemingly support the lawsuit, forsaking our values and our consciences? Or do we forgo Catholic education at Wellspring to stand in solidarity and love with our own LGBTQ loved ones?’”

Ultimately, they withdrew their child from the school.

Meanwhile a Catholic family with a preschooler at St. Mary Catholic Virtue School, joined the two Catholic parishes in suing the state over the non-discrimination agreement. The mother, Lisa Sheley, is a front office coordinator at St. Mary school, and testified at the January trial.

She said she and her husband Dan feel it’s important to give their six children a Catholic education. If St. Mary had participated in Colorado’s universal preschool program, her family would have saved nearly $5,000, she said.

“Obviously with inflation, everything is extremely expensive, but even more so for a family of eight,” she said. “So, anything we could save would be extremely helpful.”

Lisa Sheley could not be reached for comment, including through her lawyers.

Will Colorado’s preschool case lead to K-12 impacts?

In the near-term, the outcome of the Catholic preschools case — or the cases unfolding in Maine and Vermont — won’t affect Colorado’s public K-12 education system.

That’s the question at the heart of another lawsuit over Colorado’s preschool program, as well as lawsuits in Maine and Vermont. In those two states, religious schools want exemptions from rules about sexual orientation and gender identity so they can participate in state programs that cover private school tuition for students who live far from public schools.

But there could be spillover eventually, experts say. Considering Colorado’s charter-friendly environment, an unprecedented effort in Oklahoma to create a charter school run by the Catholic church shows one way that might happen. Charter schools are free publicly funded, privately managed schools.

While the Oklahoma Supreme Court in June ruled the Catholic charter school unconstitutional, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Lurking in that case is this notion that a religious entity could not only seek to participate in public programs, but actually become a public school,” said Kim, of the Education Law Center,

The idea of normalizing public funding for private religious education is concerning, he said “especially if in that process, there’s an erosion or evisceration of non-discrimination principles.”

Already many states have voucher programs that provide students funding for private school tuition, including at religious schools with anti-LGBTQ policies. Colorado has no voucher program, though some experts worry that Amendment 80, a ballot measure up for a vote in November, is a step in that direction.

Despite years of questions about potentially discriminatory practices at voucher-accepting schools, Taitz said the legal questions are a bit different than Colorado’s Catholic preschool case. That’s because in voucher programs, schools don’t get funding directly from the state. Instead, families are the go-between.

“But in terms of some of the principles at stake about discrimination and separation of church and state, vouchers pose a similar, really major problem,” she said.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Under Tennessee’s stricter school library law, some books quietly disappear

2024-09-17T22:09:26+00:00

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Jennifer Edwards was a teenager in Arizona when she first read “Beloved,” Toni Morrison’s haunting novel about sexual violence and the brutal realities of American slavery.

“It had a profound effect on me,” she said, citing the empathy, historical understanding, and critical thinking skills the book imparted.

Now a mother of two sons and living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Edwards wants teens in her community to have access to her all-time favorite book.

But under a recently revised state law broadening the definition of what school library materials are prohibited, her local board of education is set to vote Thursday on whether to pull the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and six other books with mature themes from the shelves of Rutherford County Schools.

“Banning books is not OK,” Edwards told the board last month as it began reviewing the materials. “Just because you don’t like what the mirror shows you doesn’t mean you put the mirror down.”

This week’s vote comes after the district, south of Nashville, already removed 29 books from its libraries this year under a previous policy, part of a wave of purges on campuses across Tennessee and other states.

How the ‘age-appropriate’ debate is altering curriculum

In Tennessee, that wave started under Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 school library law requiring periodic reviews of catalogs to ensure materials are appropriate for the ages and maturity levels of the students who can access them. Librarians and teachers had to publish their inventories of book collections online for parents to view. Early removals included books about marginalized groups, including people who identify as LGBTQ+, and descriptions of slavery and racial discrimination throughout U.S. history.

This spring, scrutiny escalated. Republican lawmakers added a definition of what’s “suitable” and, based on the state’s obscenity law, prohibited any material that “in whole or in part contains descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

In the absence of state guidance on how to interpret the changes — What constitutes excess violence, for instance? Are photographs of nude statues allowed? What about Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”? — some school boards like Rutherford County’s are putting questionable material to a vote. Educators in many other districts are quietly culling their shelves of certain books.

“Yes, there is some subjectiveness to it, but there’s also a line. We need to determine what the line is, and then hold it.”
Caleb Tidwell, board member, Rutherford County Schools

A recent survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles have been removed under the changes, with more under review. One librarian anonymously reported pulling 300 titles at a single school since the start of the academic year. Only a sixth of the organization’s members responded to the survey.

“We may never truly know the level to which books have been removed from school libraries in Tennessee,” the organization said in a statement, noting that large-scale removals may cause some libraries to fall under the state’s minimum standards for collection counts.

“A literal interpretation of this law may have the unintended consequences of gutting resources that support curriculum standards for fine arts, biology, health, history, and world religions, to name a few, especially in high schools, where AP curriculum and dual enrollment courses require more critical texts,” the group said.

Lindsey Kimery, one of the organization’s leaders, said the law’s rollout has created “chaos and confusion” for school librarians.

“Some librarians have received guidance from their central office; some have not,” she said. “Some boards are updating their policies for handling book challenges to align with the law’s changes. Some districts have interpreted the law to mean they should preemptively go through their collections and pull anything they think has one of the prohibited topics in it.

“It’s all over the map,” Kimery added.

‘Phantom book banning’: Censorship in the shadows

The quiet censorship is being noticed by First Amendment advocates, from the ACLU of Tennessee to Julia Garnett, who graduated last spring from Hendersonville High School in Sumner County, north of Nashville.

Garnett started a free speech club at her high school during her senior year. Now a freshman at Smith College in Massachusetts, she is the youth spokesperson for the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, Sept. 22-28.

Last week, she searched her alma mater’s online library catalog to look for books by Sarah J. Maas and Ellen Hopkins, whose popular young adult novels are frequently challenged or banned due to their mature themes and sexual content.

None were listed.

“They used to be there, but they’ve disappeared,” said Garnett. “I call it phantom book banning, where libraries are being censored, but not in a public way. I think that’s what scares me the most.”

The law is vulnerable to a federal challenge on First Amendment grounds, said Kathy Sinback, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. The statute’s vagueness, a lack of compliance guidance from the state, and the uneven way the law is being applied across Tennessee are among issues that open the door to a lawsuit.

“But we’d love to see the legislature fix the problems next year without having to pursue litigation,” Sinback said. “We’d like to see it made constitutional in a way that will ensure our children have access to the literature they deserve.”

Legal precedents support students’ First Amendment rights

The House sponsor of the law’s recent revisions, Rep. Susan Lynn of Mt. Juliet, did not respond to emails asking if she’d be open to revisiting the law. Some of her critics worry the goal is ultimately to take a legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a majority.

The Senate sponsor, Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, said he believes the law is constitutional.

“I’m always open to making laws better,” he said, “but I don’t think this interferes with people’s First Amendment rights, and I’m personally not hearing about problems with it. The law’s intent is simply to ensure public schools do not give children access to materials that are not appropriate for their ages.”

Sen. Joey Hensley, of Hohenwald, co-sponsored 2024 legislation to identify what school library materials are prohibited, and to require local school boards to act on book complaints within 60 days.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said higher courts have consistently sided with First Amendment advocates on challenges to content in school libraries, even as efforts to ban books in public schools and libraries reached an all-time high in 2023.

The school library is supposed to be a place of voluntary inquiry — a safe space for students to explore ideas under the supervision of adults instead of alone on their cellphones.

“This gets to the core of the First Amendment,” she said, “the idea that libraries are a marketplace of ideas, and elected officials should not be able to dictate their contents.”

“Students are not just students; they are citizens.”
Ken Paulson, director, Free Speech Center, Middle Tennessee State University

But it’s also possible that another school library case could someday reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Two book ban cases from Iowa and Texas are already making their way through the federal courts.

Current legal precedent stems from the high court’s 1982 ruling involving a school board in New York state that wanted certain books removed from its middle and high school libraries. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against the board and held that “the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient’s meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom.”

Justice William Brennan wrote that while “local school boards have a substantial legitimate role to play in the determination of school library content,” the First Amendment doesn’t give government officials the power to ditch books because they don’t like them or disagree with their viewpoints.

Ken Paulson, director of the Tennessee-based Free Speech Center and a former editor-in-chief of USA Today, also cites the importance of a 1969 Supreme Court ruling establishing that students have constitutional rights, too.

The case involved students in Des Moines, Iowa, who wore black armbands to their public school in silent protest of the Vietnam War. The court sided with the students.

“Because someone is 12 or 14, we sometimes think they don’t have constitutional rights,” Paulson said. “But they do, and they’re surprisingly robust. Students are not just students; they are citizens.”

Middle Tennessee district is a book ban hotspot

In Murfreesboro, a college town that is home to about 50,000 students in Tennessee’s largest suburban K-12 district, most titles removed so far were in high school libraries. They generally were contemporary young adult novels containing sexual content and other mature themes, from child abuse and suicide to substance abuse and LGBTQ+ issues.

The books were flagged as “sexually explicit” material by school board member Caleb Tidwell and removed this spring without going through the district’s library review committee that includes a principal, teachers, librarians, and a parent.

Rutherford County Board of Education is scheduled to decide Sept. 19 whether to remove seven more books from local school libraries.

Xan Lasko, who recently retired as a high school librarian in Rutherford County, said the directives she received from Superintendent James Sullivan bypassed the district’s usual review process for handling complaints. Instead, Tidwell cited a provision of board policy requiring the immediate removal of sexually explicit material. Sullivan concurred, according to their email exchange obtained from the district through a public records request from Nashville TV station WSMV.

Tidwell, a Republican who was reelected to the school board in August, said he made the requests on behalf of individuals who have expressed concerns but who feared retaliation from the media and individuals in the district.

In his opinion, all of the materials in question violate both the state’s obscenity law and local board policy. Most, he said, have “education value near zero, or very low.” For those that provide historical context, other books that go into those topics — but without sexually explicit language — are available.

“It’s a very contentious topic,” said Tidwell, who has three school-age children. “But if we focus on the content, most of this stuff is pretty clear. Yes, there is some subjectiveness to it, but there’s also a line. We need to determine what the line is, and then hold it.”

Lasko, the former librarian, said that’s what librarians and educators do.

“My biggest issue is that a small number of people were making the judgment to curtail what students are able to read using a vague law,” said Lasko, who now chairs the intellectual freedom committee of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

“We have master’s degrees in library science. We know what we’re doing,” she said. “But a lot of times, we weren’t being consulted.”

New library policy diminishes the role of librarians

In advance of this week’s vote on Tidwell’s latest request to remove more books, the board revamped its library materials policy to add language from the revised state law. It also eliminated the 11-member review committee appointed annually by the board to consider book complaints.

Instead, materials that district leaders deem to be in violation of the state’s obscenity law are to be immediately removed from all school libraries and then reviewed for a final decision by the board.

A second avenue for removal — through complaints filed by a student, parent, or school employee — also requires a board vote after receiving recommendations from the principal and superintendent and a review by an ad hoc committee.

“Before,” said the ACLU’s Sinback, “there was a thorough process where every person on the review committee had expertise and would read the book. They’d look at the questionable content but also the overall quality of the material and how it could impact kids exposed to it in both a positive and negative way.”

Now, she said, the decision rests completely with board members.

The changes concern school librarians like Brian Seadorf, who oversees the collection at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro. He asked board members and parents to “just talk to us” if they have concerns about certain books.

“We are educators, we are parents, we are grandparents. … We are good people,” Seadorf told the board on Aug. 22.

Angela Frederick, a Rutherford County resident and school librarian in a neighboring district, added: “The titles you’re considering removing are for older students approaching adulthood. It is developmentally appropriate for teenagers to mentally wrestle with difficult topics. It is also excellent preparation for higher education. Shielding them from books like these does not prepare them for anything but ignorance.”

For Edwards, the Rutherford County parent who also spoke to the board, she’s most upset that “Beloved” is on the chopping block, even though she knows it’s a deeply sad and painful book to read. (Morrison, who died in 2019, said she was inspired to write the novel based on the true story of an enslaved woman, Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter in 1856 to spare her from slavery.)

“Just because you don’t like what the mirror shows you doesn’t mean you put the mirror down.”
Jennifer Edwards, parent

“I remember it took me several weeks to finish ‘Beloved’ when I was 15, because I had to put it down every few days,” recalls Edwards, now 42. “I had to have time to process what I was reading.”

“But to restrict literary genius,” she continued, “it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: A previous version of this story attributed a quote from Rutherford County resident Angela Frederick to librarian Brian Seadorf. This version corrects the misattribution.

National teacher of the year urges teachers to ‘find their voice’ as experts in their profession

2024-08-26T23:24:49+00:00

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The Tennessee educator chosen as the nation’s teacher of the year is calling on America’s 3.5 million teachers to “find their voice” on behalf of students as many states seek to censor teachers, ban books, and push voucher policies that send taxpayer funding to private schools.

Missy Testerman, who just ended her tenure as Tennessee’s teacher of the year, said that bigger educational priorities demand attention: air conditioners are breaking down in aging school buildings as a new academic year begins; federal pandemic relief funding is running out to pay for tutoring and summer learning programs; and school communities are struggling to provide mental health support, especially for their most marginalized students.

“When we find our voices, we find our own way to stand in the gap for kids. It is not enough to just shut our classroom doors and teach,” Testerman said in her video address to the nation, released this month by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Testerman, who officially began as her profession’s top ambassador in July, is on leave this academic year from her job at Rogersville City School, where she teaches English language learners in her rural Appalachian town of 4,500 people. Her new role includes traveling to more than 150 speaking engagements or appearances before organizations spanning education, business, health, and government.

Among her messages: Teachers are experts in their field.

“Your governor is not an education expert. The legislature is not filled with education experts,” she told Chalkbeat. “If you want an expert on education policy and outcomes and what works for students, ask your teachers, your administrators, your director of schools.”

That message has resonated at her talks, where she’s routinely greeted afterward by a line of educators waiting to thank her.

“It’s hard to do a profession where you are the expert, but you’re often not treated as such,” she said. “Sometimes, we need to be reminded.”

Testerman spoke with Chalkbeat on Friday before ceding her title as Tennessee’s teacher of the year to the 2024-25 honoree, Bryan Kerns, a math and fire management instructor at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport.

In many ways, Testerman said, Tennessee epitomizes the challenges faced by educators she’s met across the nation, many of whom feel like they’re walking on eggshells just to keep demanding jobs that pay a modest salary.

While she applauded a focus on early literacy and significant investments in vocational and technical education under Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, she said other policy changes during the last six years have been more of a burden.

A 2021 state law limits what public school teachers can say about race, gender, and bias in the classroom and interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. A group of Tennessee teachers is challenging that law in federal court.

Tennessee’s 2022 school library law, billed as a way to ensure materials are age-appropriate, quickly expanded so that a state panel can ban certain books statewide, based on local complaints. This year, lawmakers added a definition of “suitable” that makes it easier to remove materials, including many stories about Black people or those identifying as LGBTQ.

Also this year, the legislature passed a law requiring public school employees to out transgender students to their parents and debated a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools. Testerman called the second proposal, which failed to pass, a distraction.

“From my standpoint, there are so many problems facing schools — I’ll give you a list,” she said. “But that’s not one that I think we need to waste a lot of time on. Let that be a local decision.”

Meanwhile, Lee’s administration is pushing for a statewide voucher program that would let any Tennessee family use taxpayer money toward private school tuition, regardless of their family income.

“Tennessee is currently in the bottom tier of states in per-pupil funding for public education, and increasing that should be our focus,” said Testerman.

“Right now, however, there’s a $144 million placeholder in our state budget for a voucher program that didn’t even pass,” she continued. “It’s disheartening for teachers to know this money is sitting there doing nothing while their students have so many needs.”

Testerman said the money could be used instead to fix broken air conditioners in Memphis schools, hire more mental health professionals in her own school system, and replace outdated Chromebook laptops in suburban Williamson County near Nashville, one of the state’s most affluent districts.

“If Williamson County is seeing these kinds of financial problems,” she said, “you can imagine what’s happening in urban and rural districts in East and West Tennessee that don’t have the tax base to raise funds the traditional way.”

While it often feels like her profession is under attack, Testerman said she’s inspired by the educators she’s met across America as she advocates for higher compensation and respect for them.

“This job can feel heavy,” she said. “Teachers are facing student behavioral and mental health issues at a scale they’ve never seen before. We have no idea what kids go home to. But we can make the seven hours that they’re with us happy. We can use those hours to deliver academic content in a way that prepares them to move on and hopefully create a good life.”

“We are hope givers,” she said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Most Americans are leery of book bans — but they don’t oppose all restrictions, survey says

2024-08-21T12:05:00+00:00

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A majority of Americans worry more about children losing access to books that could teach them something about the world than they do about children being exposed to potentially inappropriate material.

And most trust teachers and school librarians to make good choices about the books they stock at school.

But they also think age appropriateness is a legitimate reason to restrict book access, especially for elementary students. And there are big differences on the issue between liberals and conservatives, between LGBTQ adults and others, and between parents and non-parents.

That’s all according to new polling from the Knight Foundation that examines public attitudes toward book restrictions in public schools. Knight talked to more than 4,500 adults, including 1,413 parents of children aged 18 or younger, and oversampled parents of color to better capture their perspectives.

The picture that emerges is “nuanced,” said Kyla Gabriel, director of learning and impact for the Knight Foundation, which has done research on free expression issues for decades.

For example, 88% of parents of public school children say they feel confident that their local public schools choose appropriate books, compared with 76% of non-parents. But more public school parents say they support some efforts to restrict book access than do non-parents — 40% to 32%. And more than half of parents whose children don’t attend public school support efforts to restrict book access, reflecting the greater representation of religious conservatives among private school and homeschooling parents.

“This is much more complex than ‘a majority of adults oppose book restrictions’,” Gabriel said. “When they have a child in the public school system, they are not necessarily supportive of book restrictions, but they might see some reasons to restrict books.”

Reflecting similarly conflicted views, a survey last year by the Every Library Institute found that large majorities of parents trust librarians and believe their children are safe using the school library — even as smaller majorities supported the idea of restricting book access in some cases, requiring parents to sign permission slips for library use, and allowing parents to opt their child out of using the school library.

And an Ipsos poll found that Democrats had more concerns about book bans, but voters of both parties said they would be less likely to support a candidate who supported restricting book access. The issue continues to resonate politically: In a July speech shortly after she became the likely Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris contrasted her party with Republicans: “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”

Uncertainty over who should decide on appropriate books

In the Knight survey results released Wednesday, majorities of conservatives, Republicans, and white evangelical Protestants support restricting books in public schools.

But even some conservative respondents worried that works considered classics could be banned in liberal communities because they touch on ideas or use language now considered outmoded or offensive.

“Books like ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Catcher in the Rye’ all need to be made available to students,” one respondent told Knight. “Just because the far-left liberals think all things not woke need to be banned, the students will miss out on learning about the culture and history of this country.”

“They just better not restrict access to the Bible,” said another.

While most Hispanic respondents did not support restricting books, they were more likely to support some restrictions than other ethnic or racial groups, while Black respondents were the least likely ethnic or racial group to support restrictions.

Just 12% of LGBTQ adults told Knight they support book restrictions in school. Many LGBTQ youth report feeling unsafe at school even as many states have adopted restrictions on talking about gender and sexuality and some schools have removed books that mention LGBTQ topics.

Large majorities said students should have access to books that might contradict their parents’ political, religious, or moral beliefs. Some respondents cast efforts to restrict book access as “censorship.”

“These efforts sound like the actions of right-wing extremists who want to restrict education and access to information in order to inhibit students’ critical thinking so they will more easily conform to the extremist ideology,” one respondent said.

Still, 61% said age appropriateness would be a legitimate reason to restrict access to certain books, with some comparing this to TV and movie ratings systems.

There was less consensus about who should decide whether books were appropriate. About half said they trusted librarians and teachers to make the call, but those school professionals scored higher than other groups. Fewer than a third said the school board should decide, and just 21% said the state government or non-parents in the community could be trusted with the decision.

While a majority of respondents said books that portray or discuss racism should be available to all students, fewer than half thought elementary school students should have access to books that mention sexual orientation or the existence of non-traditional gender identities. This aligns with other polls about people’s comfort levels with discussions of race and American history at school versus discussions of sexuality or gender in the classroom.

In contrast, 70% of LGBTQ respondents — many of whom were once LGBTQ students themselves — said that books touching on sexuality and gender identity should be available even to elementary students. Many advocates say seeing themselves represented in books and other media is valuable for LGBTQ children who may feel isolated or unsafe in their schools.

Nearly a quarter of respondents were aware of efforts to restrict books in their community, and of those, more than half said the efforts had been successful. One in five respondents from the South said they were aware of successful efforts to restrict books in their community, compared with 6% of respondents in the Northeast.

While six in 10 respondents said the issue of book access was important, just 3% said they had gotten involved personally — 2% to prevent a book from being restricted and 1% to restrict a book.

A large majority of respondents said that parents should be able to raise concerns about particular books, but far fewer thought that community members who didn’t have children in the schools should be able to raise concerns. Respondents also thought that books should not be removed or restricted based on a single complaint.

Studies by PEN America have found that most book bans are instigated by a relatively small number of people. Florida — where a large share of book challenges occur — adopted a law this year that limits people who don’t have children in the school system to one challenge per month.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Families say a Brooklyn elementary school won’t let students form an LGBTQ+ club

2024-07-12T20:30:07+00:00

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Families at a Brooklyn elementary school say the school’s administration has been resisting their efforts to establish an LGBTQ+ club, despite a city official acknowledging to one parent that students were entitled to the club.

Johanna Neufeld, whose daughter recently finished kindergarten at P.S. 139 in Flatbush, said families began advocating more than a year ago for a Rainbow Club. Parents and students sought to establish a space for those who identify as LGBTQ+, or who have family members within the LGBTQ+ community.

But those efforts have stalled, with administrators introducing a growing list of obstacles, said Neufeld. As a result, she feels her family’s experience and those of others are being excluded.

“It’s really important for kids to feel seen, and validated, and have their home life validated,” Neufeld said. “We do a lot of stuff around food, and culture, and peoples’ backgrounds, and where their families are from, and it’s really important, and it’s been wonderful for my daughter… But there hasn’t been an opportunity for her to say, ‘I have two moms, and this is how we live, and this is our experience.’”

The school’s principal did not respond to a request for comment. Education Department officials did not comment on why the P.S. 139 club has not been approved.

The continued push for the club comes as a petition urging city, district, and school officials to support its formation garnered more than 65 signatures from families at the roughly 700-student school — with signees sharing hopes that the club will offer a supportive and affirming space for students to learn about and celebrate all identities. Studies have found that such clubs, often referred to as gender and sexualities alliances, or GSAs, can have a positive impact on student mental health and youth development.

“Broadly, these clubs exist like any other,” said Clark Wolff Hamel, director of education programs at PFLAG NYC, an organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth. “They allow students a space to find other people who share similar interests. That’s the point of an extracurricular club: To establish community.

“Establishing community at young ages is incredibly important, because those are the ages at which kids are starting to understand a sense of identity — not just personal identity, but family identity,” he added. “There are kids who come from LGBTQ+ families — whether it’s families with same-gender parents, whether it’s families who have siblings who are part of the community, whatever that looks like — [these clubs help them] understand that they are not alone in it.”

Still, in spite of the potential benefits to school communities, Hamel said he’s encountered many schools that resist efforts to establish them due to a fear of pushback from other families.

GSAs and other LGBTQ+ student groups have existed in schools for decades — with a group of New York City students forming one of the first such clubs at their high school in 1972. Across the country, the number of schools with GSAs can vary significantly between states. New York was among just a handful of states to report that more than half of their secondary schools had a GSA in 2018, according to one analysis of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

The city’s Education Department did not provide data on the number of GSAs in New York City schools.

Initially, P.S. 139 administrators told families they couldn’t establish the club without a faculty advisor and without funding to support it, Neufeld said. But when parents addressed each of those concerns — finding a teacher willing to run it, and securing funding from the Parent Association — the school continued to resist the club’s creation.

Eventually, families were offered a “Respect for All” club instead, with a curriculum that would address LGBTQ+ issues in a limited capacity, while largely focusing on combating bullying and creating a supportive student community, Neufeld said.

“Those are all important things, but not what we were asking for,” she said.

Orli LeWinter, a member of the Parent Association executive board, said the PA has not been directly involved with efforts to establish the club, but confirmed it will fund the club if it is approved.

Under federal law, students generally have a right to form GSAs in secondary schools. Though the Equal Access Act’s club protections only explicitly refer to secondary schools, Hamel said there has been “a massive precedent set in NYC that … elementary schools should also be protected in the same ways.”

And emails shared with Chalkbeat show an official from the city’s Education Department confirming to Neufeld in January that students at the school are “entitled to affinity group spaces” under federal law.

“Students within NYCPS are entitled to affinity group spaces, as stated in the Federal policy, the Equal Access Act,” wrote a member of the Education Department’s Office of Safety & Youth Development, instructing local district officials to help facilitate the creation of the club. “Please contact the school and make them aware of this legal compliance, being that we are a public school system.

“Please also inform them that NYC Public Schools is in full support of GSA groups at all grade levels,” the Education Department official added, according to the email obtained by Chalkbeat.

Still, despite the involvement of city and district officials, the club has not been formed, Neufeld said.

City officials told Chalkbeat there is no policy regarding GSAs in elementary schools, adding the Education Department’s LGBTQ Supports Team provides programming and general assistance to schools to ensure they meet the needs of LGBTQ+ students.

Neufeld expressed frustration with school administrators at P.S. 139, as well as the city’s Education Department and officials in her district — all of whom she noted have been made aware of the situation. It remains unclear why the club cannot be formed at the school, she added.

“What has become clear is that the administration does not want it to be something that is identifiably pro-LGBTQ,” Neufeld said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee textbook commission hires first staff to prepare for school library book appeals

2024-05-29T11:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s all-volunteer textbook commission is gearing up to consider new challenges to school library books after state lawmakers broadened the definition of what materials are prohibited.

Two years after the Republican-controlled legislature gave the commission broad new appellate powers to decide ultimately which books students can and can’t access in public school libraries, the panel has yet to receive its first case for review.

But that is expected to change. And for the first time, the commission will have its own full-time staff to support its growing workload, led by a recently retired school librarian from Crossville who formerly served on the commission.

Lee Houston, who has 30-plus years of experience as an elementary school teacher, coach, and librarian, became the body’s executive director in March.

The panel also hired an administrative assistant in early May and is seeking a full-time attorney.

With a potential flood of book challenges and appeals in a state that’s one of the nation’s leaders in banning books, Gov. Bill Lee and the legislature have budgeted $500,000 for the commission to staff up, plus another $55,000 for operational expenses, to help manage the significant expansion of its mandate.

Linda Cash, the commission’s chairperson, said the dedicated support is critical, especially as book complaints work their way through local school boards.

“We expect to start seeing some of those trickle up to us,” said Cash, superintendent of Bradley County Schools.

“I think everybody on the commission will take this very seriously and understands the weight and magnitude of any decision,” she added.

Books that some parents find objectionable could be removed statewide

Amid a nationwide backlash to the racial-justice movement that began in 2020, Tennessee was among the first states to pass laws aimed at restricting what teachers can discuss in the classroom and reviewing what books are available to students.

How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum in Tennessee and nationwide

Themes about race and systemic racism, disparaged by hardline conservatives as “woke ideology,” were among early targets. But the range of censored content has widened to include narratives about sexual violence, LGBTQ+ topics, and transgender identities.

The American Library Association reports 350 titles were challenged in 2023 in school libraries or other public libraries across Tennessee.

The organization does not disclose where those challenges occurred, since much of the data comes from confidential reports from libraries. But based on various news reports, districts in McMinn, Roane, Rutherford, Sumner, Wilson, and Williamson counties, as well as Collierville near Memphis, have been hot spots.

And the number of book challenges is likely to increase based on recent revisions to Tennessee’s age-appropriate materials law sponsored by Rep. Susan Lynn of Mt. Juliet and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald.

The 2022 law, which the governor pushed for, requires schools to periodically screen their library materials for “age appropriateness,” based on local standards and community input. A second law, which also passed in 2022, directs the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission to rule on appeals of local decisions about individual books and gives the panel authority to ban them statewide.

This year, during the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers added a provision allowing a complainant to take a book challenge straight to the state commission if a school board doesn’t address a complaint within 60 days.

More significantly, the revised law defines what’s “suitable” for library collections in K-12 schools and classrooms. It flags any material that “in whole or in part contains nudity, descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

Previously, the law required library materials to be appropriate for the age and maturity levels of students who could access the materials, as well as consistent with the educational mission of the school.

Supporters of the laws say they are protecting children and older students from age-inappropriate, sexually explicit material and exploitation. But critics say the goal is censorship — and that the changes will violate First Amendment freedoms.

Either way, the broadened definition puts a young-adult novel at risk of being banned for even a single paragraph referencing sexual excitement. A children’s picture book such as the Caldecott Award-winning classic “No, David!” could be pulled because one page shows the naked backside of a mischievous boy running down a street.

The 1929 novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” could be targeted for its detailed descriptions of physical and mental trauma suffered by soldiers during World War I. So could Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” which portrays brutal and abusive sex as a tool of power when early America allowed slavery.

“They’ve tweaked the definition of their own law by not including that the work has to be considered as a whole, or that it’s protected if it has serious value, whether literary, artistic, political, or scientific,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“This is effectively banning complex works of literature that are read and used in 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms for students preparing for higher education or to enrich their own education,” she said, adding that “this might close off a whole wealth of literature that deals with difficult topics that, for instance, are part of study plans for the AP English test.”

Former librarian will lead commission’s work

Even before taking on book challenge responsibilities, the state textbook commission, whose 11 volunteer members are appointed by the governor and speakers of the Senate and House, had a full plate. Its primary task has been recommending new lists of textbooks and instructional materials for approval by the State Board of Education based on Tennessee’s ongoing revisions of its academic standards.

Currently, the commission is in the middle of the textbook adoption cycle for new science materials, a process that takes up to 18 months.

“It’s daunting and important work,” said Cash, the panel’s chairperson, “because it affects all public school students and teachers across Tennessee.”

In 2022, when the panel was given its new appellate powers over book challenges, Cash pleaded for funding to hire full-time staff as the commission missed its first big deadline to publish compliance guidelines under the new law. The legislature subsequently allocated funding so that the body no longer has to rely on the state education department for administrative help.

“We are very thankful for these positions,” Cash said.

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said Republicans have essentially created a new layer of government bureaucracy.

“It was a bad idea to start with, and now they’re throwing a half million dollars at it,” said the Nashville Democrat. “And for what? There’s nothing more undemocratic than pulling books off the shelves of public schools.”

Lee Houston speaks during a meeting of the Tennessee Textbook and Quality Materials Commission on Nov. 18, 2022, as Chairperson Linda Cash listens. Houston, who was a school librarian at the time, stepped down from the commission in March to become its first executive director.

Houston, the panel’s first executive director, worked most recently at Brown Elementary, a public school in Cumberland County, which is represented by House Speaker Cameron Sexton. In 2022, Sexton appointed her to the textbook commission, where at one of her first meetings, she argued for a rule to require that each commissioner read an appealed book in its entirety before voting.

“Context is important,” she said at the time.

In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, Houston said she expects that her new job, with an annual salary of $105,000, will focus largely on the textbook adoption process.

“We have no book appeals before us right now,” she said. “But as a commission, we will uphold the law.”

School librarians feel under attack

For school librarians across Tennessee, the latest statute revisions look like government censorship and overreach as they find themselves caught in the crossfire of national culture wars, fueled in part by pro-censorship websites like Book Looks and Rated Books.

“Do challenged books still go through due process? Or are we just supposed to pull them if they include a picture of Michelangelo’s naked statue of David?” asked Lindsey Kimery, a leader with the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

As the library supervisor for Metro Nashville Public Schools, she considers Tennessee’s recent school library laws an affront to her profession. And she is concerned they are creating a climate of fear, especially in rural school systems without a library coordinator.

“I worry we’ll see more soft censorship there, the quiet removal of books, because there’s not someone with school library experience at the district level who has a voice at the table when it comes to dealing with these challenging times,” Kimery said.

Meanwhile, she said, librarians are “holding tight” until district-level attorneys can provide legal guidance.

“If librarians proactively remove a lot of books, we could see challenges related to censorship. If we don’t, I expect some individuals or groups will try to test the process to see what they can and can’t do,” she said. “Some school districts may just elect to let the complaints go directly to the state to deal with.”

“No matter how you slice it,” she added, “it’s bad.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how I talk to my students about pronouns, including my own

2024-05-22T19:16:10+00:00

“Hi everyone,” I say excitedly as I kneel to join my young students sitting in a circle. “I’m so excited to be here. My name is Teacher Ellie … and I wanted to tell you about my pronouns.”

As a nonbinary teaching artist in New York City public schools, I have begun every residency this way for going on five years. I teach theater, puppet-making, and poetry to students in all grades, but I mostly teach kindergarten to third grade.

When people talk about trans and nonbinary educators, they often assume that we’re getting in kids’ faces, correcting pronouns resentfully, talking about gender in a way inappropriate for their age, and forcing students to be who they’re not. The truth is it’s far more mundane.

Ellie Bell

“Does anyone know what pronouns are?” I continue. Sometimes, students raise their hands. Sometimes, they talk about the topic of our sessions or something they learned in class just before I arrived. Sometimes, they give an accurate explanation:

“It’s like how you let people know if you’re a boy or a girl or something else,” a first grader in Clinton Hill says.

“Yeah, it’s like the words you use, like, if you’re a boy, you’re he/him. If you’re a girl, you’re she/her,” a seventh grader on the Lower East Side says.

“It’s he/him, she/her, and they/them,” a confident student may say. “Yeah!” I say, “It’s how we talk about people when we don’t use their names.” I give examples, being sure to emphasize the pronoun: “Where did HE go? Where did SHE go? We should go find HIM. We should go find HER.”

“My pronouns,” I tell them, “are they and them.”

I go on to give examples of how you can talk about me and finish with “If you make a mistake and you call me he or she or Miss or Mister, just correct yourself, no big deal.” The two-minute speech isn’t usually for my students. It’s for the adults in the room; the teachers, paraprofessionals, and the occasional admin. I’ve been teaching long enough to know that students learn by example and practice. They can’t be told once; they need to see and hear others talk about me the way I want to be talked about and maybe be corrected themselves a few times.

Sometimes, kids never catch on. Sometimes, teachers refuse to catch on. I correct them gently almost every time, repeating the sentence casually with the correct pronouns as I continue my lesson, never stopping, rarely making eye contact; it’s not a callout, it’s a reminder. If they apologize, I say “no worries,” because if I don’t, they likely will worry.

Yes, some students will quietly try out new pronouns for themselves. I’ll never comment; I’ll just use the ones they ask me to use. Yes, I call students what they ask to be called. I have one first grader who I have called Cheese for an entire school year. Yes, some students insist, “But you’re a girl!” and I always respond, “You only know my gender by asking.”

Sometimes, kids never catch on. Sometimes, teachers refuse to catch on.

Most let it rest, but some don’t. I’m not there to fight students. I’m there to teach theater, puppet-making, or poetry. I’m there, ideally, to enrich kids’ lives and be a part of raising kind, critically conscious community members. I’d like to be respected while I do it and, if a student misgenders me with the best intentions, I still consider that respectful.

I know what you’re thinking, “It’s never that easy.” It usually is. But sometimes it’s not.

I once had a first grader I taught after school for two years tell me that her mom, whom I’d never met, doesn’t like me. “Why?” I asked. “She doesn’t like that you’re a they/them. She says it’s wrong.” “I hope she gets to know me better and can change her mind,” I replied.

I had a high school student respond to my introduction with, “Really? They/them?” “Is that a judgment or a question?” I ask. “A judgment,” he said. I was surprised by his honesty. “All I ask is you respect me, okay?” “Okay,” he said.

Some teachers can’t bring themselves to use my pronouns. The words seem to get stuck in their throat. What’s stuck in their throat isn’t mine. I leave them to wrestle with their discomfort on their own.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care if they used my pronouns or addressed me correctly. I desperately wish for it, for my pronouns not to be a blockage and my gender not to be a point of contention. But more than that, I wish for a world in which when people tell us who they are, we believe them, and where all people are seen as whole and infinitely, equally valuable.

Of course, my gender is always present, but so is that of my students and the classroom teachers. It follows us home and down into the subway and to the doctor’s office. It follows me; it doesn’t lead me. Between the short intros and the occasional corrections or questions, there are worlds built and brought to life.

I’ve seen that my modeling of self-creation is a part of that world-building. There are connections made with students grounded in trust, compassion, and joy. I walk into classrooms and am met with cheers of “Teacher Ellie!” and smiles and hugs that reach my soul and armor it for the outside world. There are moments that have rattled me, challenged me, and healed me, and very rarely are they just about me being nonbinary.

Ellie Bell (they/them) is a teaching artist and theater-maker in New York City. They hold an MA in Applied Theatre from CUNY School of Professional Studies and are working toward their Ph.D. in Urban Education at CUNY Graduate Center.

LGBTQ students wonder what’s next as conservative states seek to block new Title IX rules

2024-05-01T01:19:00+00:00

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For LGBTQ youth whose rights have been under attack by Republican state officials, new federal regulations protecting them from discrimination at school were a welcome sign that someone in power had their back.

But within two days of new Title IX rules being published Monday, top officials in 15 states announced they were suing to block the new rules from going into effect. In four separate lawsuits, Republican officials alleged the new rules endangered free speech and represented an attack on the very group Title IX was designed to protect: women.

Officials in many of these states had already warned schools not to implement the new rules, which would protect students’ ability to use restrooms that match their gender identity and use the names and pronouns they prefer.

“Do not comply,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley told schools at a Monday press conference announcing his state’s lawsuit. “Allow this process, this legal process to unfold, rely on our office if you need support, but do not comply with these radical rules from the Biden administration.”

The lawsuits highlight an ongoing culture war centered on the rights of trans students at school. Republican states have passed a host of laws limiting trans youth’s participation in sports, which bathrooms these students can use, and which names they can go by. Supporters of these laws say they protect fairness, privacy, and free speech. Advocates for LGBTQ youth say they endanger vulnerable students and actually infringe on privacy and free speech, and that the new Biden Title IX rules give students key legal safeguards.

Some legal experts believe the new Title IX rules — which clarify that gender identity is covered by laws prohibiting sex discrimination — are likely to withstand conservative challenges. In the meantime, teachers and school administrators are caught between federal law, which usually takes precedence, and state law, which can loom larger in the classroom.

And queer youth and their allies say their states’ defiance of federal law reinforces the idea that their existence is a problem and that their government is targeting them.

“You already had kids who literally did not use the bathroom at school,” said A’Niya Robinson, an advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Louisiana. “They were afraid that they would be targeted for just completing a bodily function. These rules are a reprieve from kids having to experience that, and then to have your state want to undo that, it’s just unfortunate.”

States say new Biden rules undermine Title IX

In 2016, under former President Barack Obama, top officials at the Education and Justice departments issued guidance to schools saying that transgender students were protected from discrimination based on their gender identity under Title IX.

But that guidance was quickly rescinded by the Trump administration.

When President Joe Biden took office, officials moved to make the Obama-era interpretation binding by going through nearly two years of formal rule-making. The final rule, which the Biden administration announced April 19 and is slated to take effect Aug. 1, gives LGBTQ students and others explicit protection from sex discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

The backlash has been swift. Within days, top education officials in several states told schools to disregard the rule changes. This week, 15 states filed four separate lawsuits seeking to block the rules from taking effect.

At a Monday press conference announcing one of the lawsuits, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the new regulations sought “to remake American societal norms through classrooms, lunchrooms, bathrooms, and locker rooms of American schools.”

“These rules eviscerate Title IX,” Murrill said.

The following day, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said the text of Title IX refers “over and over again to a sex binary, to men and women, to one sex or the other.”

Though each lawsuit is slightly different, they all essentially argue that the U.S. Department of Education exceeded its authority by expanding the definition of what constitutes sex discrimination, and that the changes run contrary to the original intent of Title IX.

Even though the new rules don’t address sports and the Education Department is working on separate sports guidance, opponents of the new rules have said they believe they open the door to widespread participation by trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.

That view was underscored at Tuesday’s joint press conference with the attorneys general of Tennessee and West Virginia, which featured elite swimmer Riley Gaines. Gaines became an outspoken advocate for keeping transgender women out of women’s sports after having to compete against and share a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Similarly, West Virginia is engaged in ongoing litigation to prevent a 13-year-old from competing in girls’ track.

The bulk of the concerns in the lawsuits focus on trans girls being permitted to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and that school staff will be compelled to call trans and non-binary students by their preferred names and pronouns.

Skrmetti said the facilities concern is not just about gender identity. He fears that the new Title IX rules could require that any boy be allowed in girls’ restrooms. A girl who expressed discomfort with that could be liable for creating an illegal hostile environment because she questioned that student’s gender, he said.

But the Title IX rules make clear that schools can still maintain single-gender restrooms.

While the new rules bar invasive medical tests or burdensome documentation to establish gender identity, schools can request a written confirmation from the student, a parent, or other adult. Schools can also rely on the child’s consistent self-identification.

Several states’ laws forbid trans students from accessing bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity and permit school staff to use the pronouns and name a student was assigned at birth, even if the student now uses a different name or pronouns.

National surveys have repeatedly found that these kinds of policies negatively affect LGBTQ youth, who often feel unsafe at school, struggle with mental health, and are more likely to consider suicide than their peers. When the Education Department gathered feedback on a draft version of the rules, officials said many students reported that schools ignored bullying, threats, and harassment based on their gender identity, leaving them in constant fear and anxiety.

For Zelda Duitch, who is trans and co-president of the Gender Sexuality Alliance at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, finding a supportive school has been critical to his educational success.

“When I was socially transitioning, all of my teachers were really supportive,” he said. “That was integral not just for my mental health, but for my education. I would not have been able to learn if I hadn’t been accepted.”

When Florida adopted its “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Zelda felt sorry for queer youth there. Now his own state has a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and a package of anti-LGBTQ bills is sailing through the Louisiana Legislature.

“It’s hard to describe how much anger and pain there is,” Zelda said. “It made me feel like my state was trying to kill me.”

Why the new Title IX rules matter

Practically, the new rules matter because they give students, families, and advocates sturdier ground to stand on when they file a federal civil rights complaint or a lawsuit seeking to challenge a school’s policy.

The Title IX complaint process can be slow and cumbersome, but it’s a powerful tool for students to protect their rights, said Craig White, who runs the supportive schools program for the Campaign for Southern Equality. That’s especially true for students in small towns who may not have access to attorneys or large advocacy groups.

Students can say: “This discrimination is wrong, and I’m standing up,” White said.

The new rules explicitly state that denying a trans student access to a bathroom or locker room that corresponds with their gender identity causes harm to the student in a way that generally violates Title IX.

If a teacher repeatedly refused to call a student by their preferred name and pronouns, leaving the student feeling unwelcome at school, that could violate Title IX, too.

Suzanne Eckes, a professor of education law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the big legal question now is whether the definition of sex in Title IX can include sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Supreme Court decided in 2020 in Bostock v. Clayton County that employees are protected from sex discrimination, including based on sexual orientation and gender identity, under Title VII, another federal civil rights law.

And while there are a few outlier cases, plenty of federal courts have already ruled that Title IX should be interpreted the same way, Eckes said.

“The vast majority of federal and state courts have ended in favorable results for trans students,” Eckes said.

But Matt Sharp, senior counsel for conservative legal group the Alliance Defending Freedom believes the Bostock case doesn’t apply in many of the scenarios covered under Title IX, an interpretation shared by many Republican AGs.

Access to bathrooms and locker rooms implicates personal privacy, he said, and courts have found that physiological differences between men and women justify separate facilities.

Protesters chant outside the Indiana House of Representatives during an education committee hearing about that state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill. Indiana is among the states suing the federal government to overturn new Title IX rules.

Advocates say anti-LGTBQ laws silence allies, spread fear

White, of the Campaign for Southern Equality, said the climate fostered by states’ policies can send ripple effects through the school day.

A student might be misgendered by a teacher in first period, attract scrutiny for which bathroom they use in second period, be unable to use a locker room in third period, then get bullied at lunch — only to be told by a lunch monitor that other students don’t agree with their “lifestyle.”

“Students do not experience these as isolated incidents,” White said.

But he also noted that such laws can spread fear and silence allies. In Indiana, for example, where a new law requires schools to notify parents if a student wants to go by a different name, Gender Sexuality Alliance clubs have stopped meeting in many schools, as students fear sponsors would be required to out them, said Chris Paulsen, CEO of Indiana Youth Group, which supports GSAs across the state.

Indiana is among the states that have directed schools not to change their policies to comply with the new Title IX rules, and it has joined Tennessee’s lawsuit.

Peyton Rose Michelle, who leads Louisiana Trans Advocates, remembers being bullied as early as first grade and called slurs she didn’t understand. By middle school, she had trained herself not to use the bathroom until she got home around 4:30 p.m.

She hears about students doing the same thing today — as well as skipping school to avoid bullying. The new Title IX protections are about doing the right thing for kids, she said.

“Bathrooms in middle school are for peeing and looking at yourself in the mirror,” Michelle said, “and trans kids should be able to do both of those things without fear of bullying and harassment.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

New Title IX rules offer ‘comprehensive coverage’ for LGBTQ+ students and sexual violence survivors

2024-04-19T14:27:26+00:00

This story was originally published by The 19th and is republished under a Creative Commons license. Sign up for The 19th’s newsletter here.

Since President Joe Biden first took office, advocates for sexual violence survivors and the LGBTQ+ community have pressured his administration to update the federal regulations that protect such groups from discrimination in schools and colleges.

Now that day is here.

The Department of Education announced on Friday that it has finalized the rule under Title IX — the historic federal civil rights law — that prevents academic institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex.

“For over half a century, Title IX has opened doors, expanded access and promised fairness,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said on Thursday during a call with reporters. “Before Title IX was passed in 1972, women and girls didn’t have equal access to education in this country. That was unacceptable then, and it’s unfathomable now. Title IX promises that no person experiences sex discrimination including sex-based harassment or sexual violence in federally funded education.”

Advocates have argued the new regulations are necessary after former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in 2020 rolled back safeguards by narrowing the definition of sexual harassment, giving protections to alleged perpetrators, failing to protect LGBTQ+ students and instituting controversial rules for questioning during misconduct hearings. Although Title IX is a federal law, each administration takes a different approach to enforcing its regulations about sex discrimination.

After suggesting updates to the regulations in 2022, the Department of Education fielded over 240,000 public comments that it took under consideration during its rulemaking process. The newly finalized Title IX rule under Cardona not only repeals many of the DeVos-era changes but also represents “the most comprehensive coverage under Title IX since the regulations were first promulgated in 1975,” said Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, during Thursday’s call with reporters. “The final regulations encourage reporting of sex discrimination under Title IX and require institutions to respond promptly and effectively.” The 2020 regulations asked little of schools, only tasking them with not deliberately ignoring sexual harassment, she added.

As Biden faces an election rematch with former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, Department of Education officials made a point to contrast the updated Title IX regulations with those of the Trump era. Rather than weaken protections for sexual violence survivors, LGBTQ+ people and pregnant people, their regulations strengthen them, they said.

“These regulations make it crystal clear that everyone can access schools that are safe, welcoming and that respect their rights,” Cardona said. “They clarify that Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination includes all forms of sex discrimination. No one should have to give up their dreams of attending or finishing school because they’re pregnant. No one should face bullying or discrimination just because of who they are or who they love. Sadly, this happens all too often.”

The final regulations intend for students and school personnel to get the support needed if they experience sex discrimination and for schools to resolve complaints with fairness and accuracy, according to the Department of Education. Although the newly finalized regulations restore a number of protections that the DeVos era ones gutted, the Department of Education emphasized that it will give schools flexibility to resolve sex discrimination complaints in a way that is appropriate for their school size and administrative processes.

The final rule also describes what sex-based harassment and sex discrimination are, noting that schools must provide an educational environment free of biases “based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

Department of Education officials said that the new regulations could address the disturbing trend of pornographic deepfake images circulating in schools, a phenomenon that was not even a possibility when Title IX was first established in the 1970s. Lhamon said that if deepfake harassment creates a hostile environment in a school setting that it could also constitute sex discrimination under the federal law.

“The school would need to take prompt and effective steps to ensure nondiscrimination for the students on the basis of sex moving forward,” she said.

The regulations acknowledge that stopping someone from experiencing school in a way that’s consistent with their gender identity causes harm, but they do not address whether transgender or nonbinary students qualify to participate on sports teams that align with their identity. They also do not prevent religious institutions from discriminating against LGBTQ+ students or staff.

“The Title IX statute itself exempts religiously controlled institutions, and the regulations are unchanged in tracking that statute,” Lhamon said.

The regulations also stress the rights of parents and guardians to advocate for their children and the needs of individuals who allege they have experienced sex discrimination. They protect students and staff from reprisal, including from peers, related to their rights under Title IX.

Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit that works to end college sexual assault, welcomed the Biden administration’s final Title IX rule. She said that survivors and advocates have fought tirelessly for these reforms dating back to when the Trump administration took office.

“It’s On Us has long advocated for updated Title IX regulations that prioritize the protection of all students and survivors of sexual assault,” she said. “We are glad that the Biden administration finally fulfilled its promise to student survivors to return Title IX to its original intent of protecting their civil rights in the aftermath of sexual violence.”

Florida settlement’s limits on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law may give teachers and students breathing room

2024-03-13T20:50:30+00:00

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Florida teachers can place a photo of their spouse on their desk. School libraries can stock books featuring LGBTQ characters. And anti-bullying efforts can protect LGBTQ students. But restrictions on classroom instruction related to sexuality and gender identity remain.

Those are the terms of a settlement agreement that puts an end to a lawsuit challenging what’s commonly known as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Advocates are hailing the lifting of a “shadow” that had fallen over the state’s schools. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made challenging “woke” ideas in schools a cornerstone of his political brand, also declared victory.

The resolution calls attention to the enormous gray areas created by laws restricting how teachers talk about gender, sexuality, race, and history. These laws simultaneously touch on issues of personal identity where federal law protects students and teachers, and issues of curriculum and instruction where states have broad authority.

Fearful of lawsuits and state investigations, teachers have emptied out classroom libraries, taken down Pride flags, and quit their jobs. A high school class president was told he couldn’t mention being gay in his graduation speech. State officials have blamed local leaders for going beyond the requirements of the law, but never formally clarified what was and wasn’t covered — until the settlement agreement was signed Monday.

Essentially, the agreement means that the law won’t force teachers back into the closet or prevent students from talking about who they are.

Under the agreement, the Florida Department of Education will also disseminate guidance about the law to all 67 school districts.

“The vagueness of this law was intentional,” said Joe Saunders, senior political director at Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ rights group and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “At any point, [state officials] could have offered deeper guidance and didn’t. The only reason they’ve done it now is because we sued them in federal court and forced them to end the most harmful aspects of this law.”

Laws restricting teaching have wide-ranging impacts

As classroom restrictions proliferate, a survey by the research group RAND found that two-thirds of teachers reported self-censoring how they talk about certain social and political issues in the classroom, whether they lived in a state with formal restrictions or not. RAND also found — in a study released this week — that a majority of teachers thought these restrictions harmed learning and made students feel less welcome and less empathetic.

Teachers in Florida were the most likely to be aware of their state’s restrictions, and the most likely to report having changed instruction in response, RAND found. Florida also had more laws restricting instruction than other states.

A recent Washington Post analysis of FBI data found that school-based hate crimes against LGBTQ students quadrupled in states that passed restrictive laws, which include laws governing teaching as well as which bathrooms and sports teams transgender children have access to.

The relationship between state policies and bullying has been in the national spotlight after the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary student who died in February after a fight in their Oklahoma high school.

Related: ‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

Some state laws ban discussion of certain topics or require that lessons be “age appropriate” or avoid “divisive” framings, while others require parental notification and the opportunity for parents to opt students out of lessons. Many states leave enforcement to school districts and provide little guidance.

Advocates of these laws say parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, especially on issues that might conflict with their own values, and that schools should focus on core academic subjects.

Students and teachers in states with teaching restrictions told Chalkbeat about LGTBQ student clubs receiving less support, and lessons in literature and history being scaled back to avoid talking about queer references in literature or the movement for gay civil rights.

Legal challenges to these laws are underway in a number of states, but how courts will rule could depend on specifics in individual states. Arizona’s teaching restrictions were struck down, for example, because lawmakers had wedged them into the state budget.

Keira McNett, staff counsel for the National Education Association, said the settlement is important in Florida and “for the national tenor.”

“Many states modeled their law after Florida’s and many are facing lawsuits of their own,” she said. “In many cases, they are overly broad. And when the state is required to actually explain what these vague laws mean, they explain it in a way that is a lot more narrow.”

Settlement provides clarity for classrooms, activities

Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the lawsuit, said the settlement provides immediate relief to Florida students, parents, and teachers who were living under a cloud of uncertainty.

“Every kid should be able to go to public school and have their dignity respected and their family respected,” Kaplan said.

The settlement lays out examples of what’s allowed under Florida law, known formally as the Parental Rights in Education Act:

Teachers can respond to students who choose to discuss their own families or identities and can grade essays that include LGBTQ topics.
Teachers can make reference to LGBTQ people in literature or history.
Student-to-student speech and classroom debates can touch on LGBTQ issues.
Schools can explicitly protect LGBTQ students in anti-bullying efforts, and teachers can have “safe space” stickers in their classroom.
Students of the same gender can dance together at school dances and wear clothing considered inconsistent with their gender assigned at birth.

The settlement clarifies that restrictions on classroom instruction apply “regardless of viewpoint.” In other words, teachers can’t teach a lesson on modern gender theory to elementary students, nor can they teach those students that gender identity is immutable and determined by biological traits.

Kaplan said states have significant authority over curriculum, and that the part of the law specifying such restrictions was unlikely to be overturned on further appeal.

DeSantis’ office in a press release emphasized that the law as written remains intact and “children will be protected from radical gender and sexual ideology in the classroom.”

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” Florida General Counsel Ryan Newman said in the press release. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

Settlement ‘allows for a reasonable conversation’ on instruction

Suzanne Eckes, a professor of educational law and policy at the University of Wisconsin, said Florida’s law and others that are vague and broad potentially violate federal laws and protections.

As employees, teachers have limited free speech rights in the classroom, but states cannot discriminate against them on the basis of sex, which forms the basis of many legal protections for LGBTQ people. For example, they can’t penalize a teacher for having a picture of a same-sex spouse on their desk while allowing a colleague to have a picture of her husband. The federal Equal Access Act says that schools can’t limit extracurricular clubs based on their content. Bible study groups, future homemakers, and gay-straight alliance clubs all have the right to meet in school, Eckes said.

Eckes said the settlement suggests the challengers had viable claims on equal protection grounds, even as the state maintains the right to regulate curriculum and prevent teachers from offering personal opinions to a captive audience.

While the settlement creates no legal precedent, it could encourage some school district lawyers, even in other states, to reach less restrictive interpretations of their states’ laws. At the same time, even in Florida, there may be disagreements about what exactly constitutes instruction.

“If a teacher does give an opinion in class, there is this overall idea that teacher speech can be curtailed,” she said. “That is a grayer area than banning the gay-straight alliance or pulling all the books off the shelves due to your own ideology.”

Derek Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, said the settlement could change the political and cultural calculus around sweeping prohibitions, even though it doesn’t set a precedent for other lawsuits.

“If DeSantis is willing to settle, maybe it’s OK for the governor of Oklahoma to settle,” Black said. “Maybe it denies cultural conservatives the ability to say that some governor or AG in another state is weak.”

The settlement also offers teachers important clarity, Black said: “This type of settlement rebalances things so you don’t have to be so afraid and that allows for a reasonable conversation about what’s instruction and what’s not.”

Michael Woods, a high school teacher in Palm Beach County who leads the Florida Education Association’s LGBTQ caucus, said he’s thrilled with the settlement even as he fears it will take decades to get back to the level of inclusion teachers and students experienced just a few years ago.

His school district’s guide for supporting LGBTQ students shrunk from 140 pages to 14 under Florida’s law, he said. And he stopped leading his school’s GSA club because he would have needed to send permission slips home, which led him to worry about outing students. He’s not sure that’s changed.

Woods also worries about colleagues in smaller, more conservative communities, and about trans educators who often face even more hostility than gay and lesbian teachers.

Still, he hopes teachers in other states feel inspired.

“One of the most hateful states in the nation for LGBTQ rights reached a settlement,” he said. “You have to fight, but it can happen.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Should kids learn about LGBTQ issues at school? Many teachers and teens say no, new surveys find.

2024-02-23T21:21:25+00:00

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Should elementary schoolers learn that people of the same gender can love each other? Do teens want to learn about how slavery’s legacy matters today? Should parents be able to opt their kids out of lessons they disagree with?

As Republican-dominated state legislatures limit how teachers talk about race and restrict transgender children’s access to bathrooms and sports, and as school board elections turn on book bans and parents’ rights, three new national studies from the Pew Research Center, the research corporation RAND, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education shed light on how teachers, parents, and students themselves think about these questions.

For all the attention LGBTQ issues receive in national politics, teachers said topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation rarely come up. And many said they don’t believe these topics should be taught in school.

In fact, large swaths of the public also don’t think gender and sexuality should be discussed in school, the studies found. However, there were wide partisan divides, as well as differences along racial and ethnic lines.

Adults and teens felt more comfortable with teachers teaching about racism than LGBTQ issues. They were also more comfortable with teachers talking about past injustices than present-day inequality, and more comfortable with gay rights than trans rights. And they were more comfortable with any of these topics coming up at the high school level — though many teens reported their own discomfort.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that two-thirds of teachers in one study said they decided on their own to limit how they talked about potentially contentious issues. One reason: They feared confrontations with upset parents.

“The topics of race and LGBTQ issues are often lumped together in discussions about these so-called ‘culture wars’ and how that’s playing out in K-12 education,” said Luona Lin, a research associate at Pew. But teachers and students actually “feel very different about these two topics.”

Here are some of the major takeaways of the three new reports:

Many teachers are censoring themselves

More than a third of American teachers work in states with laws restricting how teachers talk about issues that are considered divisive or controversial. But a study released this month by the research organization RAND found local restrictions and teachers’ own fears are having an effect as well.

In a survey of 1,500 teachers taken last year, two-thirds reported deciding on their own to limit how they talked about social and political issues in the classroom. Meanwhile, about half of teachers told RAND they were subject to either a state or local restriction. These limits could be formal, such as a school board policy, or informal, such as a principal’s comments.

More than 80% of those who were subject to a local restriction said they had made changes to their teaching, regardless of state law. That should not be surprising, said Ashley Woo, an assistant policy researcher at RAND.

“If your principal is telling you to do something, that is the person who is there with you at the school and can see what is happening in your classroom,” she said.

At the same time, more than half of teachers who were not subject to any restrictions said they had limited how they talked about certain topics, with self-censoring more common in conservative communities but still widespread in liberal ones.

A major reason teachers cited for limiting instruction, especially in communities with local restrictions, was a fear of confrontation with upset parents and that their administration would not support them if they faced a challenge.

LGBTQ issues raised less often than racism in classrooms

Though LGBTQ issues are prominent in local and national politics, a report released this week reveals a striking finding: Most teachers say gender identity and sexual orientation hardly get discussed in class — and many teachers say they shouldn’t be.

According to a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity rarely or never came up in their classroom last school year. Around 3 in 10 said the topics came up sometimes or often.

Half of teachers, meanwhile, said they thought students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school, with an even higher share of elementary school teachers agreeing with that view.

The findings come as anti-trans legislation creates a more hostile environment for gender non-conforming youth in many states.

In contrast, more than half of teachers said they discussed topics related to racism or racial inequality at least sometimes. Around 4 in 10 teachers said the issues rarely or never came up.

Nearly two-thirds of teachers said students should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while just under a quarter said slavery should be taught only as a component of history — without any bearing on the present.

Lin, the Pew report’s lead author, says it’s likely that school board policies, local politics, and state laws are influencing what teachers discuss, though the survey doesn’t measure those factors.

What should young kids learn about gender and sexuality?

In Searching for Common Ground, a study released this week by a team at the University of Southern California, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,900 adults, about half of them parents of school-aged children, and asked them about dozens of scenarios related to race, sexuality, and gender.

Democrats were more comfortable than Republicans with almost every scenario, with independents and others roughly in the middle. But even Democrats were less supportive of discussing gender identity or asking students’ pronouns in elementary school than discussing racism or different family structures.

Nearly half of all respondents thought it was appropriate for an elementary teacher to have a picture of their same-sex spouse on their desk. And almost as many were OK with elementary students reading a book about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin.

But just 30% of respondents and only half of Democrats thought it was appropriate for an elementary classroom to display LGBTQ-friendly decorations, such as a Pride flag.

Democrats were far more likely to want gay or trans children to see themselves reflected at school, while Republicans were far more likely to fear discussing these topics would change children, leading to them thinking they are gay or trans.

“The largest partisan examples seem to have to do with LGBTQ and family issues in elementary school,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor and one of the study’s lead authors. “Democrats think that kids can handle that and Republicans do not.”

The rollout of Advanced Placement African American Studies reflects widespread interest among some students and teachers in learning more diverse history, but some conservatives have targeted the course.

More students feel comfortable discussing racism than LGBTQ issues

Students in grades 8-12 also tend to feel less comfortable discussing LGBTQ issues than issues of race and racism at school, and are more likely to say they shouldn’t be learning about them, the Pew report found.

In a nationally representative survey of 13- to 17-year-olds conducted last fall, around 4 in 10 teens said they felt comfortable when topics related to racism or racial inequality came up in class.

But only around 3 in 10 said the same about topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. And just under half of teens said they shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school. That rate was somewhat higher for teens who identified as Republicans than Democrats.

Only 11% of teens, meanwhile, said they shouldn’t learn about slavery. Around half said they should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while 40% said they should learn about slavery only in a historical context.

Black teens and teens who identify as Democrats were much more likely than white, Hispanic, or Republican teens to say they want to learn about how the legacy of slavery affects Black people today — a finding echoed among Black parents and Black teachers in other surveys.

Bridging these divides is tricky

The University of Southern California study found strong support for public education across the political spectrum.

But there’s a gap of nearly 39 percentage points between Democrats and Republicans on whether public schools should teach children to embrace differences. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said yes, compared with just over a third of Republicans.

This underlying belief was a strong predictor of responses to specific scenarios. Those who said kids shouldn’t be taught to embrace differences also expressed more discomfort with race, gender, and sexuality being discussed in the classroom.

“Democrats on average think schools are exactly the place to do this — it’s one of the last places where everyone comes together regardless of their differences,” Polikoff said. “And Republicans don’t think that is an appropriate role for schools. And they think that because they perceive, in part correctly, that schools are a liberalizing force.”

There was broad support for parents having the right to opt their child out of certain lessons, but when researchers prompted respondents to consider downsides, such as their child missing out on the opportunity to learn critical thinking skills, support fell.

Understanding the values that drive differences and building on common ground, such as agreement that children should read books by authors of color and learn about historic injustices, could lead to a healthier conversation than what’s happening now.

“We need to have this conversation,” he said. “Instead we have Ron DeSantis saying we’ll ban everything, and Democrats sticking their fingers in their ears and saying you’re all bigots.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois becomes magnet for transgender students seeking protections in school, health care

2023-08-29T15:13:41+00:00

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Back in the spring, Kimberly Reynolds stared at a map of the U.S. Each state was filled in with a color gradient: red for those with the strictest active anti-transgender laws, bright blue for those with the most protections for trans people.

Her state, Florida, was awash in a sea of red. The closest state in blue? Illinois.

Reynolds took a breath. And some time to panic.

She had started researching a new place to live after legislators in Florida introduced a slew of anti-trans bills, many targeting transgender youth — including her 11-year-old son.

“Something inside me just broke,” she said. “I’ve dealt with a lot of policies in Florida that are not okay. But now they’re coming after my child. So that’s why we’re done. We’re getting out, one way or another.”

Reynolds asked her son: How do you feel about moving?

“I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s move. Let’s get out of this place. Let’s get out of this climate,’” Joseph Reynolds recalled thinking. “‘Let’s get out of this house. Get away from these people.’”

After Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed several of the anti-trans bills into law in May, Reynolds again checked the map. This time, her state had a new, special designation, marked in black stripes:

Do Not Travel.

Three months later, the new school year has started, and the Reynolds family remains stuck in Florida. The laws are already deeply impacting her child, Reynolds said. She’s hoping to get her family to Illinois as soon as she can.

Florida is not the only state that has passed or is considering anti-trans legislation. This year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from the American Civil Liberties Union, at least 14 states passed laws regulating bathroom access, sports participation, or pronoun and name changes specifically in K-12 schools. Additionally, at least 18 states passed laws restricting gender-affirming health care, primarily — though not exclusively — for minors.

For many families looking to protect their trans children in school and to preserve control over their medical decisions, moving seems like the only option — and Illinois a safe landing spot.

Bills impact school policies, sense of safety for trans students

Illinois is a sharp contrast to many states across the nation, where anti-trans policies are playing out in schools. Here, state law protects students from discrimination on the basis of their gender identities. Students must be permitted access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams aligning with their identities, according to state guidance.

Changes to education policy are a big part of why the Reynolds want to move.

Florida’s board of education prohibits public schools from teaching students about sexual orientation or gender identity. School staff are also not allowed to ask students for their pronouns — or be required to use them — under state law. Another law forces K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions to discipline students who use a restroom that doesn’t align with their assigned sex at birth.

Such laws threaten to disrupt the lives of thousands of young people in Florida — and across the country. About 1.4% of the U.S. population between 13 and 17 identify as trans, according to the Williams Institute’s 2022 estimates, which are based on analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention youth surveys.

Even before the laws were passed, Joseph had run into discrimination at school. One time, he said, a kid in his class made a cross and screamed “die” while shoving it into his face. Still, he said his elementary school had largely been accepting, and he had a strong circle of friends.

But as Joseph watched the Florida laws come into effect over the summer, he said the idea of starting school there became more and more scary. Ahead of his first day of middle school this month, he had one word for how he was feeling: “horrible.”

At school, he introduced himself as Joseph to his classmates. He said they’ve mostly been respectful. But teachers have been calling him by his legal name, which he no longer uses, and using she/her pronouns to refer to him.

Under Florida law, teachers must use a child’s legal name unless a parent gives consent. After talking to multiple employees at her son’s school just to get a consent form, Kimberly Reynolds said, she’s not convinced that teachers will follow it.

Ultimately, she just wishes her son could have the chance to be a kid.

“He shouldn’t have to even know that there’s so many people against him and out to get him,” she said.

But Reynolds said it feels like there’s not much she can do right now. The timeline for their move is up in the air, since it’s been a struggle to get enough money to leave Florida. A few days after the laws were signed, she set up a GoFundMe to help with moving costs, but donations have slowed down. And Reynolds is concerned about having to leave most of her family behind in Florida, especially because she recently had a new baby.

Though her original plans have been delayed — and these challenges loom — she said she’s still prepared to move as soon as possible. They’ve even already started packing.

As for Joseph? “I just hope that it will be a lot more calm and peaceful than my life here.”

The Reynolds are hoping that the more accepting place could be Carbondale, a town in southern Illinois with a strong LGBTQ+ community, and where residents recently elected the first transgender person to a city council in Illinois.

In the center of town, a rainbow awning hangs above the doors of Carbondale’s LGBTQ+ community center, Rainbow Café. The executive director of the café, Carrie Vine, said that when anti-trans legislation began to increase across the country, a group of advocates got together and decided they should get the word out: Come to Carbondale.

They set up “Rainbow Refuge,” mainly run through a local group, the Carbondale Assembly for Radical Equity. People reach out over social media, and advocates direct them to accepting areas and schools, including Carbondale.

Vine has previously worked to help people in bordering states access abortion care. But she said supporting trans people through moving involves more long-term support.

“They’re not just coming here for one service and going home,” she said. “You’re talking about lifelong support — bloodwork, labs, doctor’s visits. So we decided we needed to make something that would be more sustainable.”

When families make that move, Vine said, it’s important to get them to a safe place for trans people. Though Illinois has statewide legal protections, she said, not everywhere is accepting.

Despite protections, not everywhere in Illinois feels safe

Jay Smith, a trans man living in a small town in rural Illinois, knows that struggle. For him, being openly trans isn’t a safe option.

Shortly after he finished his undergraduate degree, he got a job where his co-workers were openly discriminatory, using anti-LGBTQ+ slurs. To avoid harassment, he decided to keep his trans identity quiet and allow people to perceive him as a cisgender man. Smith is using a pseudonym for his safety in this story.

“I can’t really just exist a lot of the time,” Smith said. “At the same time, it’s nice to not have people policing me.”

Smith is only out to particular people that he’s close with, such as his girlfriend and friends from high school. He used to live in Chicago, where he was openly trans and connected with a LGBTQ+ community. Now, he said, he sometimes feels isolated.

Smith is becoming increasingly anxious about what might happen if he were to be outed — and he and his girlfriend are thinking about moving towns within Illinois or even leaving the country.

He’s not alone. Over half of trans and non-binary adults said they’d move — or already have moved — from a state with a gender-affirming medical care ban, according to a Human Rights Campaign survey.

As an adult, Smith can make that choice on his own. But he said he’s concerned about youth, who must rely on their parents to leave.

For him, he said, school acted as a place of escape against a lack of support he faced at home.

He attended Chicago Public Schools, where current district guidelines state that staff should use the names and pronouns that align with students’ identities. Students can request a support plan between administration and trusted adults — which doesn’t necessarily have to include parents.

That’s a divergence from bills that could “out” students as trans to their parents.

Smith graduated from CPS in 2017. When he came out as trans in high school, he said he simply emailed his teachers about his pronoun change. For the most part, he said, his school gave him a reprieve.

“It was nice to have that space from home, and know: My parents may not be able to treat me this way, but when I get here, I have that respect, that space, and that support that I just can’t get from home,” Smith said.

But Smith is scared for the kids who don’t have the same opportunity to escape transphobia, whether in school or out of school.

Families seek states that protect access to gender-affirming care

Packing up and leaving isn’t realistic for everyone. For many families, the options are limited to wherever is closest.

That’s the case for Carly West, who lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She is trying to move right across the border to Illinois, she said, in order to protect her trans child, Lisa.

“Sometimes I think that I’m overreacting, because it’s not like they’re banging down the door and pulling her out of my arms,” West said of the anti-trans push in Missouri. “But the reality is that she does need to be safe, and it’s not safe here.”

So much could change for Lisa with a short drive across state lines, West said.

In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has spoken out in support of trans children and established a task force to create more inclusive school policy. In Missouri, the governor has signed bills to ban gender-affirming health care for minors and prohibit trans girls from playing on women’s sports teams.

When Lisa heard about the laws, she said she thought to herself: Why? I’m not hurting anybody.

Lisa came out at 6 years old. Now 11 and attending middle school, West uses she/her and they/them pronouns, alternating back and forth between the two. They wear rainbow glasses and like watching dessert decorating videos.

After moving, West said, the family plans to keep Lisa enrolled in the same school district, since Lisa spends half their time with their mom and the other half with their dad, who is staying in Missouri. But if school policies change, Carly West said Lisa may transfer.

The biggest threat right now is to Lisa’s gender-affirming medical care. For young people, such medical care might include puberty blockers — which can delay puberty-related changes such as facial hair growth — or hormone replacement therapy.

A transgender teen holds a bottle of testosterone, which is used for hormone replacement therapy that can align people’s bodies with their sense of gender.

In Missouri, minors who were prescribed puberty blockers or hormones before Aug. 28 will be allowed to continue treatment, but health care providers cannot prescribe treatments to new patients.

Opponents of gender-affirming care say children are too young to make transition decisions and claim medical interventions are not safe. But more than a dozen top medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support gender-affirming care as evidence-based and medically appropriate and have opposed laws restricting such care.

At least 33 states have proposed bills to limit gender-affirming care, according to a Chalkbeat data analysis of the ACLU’s 2023 anti-LGBTQ bills tracker. About a fifth of bills considered during the 2023 session would restrict gender-affirming medical care for adults, according to a Reuters analysis that identified additional bills not captured in the ACLU tracker. But most policies would specifically restrict children’s medical care.

In Illinois, state law protects health care providers and patients from being targeted by states that have banned gender-affirming care.

Before the cutoff date in Missouri, Lisa had a consultation to start gender-affirming care.

“I’m feeling great about it,” Lisa said, at the time. “It’s making me feel more like who I am.”

Then the ban went into effect Monday — and Lisa wasn’t able to be prescribed treatment.

Trans students carve out space in new Illinois towns, schools

On Feb. 28, the Nightengale family sat around the dining table in their Iowa home, making pins that read: “We say gay” and “Protect queer youth.” They stayed up late that night, preparing for a school walkout in protest of pending anti-trans laws in their state.

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, pinned the new additions to a vest, not too far from a demiboy pin. Shigeru mostly likes using it/its pronouns — sometimes he/him — because it feels void of gender but male-adjacent. Shigeru’s parent, Sami Nightengale, has a matching pin, for their own identity: genderqueer.

Shigeru Nightengale has covered its vest in pins, including ones protesting anti-trans legislation in Iowa. Shigeru passed out extra pins during the day of a March 1 walkout in Iowa.

The next day, approximately 50 students walked out of Shigeru’s high school as part of a statewide protest against anti-trans legislation. Across the state, 27 schools participated in the March 1 walkout, the Quad-City Times reported.

But a bill banning gender-affirming medical care for minors passed the Iowa legislature and headed to the governor’s desk by March 8 — the day before Shigeru was due to receive its first testosterone shot.

Shigeru had been going to a clinic in Iowa City for over a year. Sami Nightengale first remembers Shigeru expressing thoughts about gender as a young child.

“When he was 7, he started to talk a lot about not feeling right in his own body and it would be better if he was just dead. As a parent, that’s not something you want to hear from a little kid,” they said. “Then we went through this whole process, seeing family doctors and therapists and psychologists and finally he figured out what was going on.”

All those appointments led up to the moment of Shigeru getting on hormones. But as the Nightengales made the trip to Iowa City, they had no idea whether the governor would sign the bill into law before Shigeru could get the shot.

“I was so scared that I was going to just touch it and then have it completely taken away,” Shigeru said.

That day, Shigeru got its first T shot, and doctors taught the Nightengales how to administer subsequent doses at home, a standard practice for hormone replacement therapy. What was not so standard: With the legislation on the governor’s desk, Shigeru didn’t know whether future hormone prescriptions would be possible.

The next day, the Nightengales started searching for new clinics in different states. But some places didn’t have availability, and others didn’t know whether they could take on Iowa patients.

Iowa’s governor officially signed the gender-affirming care ban into law on March 22, less than two weeks after Shigeru’s first shot.

“There was just too much going on — the terror of, ‘Oh, God. All of these people hate us, because we are a queer family,’ and also the joy of having my T,” Shigeru said. “It was all so much that I went kind of numb.”

When politicians first started discussing anti-trans legislation, the Nightengale family had loosely talked about moving. But they thought they’d have more time — to save money, to pay off debt, to search for the best home.

Over the course of March, the window to wait seemed to close more and more.

In early April, the family found an Illinois clinic that would take Shigeru. And against the odds, Sami Nightengale said, they were able to move before the start of the school year.

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, at his Illinois home.

A badge with they/them pronouns

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, and its mom, Sami. Shigeru uses it/its pronouns and Sami uses they/them pronouns. A portrait for a specific story — don’t repeat unless we are covering the same family.

A school speed limit sign

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, at his Illinois home.

Now that Shigeru has settled in — and has reliable care — it said it can’t describe the joy it feels.

“It has been a struggle with ups and downs,” Shigeru said. “But I have been way happier than I have been pretty much my entire life.”

Having been on testosterone for a few months, Shigeru said this is its first time going into school “mostly sorted out.” Shigeru had previously come out as trans at school in Iowa, but felt people didn’t take it seriously because it still looked feminine.

So far, Shigeru said it has run into some discrimination at school, but that students and teachers have been fairly accepting. Looking ahead, Shigeru is staying hopeful — and carving out a space in Illinois.

Shigeru Nightengale’s desk is cluttered with its collections — including a bunch of rocks. Shigeru often picks up new stones to add to the pile.

On Shigeru’s bedroom desk are signposts of a new life: its first bottle of testosterone. A scattered rock collection. And, on top of one stone, a Band-Aid — narwhal-themed — from an appointment at the Illinois clinic.

Little things marking a big move.

Max Lubbers is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Contact Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana law on student names and pronouns leaves tough decisions to families and schools

2023-08-24T18:49:26+00:00

Uncertainty, a growing patchwork of policies, and virtual silence from state leaders have marked the rollout of an Indiana law requiring schools to disclose students’ requests to use new names and pronouns to their parents.

Under HEA 1608, which took effect for this school year, schools must notify at least one parent in writing if their student requests to change their name, pronoun, title, or other identifying word.

But there’s little guidance in the law or from state agencies about various issues, including how districts should notify parents. That vagueness has left students and educators on their own to figure things out.

At least one district is going beyond the law by requiring parental permission to use students’ new names — a mandate that was dropped from the original legislative proposal over concerns it might sow conflict within families. But leaders of another district who oppose the law said it has spurred them to enhance protections from harassment for students who identify as LGBTQIA+.

Different policies could leave parents unhappy regardless of what’s tried. For example, some parents might argue their districts aren’t doing enough to ensure they know about students’ requests, said Andy Downs, director emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics. Yet others, he said, might believe their districts are going overboard if they send letters, schedule meetings, and repeatedly follow up with families.

With transgender rights firmly in focus on the national political scene, local school leaders searching for the right approach could spark an uproar at already contentious school board meetings.

Still, some advocates do see a silver lining in the fragmented way the law is being carried out: a chance to shape, or even challenge, how it’s applied in their local schools.

“The right thing to do is to fight the mandate,” said Barbara Dennis, a volunteer with Kaleidoscope, a Bloomington-based and youth-led LGBTQ advocacy group whose members have discussed ways to subvert the law. “But we also need to survive the moment.”

What the new law on students’ pronouns does

HEA 1608 was one of several laws Indiana legislators passed this year aimed at restricting how and when transgender youth could transition socially and medically. Proponents say it gives parents more information about their children at school — part of an argument for increased parental oversight in education that has swept conservative states.

“We’re going to fight for the right of parents to handle the upbringing of their children,” said Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita at a recent press conference in reference to such laws.

But opponents of the new law said outing transgender students to their parents could put some at risk of physical harm or homelessness if their families aren’t supportive. (The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana challenged HEA 1608 in court by focusing on another aspect of the law that prohibits teaching human sexuality in grades K-3.)

The law does not prescribe details like what a written notification to parents about their students’ name requests should contain, nor whether schools are required to send follow-up notices.

By contrast, another law passed this year on student surveys specifies that schools should send parents two notifications before they can administer certain surveys, that the notifications can be electronic, and that each should summarize the content of the survey in question.

The Indiana Department of Education does not plan to issue guidance on how schools should implement HEA 1608. A spokesperson said implementing the law “comes down to a local decision by the school districts.”

The department did provide guidance on a dozen or so other laws from the 2023 legislative session.

Rep. Michelle Davis, a Whiteland Republican and author of the law on student pronouns, declined to comment on how she intended it to be enforced, citing the ongoing litigation.

Downs said that some laws are written to offer as many details as possible in order to remove any doubt about compliance, while others offer leeway to the people who have to implement them.

If there are enough complaints about the law’s lack of clarity, legislators will likely take notice, Downs said.

“They may pay an awful lot of attention if constituents say they weren’t informed properly,” he said. “They may say, ‘Ok you had your chance, schools, to do this properly and you did not. So now we will.’”

Downs said that ideally, legislators would see how HEA 1608 affects schools and students, before considering whether to expand it. He also noted that some issues fade from the public eye over time, and that schools sometimes keep procedures on the books without enforcing them.

But given the emotionally charged debate around the topic, Downs said it’s most likely that legislators will revisit HEA 1608 soon.

Becoming ‘better parents for LGBTQ kids’

Speaking at a Monroe County school board meeting Tuesday night, a student told board members that they considered submitting a name change request every day in order to “maliciously comply” with the law — but reconsidered after realizing the burden it would create for teachers.

“The school board should be the ones fighting for us students,” the student said. “I shouldn’t have to fight for the right to my name.”

Dennis, the Kaleidoscope volunteer, also said it’s ultimately up to school districts to file lawsuits challenging the enforcement of the law. Complying puts youth at risk, and damages schools’ ability to support students.

“A main tactic in bullying is pointing at kids and telling them who they are,” Dennis said. “Under this law, educators will be forced to enact bullying.”

The student at the Monroe meeting addressed a board that previously criticized the law in strong terms. In March, board members approved a resolution condemning HEA 1608 and stating that the district would work on a policy that prohibits the bullying or harassment of LGBTQIA+ students.

In an August statement, the district described the law as “Trojan horse legislation,” but said its schools will comply and notify parents. It will also communicate the new requirement to students and families, according to the statement.

Work on an anti-harassment policy will continue through a series of community engagement meetings this fall, the district said. Monroe district leaders also said in its August statement they’re “confident that the new state legislation does not prevent the important work related to our local resolution to support more fully our LGBTQIA+ population. As a matter of fact, with legislation, such as Indiana HEA 1608, this work is more important than ever.”

Other districts have already announced their approaches for notifying parents. Many are designating one person at each school to notify families of their students’ requests, or having their counseling staff do the job. Some are relying on their student information portals; others are sending written notifications encouraging parents to ask questions.

Hamilton Southeastern schools — which last year elected a slate of candidates running on a parental rights platform — has gone a step beyond the law and will require approval from a parent or guardian before the district will use a student’s requested name.

“Hamilton Southeastern Schools has no desire to make student name changes to which a parent objects,” a statement from the district said, adding that federal and state law require parents and schools “to work collaboratively.”

The student members of Kaleidoscope have brainstormed other ways to push back against the law without violating it, like by using class nicknames, placards, or last names instead of students’ legal first names. But some of these approaches wouldn’t allow students to publicly claim their own identity, said Dennis.

Working under the confines of the law, districts could also interpret the mandate to “notify” parents to mean setting up a conference between schools and parents to discuss their students’ requests and how best to support them.

“If the goal is to be better parents, maybe we can take this as an educational moment to become better parents for LGBTQ kids, and foster areas where kids feel safer,” she said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

I am a Black, queer teen. I am resilient.

2023-08-15T11:30:00+00:00

Until I was 10, my father was nothing more than a faint memory. Then he seemed to want to make up for his absence, and he would show up occasionally to take me on different adventures. We’d go to the park, where I would hop on the swings and he would push, and to the bowling alley, where I felt my stress rolling away each time the ball spun forward and knocked over the pins. We’d go to his house, where we would sit and watch horror movies (my favorite genre).

As a preteen, I was growing into my sexuality and did my best to mask my true self. But one evening, when my father and I were watching “Seed of Chucky,” I said, “Oh, he’s cute,” referring to one of the characters onscreen. Immediately, I felt the air shift. I didn’t say another word for the rest of the movie.

My father made his disapproval known a couple of weeks later. That’s when my godmother, who raised me, called out my name, saying that my father was on the phone asking to speak to me. I rushed into her room and held the phone. The moment I put my ear to the phone, I heard a torrent of homophobic slurs. He told me he was going to beat me up to turn me “into a man.” The fact that my father uttered those words to his own son over something as minuscule as a remark about a movie character baffled me. But I also somewhat expected it after the way he had tensed up.

I handed my godmother back her phone and slowly left her room. Once back in my own room, I opened my journal and began to describe the emotions fluttering through me: rage, sadness, confusion, anger.

When I asked my godmother to cut off all forms of communication with my father, he would ride around my school early in the mornings to try to spot me. My godmother’s mother, whom I think of as my grandmother, lived across the street from my school and let me stay inside her house until his black sedan completed its daily ritual of circling slowly around the block five times before disappearing. At one point, my father tried to pick me up from my school without my godmother’s permission. Then, as suddenly as he reappeared in my life, he packed up his things and moved away. I don’t know where he went. I haven’t had contact with him in the six years since.

It wasn’t just my father pushing this version of what it means to be a man. Growing up, I remember family members telling me how I should be strong and not display my emotions, as denying vulnerability is just the way of life for Black males like me. I would always ask: Why is this a thing? Why can’t I show emotions? What if I’m not as strong as I’m always told to be?

I learned subsequently that notions of Black masculinity and homophobia among Black Americans have been reinforced since the 1960s Black Power movement. In his memoir “Soul on Ice,” Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader of the Black Panther Party, attacked the racial authenticity and masculinity of the acclaimed author James Baldwin, writing that Baldwin’s homosexuality was an attempt to distance himself from his Blackness.

And Cleaver’s ideas are hardly a thing of the past. The phrase “no homo” is still common in hip-hop.

It takes a toll. A 2022 study conducted by the Trevor Project, the world’s largest crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, found that there is a high prevalence of homophobia and homophobic abuse that is linked to significant rates of family disownment, homelessness, and loneliness within Black LGBTQ communities. According to the study, 68% of Black LGBTQ youth either considered or attempted suicide in the past year, and 50% were physically threatened or harmed due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Black LGBTQ youth were 58% more likely to attempt suicide than their white counterparts and were six times more likely to feel misunderstood by their care providers.

I have often felt ostracized by my peers. Many seemed apprehensive of my flamboyance, including my Mariah Carey and Britney Spears super-fandom and my interest in skin care. I imagined that if I could somehow stop concealing my sexuality, my chronic sadness would disappear. My hopelessness, at times, veered into thoughts of self-harm.

I talked recently with one of my school’s math teachers, Kysung Tisdale, about the challenges of being a Black queer male. “When I come to school, I’m no longer Kysung,” he said. “I am Mr. T. I am the teacher that people can come to for advice.” Kysung is more outgoing and flamboyant, while Mr. T is more stern, more conventionally masculine. He also said that he tends to code-switch in order to ensure his safety. When he’s in typically male environments like the barbershop or at basketball games, he dims his personality and deepens his voice.

What if I’m not as strong as I’m always told to be?

River, my school peer, was assigned female at birth and is nonbinary. River said they conceal their masculinity when they go to places where their queerness might not be accepted, such as a hair salon. They feel they lose a part of their identity with each switch. But when they feel safe and secure, River loves to lean into their masculinity, dressing in baggy pants and sneakers.

Kysung and River are fellow travelers. I’m fortunate to know them. I’m also lucky to have been raised by my godmother. She is a lesbian and has faced discrimination and hostility similar to what I’ve endured. She was kicked out of her grandmother’s house, where she lived as a child in Alabama, because of her sexuality.

She wants a different upbringing for me, so she takes me to various pride events, shows me movies and documentaries with queer characters, and gives me space to express myself. At her job, she has hosted a series of workshops on LGBTQ inclusivity.

And yet, I still fall prey to the stigma of being a queer, Black male. Like Mr. Tisdale, in male-dominated spaces, like going to the barbershop or hanging with friends as they play basketball, I find myself deepening my voice and acting more “masculine.” That’s me subconsciously yearning for acceptance — not just from the Black community but also from society as a whole. Of course, homophobia and harmful stereotypes of what it means to be a man are not limited to the Black community. They’re everywhere.

As I prepare to leave for college, a place where I will live as my most authentic self, I’ve been thinking a lot about something Kysung once told me, “Queer men are diamonds that are made with pressure and time.” I’ve come to realize that discrimination, marginalization, isolation, and shame can lead to the development of a strong sense of self and a deep understanding of one’s own identity. Despite the challenges, queer Black men often demonstrate remarkable resilience. Like diamonds, we are formed through the application of pressure and time, emerging beautiful.

Dashawn Sheffield recently graduated from North Star Academy Washington Park High School and will be attending Lafayette College in the fall. He was a Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellow in Newark and was among the recipients of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations for his work on racial equity.

Nonbinary students are now included in NYC school enrollment data

2023-07-25T18:15:01+00:00

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After New York City cleared the way for families to list their child’s gender as “X” instead of “M” or “F,” officials released statistics for the first time on how many families selected that designation for their child’s school records.

The numbers are small for now: Just 108 nonbinary, gender fluid, or gender expansive students used the “X” designation last school year out of more than a million children in the city’s public schools, including charters.

But advocates say the new statistics represent an important milestone, given the increase in reported gender nonconformity among young people, and as Republicans are ramping up attacks on schools’ support of LGBTQ students and gender diversity.

“The first step to making sure a school is meeting the needs of its student body is knowing who is in the student body,” said Allie Bohm, an attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union who focuses on LGBTQ issues. “It’s really important that they’re collecting these data.”

City and state officials have recently ramped up their efforts to make schools more welcoming for transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender expansive children — populations that often experience an outsized share of bullying, harassment, and mental health challenges.

Beginning last fall, city officials began allowing families to select the “X” designation on official school records in lieu of “female” or “male” — an option already available on city birth certificates. The state education department requires districts across New York to report the number of nonbinary students who are enrolled and now lists those statistics publicly. The federal education department is also beginning to collect similar data.

The number of city public school children who don’t identify as male or female may be an undercount, as changing a student’s gender on official paperwork generally requires parental consent and students may not be comfortable broaching the topic with their family. Some caregivers also may not know they can request a change to their child’s gender on official paperwork to the “X” marker.

In New York City, student- and school-facing records — such as transcripts, report cards, and attendance rosters — generally do not include a student’s gender. And education department policy requires teachers to call students by the names and pronouns they assert at school, even without explicit parental consent or changes to legal documents.

“New York City Public Schools is committed to providing a safe, equitable and affirming school environment for every student in our school building,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in a statement. “Affirming students’ gender identities is of paramount importance.”

School to school, experiences may vary

The degree to which a school is welcoming to LGBTQ students may also affect how comfortable families feel changing their students’ records. At Brooklyn Collaborative Studies in Cobble Hill, educators were not surprised that their school reported enrolling four nonbinary or gender expansive students — the most of any public school in the city.

“We do work really hard to have an open, welcoming, communicatory school space,” said Diana Roffman, a sixth grade English teacher and co-advisor of the school’s joint gender and sexuality alliance and Black Lives Matter club (known as the GSA BLM Collective).

Students and staff at the grades 6-12 school have access to all-gender bathrooms, the GSA BLM Collective has invited LGBTQ authors to speak with students, and teachers often help review each other’s lessons to make sure they are culturally responsive — including diversity in religious experiences, racial identities, and family structures. The school previously set up its own processes to track students’ preferred pronouns and names.

“Within our electronic gradebook there were notes so that students didn’t have to come out to like seven different teachers,” said Devon Shanley, a seventh grade English teacher and co-advisor of the GSA BLM Collective.

But even as city and state officials are making efforts to be more inclusive, students’ actual experiences may vary significantly from campus to campus — and gaps in policy can emerge.

When schools pivoted to remote instruction during the pandemic, for instance, some nonbinary students said their online learning platforms automatically displayed their names assigned at birth, often referred to as deadnames, and which may not match their gender identity. That led to anguish for those who already used chosen names in their daily interactions with their teachers and peers.

“For all the Zoom meetings, I see my dead name,” one city high school sophomore told the news organization THE CITY in 2020. “It’s distressing.”

Facing pressure from the city comptroller, the education department made it easier for families to alter their children’s school records with a chosen name — which can be displayed on report cards, attendance rosters, and other records — even if it differs from what appears on legal documents.

But schools do not always swiftly adhere to the policy.

Brooklyn mom Eliza Hittman said it took months for her child’s elementary school to process a name change request last year, with school officials using the student’s deadname in the meantime. The experience was emotionally fraught for her child, a rising fourth grader who identifies as gender diverse, and contributed to the family’s decision to transfer them to a different public school.

“Schools aren’t necessarily aware of the importance of things like a name change form and the level of distress it can cause a student who is transitioning to have a legal name called out,” Hittman said. “There are DOE guidelines that are clear but they’re not implemented unless you have families who are fighting for them.”

Bohm, the New York Civil Liberties Union attorney, said swiftly processing requests to change students’ names and genders is essential, noting that feelings of discrimination can affect school performance. Adapting to new policies and norms may require culture shifts at some schools, which can take time, Bohm added.

“I wish I could say guidance comes out or regulations come out and everything is great now,” she said. “There’s no silver bullet.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

COVID aid ends, science of reading, vouchers: 5 things to watch as Indiana’s school year begins

2023-07-25T11:00:00+00:00

The first Indiana school districts head back to school this week amid a spate of new laws and policies that will affect what happens in the classroom.

Recovering from the pandemic’s effects on student performance remains a top priority for schools, as state testing scores indicate that learning has stagnated. But new laws will also expand schools’ focus beyond postsecondary education, and more toward career exploration.

For younger students, Indiana is prioritizing reading instruction through new laws requiring curriculum and teacher training based on the science of reading, an approach to literacy that emphasizes phonics, fluency, and other principles.. Meanwhile, for middle and high schoolers, preparation for postsecondary life is the priority, with new funds earmarked for workforce training.

Public schools are also grappling with the potential impacts of an expanded voucher program, as well as laws aimed at students’ identities and school library books.

Here are five things to watch for as the school year begins.

New standards and approaches to reading

Fresh off the latest statewide testing results showing a decline in students’ reading proficiency, Indiana is continuing a push to make sure schools teach reading through evidence-based practices known as the science of reading. Several new laws and policies will shape how students learn to read this year.

Districts will be evaluating their reading curriculum materials this year to ensure they’re in line with the science of reading practices. They must adopt an approved curriculum by the 2024-25 school year.

Literacy coaches will be coming to schools where fewer than 70% of students passed the state reading assessment, as well as schools that opt in to the Indiana Department of Education’s initiative to place more of these coaches in schools.

Meanwhile, new standards in four core subjects adopted in June will also streamline what students must learn in each grade level. Officials hope this move will allow teachers to focus on the most essential skills in their lessons.

A push toward college and career

While literacy is the emphasis for younger students, middle and high schoolers will see several new initiatives aimed at preparing them for postsecondary training.

All high school seniors will have to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid next spring due to a new law meant to increase Indiana’s college-going rate.

High schoolers will also have access to the state’s new career scholarship accounts, which provide grants for workforce training that they can use outside of traditional high school programs. As part of that new law, students will also attend career fairs throughout the year.

Eligible middle school students, meanwhile, will be automatically enrolled in the 21st Century Scholars program, which covers tuition and fees at an in-state college or university.

A near-universal choice program

Indiana opened its private school voucher program to nearly all students during this year’s legislative session, offering public funding for students to attend private schools and potentially leading to major changes in the state’s enrollment landscape.

It’s not immediately clear how many more students will participate in the program, or whether new participants will primarily be students who are already enrolled in private schools. But declines in enrollment at public schools could create instability in district budgets and affect the students who remain.

The approaching end of ESSER spending

Districts are facing final deadlines to commit the second and third rounds of federal COVID funding — known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER — in September 2023 and September 2024, respectively.

With Indiana no longer allowed to charge families for textbooks and devices, some districts could use federal funds to provide these course materials. Conversely, districts that relied on federal funding for long-term costs like staffing may face a crunch as they figure out how to fold those positions into their budgets.

The state education department’s spending tracker shows that the state has reimbursed schools for around 84% of ESSER II dollars and 46% of ESSER III dollars as of July 17, though these figures don’t represent schools’ expenditures in real time.

The effects of laws aimed at students’ identity

The Indiana legislature this year passed several laws that seek to control how sex and gender are discussed and dealt with in schools.

Among them is a requirement for schools to notify parents if their children request to change their names or pronouns, passed over LGBTQ advocates’ concerns that it could put youth at risk at home. The law also bans sex education lessons in preschool to third grade.

Districts will also grapple with a law that requires them to publish their library catalogs and create procedures for parents and others to request the removal of books. Supporters of the law said it was meant to keep obscene material out of kids’ hands, while librarians said such material isn’t in their libraries to begin with.

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Denver LGBTQ+ students share their stories, and joy, in new film for educators

2023-06-21T23:06:27+00:00

The last words in a new film about LGBTQ+ students belong to a 17-year-old named Ca’Shara, who graduated from a Denver high school last month.

“My queer joy is all the time,” Ca’Shara says, a wide smile on her face. “I feel like there never was a time in my life when I wasn’t queer. I feel like we should also celebrate your Black joy, your Latino joy, all these other joys. They’re just as important. And, yeah. That’s me.”

Ca’Shara throws her hands up and scrunches her face into a laugh.

The hourlong film, called “Reclaiming the Narrative: A Film About LGBTQ+ Students,” features 16 Denver Public Schools students speaking about their lives and experiences in school as LGBTQ+ students — and also, for many of them, as Black, Latino, and Indigenous students.

The film was made in partnership with A Queer Endeavor, an organization housed at the University of Colorado-Boulder that provides training to educators about gender and sexual diversity. It will be used in those trainings — in DPS, throughout Colorado, and even nationwide — starting next school year. Though the training sessions are not always mandatory for educators, even in DPS, the filmmakers hope the students’ voices will spur action and change.

“I hope that viewers are open to listening with a full heart,” said Bethy Leonardi, an associate professor at CU Boulder and co-founder of A Queer Endeavor, “and to think carefully about: What can I do? … How can I hold my community accountable to do right by these people?”

Fewer than half of LGBTQ+ Colorado youth surveyed in the fall of 2021 said they felt like they belonged at their school, according to the results of the biennial Healthy Kids Colorado survey. LGBTQ+ youth were more likely than straight and cisgender youth to report being bullied and also more likely to report attempting suicide.

But the filmmakers — and the students themselves — didn’t want to focus solely on the ways LGBTQ+ youth are marginalized or oppressed. They also wanted to focus on joy.

“That was the main thing they wanted to talk about,” said Levi Arithson, program manager for LGBTQ+ equity initiatives at DPS.

Well-meaning adults often want “to feel like they are saving a kid,” Arithson said. But, he added, “We don’t always have to wait until it’s terrible. How do we find the things that are wonderful?”

Students’ voices are the most powerful

“Reclaiming the Narrative” was filmed over the course of several days in the spring of 2022 with students from 13 DPS high schools. It was funded by a $16,350 grant from Denver-based education nonprofit RootED, which called the film a valuable tool for teacher training.

Though the film features quotes from famous writers and activists such as James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, as well as interviews with scholars from universities across the country, the students’ words are the most impactful.

“Our students, it’s really their story,” Arithson said. “All we did was make it into a film.”

Here is some of what the students had to say:

“I want to know about the previous queer people in history,” a student named Ronan says in the film. “It feels like in school curriculums, there’s no conversation about queer history.”

A student named Zoë says she has known she was gay since kindergarten. But she never saw LGTBQ+ people in her schools’ curriculum. “If I had seen that since I was in elementary school, I wouldn’t have thought something was wrong with me,” she says.

Helios talks about how empowering it was to do a history project on queer artists. “But then it also made me sad,” they said, “because I realized I’d never heard about any of them.”

Sammy, who uses they/them pronouns, recalls how sometimes their teachers use the wrong pronouns “not because they’re malicious or anything, but just because they don’t remember.” And sometimes, the teachers make a big deal of correcting themselves.

“When they correct themselves, I find more times than not, it will be much, much overexaggerated,” Sammy says. “It’s really just a grammar mistake at the root of it. And if you were to say another grammar mistake, you wouldn’t spend two minutes addressing it to your class. … So I want to treat it more like that. Like ‘Oh, sorry. My bad.’”

A student named Lumi talks about how much they love to write and how it feels “so, so amazing” when someone listens to them “talk about my gay little stories,” the characters in the stories, and how Lumi builds relationships.

“Hire queer teachers,” a student named Tally says, speaking directly to school administrators. “Hire teachers who are unabashedly and proudly queer.”

“It’s just really hard to be Black and to be part of the queer community,” a student named Karla says. “Because you just have that double standard all the time.

“Like, ‘well, I’m Black so I have to act a certain way, I have to talk a certain way,’” Karla says. “And then on top of that, ‘oh, I’m queer so I have to still act a certain way, talk a certain way, and not be too loud or not be too happy.’ It’s a lot of restriction that comes along with it. It’s just that level of trying to find yourself and be in both groups but still be just you.”

Zoë talks about how the Black students at her school are disciplined more harshly than the queer students — and how that leads to friction between the groups. “Make sure you’re not singling out anybody just because of what group they’re associated with,” she says.

A student named Eric recalls being asked what queer joy looked like to him and not knowing how to answer. But now Eric says he knows that “it’s self expression, it’s joy, it’s laughter.

“It’s being authentically you.”

Students hope the film makes a difference at school

In an interview, Lumi said participating in the film gave them a sense of belonging.

“I’ve never been in a place where I felt like I belong except for in that room with all those other students and Levi and Bethy,” they said. “It’s important for students who are queer and (people of color) to gather in a space where they feel welcomed and know that it’s OK to be a person of color and be queer. A lot of schools aren’t really all that accepting of queer students.”

Lumi, 18, graduated from a DPS high school in 2022. As a student, they said they were often afraid to speak up. Their teachers’ behavior contributed to their silence, they said. When their classmates would “say words like ‘fruity’ or use ‘gay’ as an insult, most of the time my teachers would look at those students and just let it go,” Lumi said. “That’s what made me so afraid.”

Although their school had a club for LGBTQ+ students, Lumi said the school didn’t provide much support other than a classroom for club meetings, and they often felt like they didn’t have a voice. Lumi said the film offered them another opportunity.

“It was so exciting to see myself up on that screen and realize I made a difference,” they said.

Ca’Shara recalled going to a premiere of the film earlier this month. Afterward, she said educators in the audience came up to her and told her how moved they were.

“They gave me unconditional love,” Ca’Shara said in an interview. “I’d love to see teachers — when you see students who are different and all of that, that unconditional love that you might have felt for the people in the film, put that into the classroom.

“You see students from different backgrounds? Support and love them.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

A North Carolina school district told educators to ‘out’ trans students. Will some refuse?

2023-06-13T10:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

The staff meeting had just started, but Brian Hayes could not bear to wait. As soon as the first speaker finished addressing the room full of school counselors, Hayes raised his hand.

“I hate to interrupt,” he said in April. “But I feel like we really need to talk about this Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

Four days earlier, the school board in Moore County, North Carolina, had passed the policy. One of its provisions requires school personnel to notify parents if students ask to use different names or pronouns. Proponents said it was common sense: Parents need to know if their children want to change gender identities. But some counselors, including Hayes, believed that forcibly outing transgender and nonbinary students to their families could cause real harm.

The policy in Moore County, a Republican stronghold in the center of the state, is part of a nationwide crackdown on transgender youth.

Conservative lawmakers and school board members argue that the rise in gender nonconformity is due largely to educators promoting a permissive “gender ideology” and, often without parents’ knowledge, affirming students’ gender identities. To combat what they call indoctrination, Republicans have sought to roll back schools’ support for gender diversity.

An increasing number of states and school districts forbid teachers from discussing gender identity in class or using trans students’ correct pronouns without parents’ permission. Schools have been pressured to remove books with trans characters and to disband LGBTQ clubs, and forced to bar trans students from sports teams.

Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, signed bills that prohibit trans students from using pronouns and bathrooms in school that correspond with their gender identity. And last week the Louisiana legislature passed several bills targeting trans youth, including one allowing school employees to refuse to use students’ preferred pronouns.

School staffers generally are the ones to enact the restrictions — but some have refused to carry out policies they consider harmful to LGBTQ students.

The resistance includes administrators who decline to enforce the new rules and educators who openly flout or quietly disregard them, said Craig White, supportive schools director for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group. While there is no national data to quantify the pushback, White said a growing number of school employees in recent months have sought his advice on how to fight the restrictions.

“The wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation,” he said, “has really catalyzed a grassroots resistance.”

At the Moore County meeting, counselors questioned the legality and ethics of the new policy. One asked the question that seemed to be hanging over the room: What would happen if they refused to comply?

But the next day, an official emailed them the new expectations: If a student asks to use a different name, counselors now must call their parents and ask for written permission.

Hayes recalled how he had counseled two trans students last year who were certain their parents would not accept their identities. Under the new policy, he would have been forced to inform the parents, even if it meant subjecting the students to rejection.

Hayes quickly drafted a reply to the official. He called the policy unethical and contrary to counselors’ duty to maintain student confidentiality. He asked about the consequences of non-compliance, then ended with a declaration.

“I am prepared to seek other employment if necessary to avoid violating my personal values and professional training,” he wrote. Then he hit send and waited.

A conservative majority takes shape on the board

Hayes grew up in Moore County, whose roughly 100,000 residents include military personnel connected to nearby Fort Liberty and retirees drawn to the area’s luxury golf courses, along with many working-class families. He attended Moore County Schools and worshiped at a fundamentalist Christian church, which taught that homosexuality was an abomination.

A billboard in Moore County, North Carolina.

After college, he enrolled in divinity school, where he began questioning what he had been taught. Eventually he made a radical change of plans: He would become a school counselor, one who affirms every student and condemns none.

After finishing a graduate program in school counseling in 2018, he took a counseling job at a Moore County middle school. He and his wife hadn’t planned on moving there, but he was drawn to the principal’s focus on social-emotional learning and the district leadership’s professed commitment to racial equity.

“Maybe this area’s making strides,” he thought. “And I could be a part of that.”

But within a couple years, the very changes that pulled him back to Moore County Schools were under attack. One person leading the charge was Robert Levy.

Like Hayes, Levy grew up in Moore County. He returned after 40 years practicing law in California and Maryland. Semi-retired, he wrote a weekly column in the local paper, briefly worked as a substitute teacher and served as chairman of the Moore County Republican Party.

In 2020, party members urged him to run for one of three open spots on the school board. Levy had concerns about some schools’ poor academic performance, as well as the board’s perceived liberal political leaning. He described the former board’s strategic plan — which called for a reduction in racial disparities in student discipline, more teacher diversity and support for students’ mental health — as “about 20 pages of woke ideas and a woke mindset.”

Levy ran and was elected alongside two other outspoken conservatives.

Early on, he proposed two policies: A ban on critical race theory in the district’s curriculum and a requirement that students’ biological sex determine which bathrooms they use and sports teams they play on. Outnumbered on the seven-member board, the three conservatives failed to pass the policies.

In March 2022, the trio voted to remove a book about a transgender child from two school libraries after a community member challenged it. Again they failed.

That summer, the board discussed school discipline disparities. Last school year, Black students in Moore County were suspended at nearly four times the rate of white students, according to state data on short-term suspensions, which can last up to 10 days.

At a board meeting, Levy blamed the disparities on students’ race and poverty.

“Minorities tend to be poorer. They tend to be less disciplined,” he said, according to the local Pilot newspaper. As a result, “you are going to get a disparity in numbers between disciplining of minorities and disciplining of the majority cultures.”

Some community members condemned the racist remarks. In an email to Chalkbeat, Levy said his point was that poverty, not race, makes students “more prone to discipline problems.”

Last November, Levy opposed adding the phrase “gender identity” to a board document. In a Facebook post, he accused the board’s “liberal members” of trying to redefine sex so that “male students who ‘identify’ as females and females who erroneously believe themselves male were to be a protected class.”

In the post, he urged voters to choose the three conservative candidates in that month’s school board election in order “to protect our children from woke attacks and free flowing sexualization of children.”

The conservatives prevailed in the election, gaining a 6-1 majority. Levy became the board chair and vowed to introduce a parents’ bill of rights.

Hayes watched with dread. If the policy passed, he would have to choose which to follow: his orders or his convictions.

“I kind of knew,” he said, “it was going to be an ultimatum.”

A community debates parents’ rights — and students’

A few months after the election, the Robbins Elementary School auditorium crackled with nervous energy. The school board was set to vote on the parents’ rights policy, but first, members of the community were to weigh in.

“Let me say that I know people are concerned about certain things, certain portions, of our business,” Levy told the crowd. “Please try to be civil.”

Robert Levy, chair of the Moore County school board, stands in front of an old schoolhouse in the district.

The policy stipulates that schools must notify parents before giving surveys or providing services related to students’ mental or physical health. But its most controversial provision was the requirement that schools alert parents if students want to change their gender expression.

Republicans across the country have pushed similar parent-notification rules. (The Moore County policy lifts language directly from Virginia guidelines and a North Carolina bill.) The rules target the practice in some schools of allowing gender-nonconforming students to switch names and pronouns without telling parents. To avoid outing them, some schools use students’ chosen names in class and their birth names when calling home.

Some educators and advocates defend the practice as protecting trans students’ privacy and safety, adding that most schools encourage students to eventually come out to their families. But critics say schools should never withhold important information from parents, adding that parents can’t support trans children if they aren’t informed.

While most parent-notification rules do not take a stance on gender nonconformity, some of the advocates and lawmakers pushing the policies have suggested that transgender students are confused or were pressured by educators.

Levy is skeptical of people who identify as trans, saying in an interview that he personally does not believe that someone can “wish a different gender.” But he said the notification policy lets parents decide how to respond.

“It is not for me to support or not to support students in what is called their gender identity,” he told Chalkbeat. “Our job is to teach them reading, writing, and math.”

The Moore County school board scheduled a vote on the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” for its April 17 meeting. Word spread quickly: A local LGBTQ center urged allies to attend the meeting to oppose the policy, while a local conservative activist implored “Christian conservatives” to support the policy in order to “protect our kids.”

On the evening of the meeting, a group of high schoolers filed into the back of the auditorium. Among them was Atlas, a ninth grader at Pinecrest High School who came out as transgender to his family and fellow marching band members last summer.

Most people at school respected his identity, but not everyone. One teacher refused to refer to transgender students by their correct names and pronouns or let them use a private dressing room for gym class. Atlas and his friends reported the teacher to the administration, but the issue persisted, he said. (A district spokesperson and the superintendent did not respond to emailed questions.)

Trans kids already felt unsafe in many places; with the notification, now they would feel exposed even in their counselor’s office. When Atlas’ name was called at the meeting, he stepped up to the podium and tried to help the board members understand.

“This proposed bill will hurt many students in our schools,” he began.

He cited national statistics showing that LGBTQ students, and transgender youth especially, are far more likely than their peers to consider or attempt suicide. The same is true in Moore County, where a 2017 survey found that 46% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual high school students had seriously considered suicide — compared with 14% of their straight peers.

“The students you were elected to represent are the faces of these statistics,” Atlas told the board, and his friends cheered.

Other speakers praised the proposed policy. One woman said some people want to change “the actual truth” that children are either male or female. A pastor warned about a slippery slope from supporting transgender youth to letting students dress up as animals.

One of the final speakers, who identified himself as Colin Wilson, said he and his wife pulled their child out of public school after the child came out as nonbinary. Now home-schooled, the child is a “well-adjusted female,” Wilson said, which is why schools must notify parents if children question their gender.

“If we don’t know,” he said, “we can’t address our children the way we see fit.”

During the board’s discussion, the one member who is not part of the conservative bloc said she opposed the policy because it targets LGBTQ students. She recalled how a school counselor had helped her nephew navigate the process of telling his parents that he is transgender.

Levy insisted that the policy is not directed at any particular group. “If you aim it solely at transgender youth, then you have a constitutional problem,” he said.

Yet during the same discussion, he suggested that the policy is intended to inform parents about children who want to change their gender expression. “Nobody is going to care” if a student named Robert asks to go by Rob, Levy said in response to another member’s question.

But “when Robert wants to be called Roberta,” he said later, “a parent needs to know.”

The board approved the policy by a vote of 6-1. It appeared to have an immediate chilling effect.

Rebecca Beittel, a Pinecrest English teacher, said a colleague started calling students by their last names in order to sidestep the name-change policy. Hayes said his trans students avoided discussing the policy; he worried that they no longer felt safe opening up to him. Noah, a Pinecrest student who is trans, said a classmate asked him and some friends if it was still OK to share their gender identity with teachers.

“We were all like, ‘Don’t!’” Noah said. “‘Don’t tell the teachers.’”

Students and staff resist the policy

Two days after the vote, Atlas led a few dozen Pinecrest students in a school walkout during third period. A TV news crew covered the protest, while supportive parents stood across the street and cheered.

Beittel, who plans to leave the district after this school year, joined the walkout. She said students have told her that their parents would reject them if they learned they’re trans.

“The only place where they feel comfortable being their authentic selves is in my classroom,” she said. But “with this new policy, a kid can no longer trust us to be that person where they can be safe and comfortable.”

Pinecrest High School, where students staged a walkout in protest of a policy targeting transgender students.

A few other staffers also spoke out. Kindergarten teacher Michele Cunningham said at the April board meeting that the policy would strip trans students of the “right to come out on their own terms.” Middle school counselor Renee Portfilio wrote an op-ed saying the policy violates counselors’ ethical duties and students’ privacy rights.

Hayes sought professional guidance. One group he contacted said ethics are a guide, but they don’t supersede local laws and policies. The American School Counselor Association’s ethical standards say counselors must maintain confidentiality, but also that students’ right to privacy “at times may be limited” by other interests, including parents’ rights.

Families in several states have sued school officials and counselors, alleging that they violated parents’ rights by affirming students’ gender identity without parental consent. Last month, 21 conservative state attorneys general filed an amicus brief supporting a Florida family’s lawsuit. The brief says schools across the country have “shut parents out” of decisions about their children’s gender identity “and trampled on their fundamental rights.”

In late May, Moore County Schools Superintendent Tim Locklair met with the school counselors to discuss their concerns. He advised them to comply with the parent-notification policy while also following their code of ethics, according to two attendees. “I trust your professional judgment,” he said. (Locklair did not respond to requests for comment.)

The guidance frustrated Hayes, who considers the policy and his ethics irreconcilable.

“I don’t understand how those two things can go together,” he said, “when my professional judgment tells me to violate the policy.”

Some counselors hoped the board would revise the policy, but it has no current plans to do so, Levy told Chalkbeat in an email. As for counselors’ ethical concerns, he added, they have been told how to implement the policy “consistent with any perceived conflicts.”

Meanwhile, Levy intends to introduce a new policy forbidding staffers from advocating for or against controversial issues during class. “This includes but is not limited to gender, sex and the policies surrounding such matters,” reads the draft “Inclusion and Indoctrination” policy.

Not long after Hayes sent the email asking what would happen if counselors refused to follow the parent-notification rule, he received a reply. The administrator acknowledged his concerns, but said employees are expected to follow board policies, according to Hayes.

If following the policy meant outing transgender students against their will, Hayes didn’t see how he could ethically comply. For now the dilemma is theoretical, but eventually such a situation will arise — in Hayes’ school and other districts adopting similar policies. Then Hayes and like-minded educators will have to decide: Do they obey the new rules or resist?

“I feel like it’s time for somebody to take a stand,” he said. “If nobody ever says anything, these people are just going to take over.”

How to support LGBTQ students: New York education officials update guidance

2023-06-12T13:00:00+00:00

As some states pass anti-LGBTQ legislation, New York state education officials have moved in the opposite direction, issuing new guidance on Monday on how schools should support transgender and gender-expansive students.

The 42-page document includes a slew of information for schools, including the correct terminology to use for gender identity, or how to support students who are coming out at school or want to transition. It has information on students’ privacy rights — including in relation to their parents — and research about LGBTQ students’ experiences at school. It also outlines the laws that prohibit discrimination against students on the basis of their gender.

Many of these laws were created after the state’s initial guidance from 2015, said Kathleen DeCataldo, assistant commissioner of the state education department’s Student Support Service office. One of those laws is the GENDA Act, which in 2019 added gender identity and expression as a protected category to New York’s Human Rights Law.

The document also includes more information and resources for schools than the 2015 guidance. For example, the guidance released Monday includes 26 words schools should know in relation to LGBTQ students, such as misgendering. The older document had just eight words.

The document opens with results from a 2021 national survey conducted by Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, which found that nearly 82% of the LGTBQ student respondents reported feeling unsafe at school. More than two-thirds of those students said they felt unsafe was because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Two-thirds of the respondents said they heard homophobic remarks at school, and roughly 40% said they “often or frequently” heard transphobic words, such as “tranny” or “he-she.”

As other states pass laws that seek to curb the rights of LGBTQ people, officials in New York “understand the climate right now,” DeCataldo told Chalkbeat.

“That makes it even more important to be clear about what the law requires of schools, so this is the perfect time to really have this update,” she said.

As one of the first states to release guidance nearly a decade ago, New York was ahead of the curve on pushing schools to create safer spaces for LGTBQ students. But members of New York’s Democratic committee recently signaled that the state is not doing enough. In May, the committee passed a resolution that called for elected officials and the governor to create a statewide LGTBQ curriculum for public schools. Efforts to do so in the past have failed.

New York City’s education department has a social studies curriculum supplement that centers the voices of LGTBQ people. On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order that, among other things, prohibits the city from cooperating with out-of-state investigations into gender-affirming care.

State officials developed the new guidance with the help of a roughly 30-person advisory committee that included representatives from advocacy groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union, or NYCLU, and the Trevor Project, which focuses on preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth.

Allie Bohm, policy counsel for NYCLU and advisory committee member, praised the committee’s array of voices, including parents of transgender youth, lawyers who work in this subject area, school psychologists, and adults who had the experience of transitioning as children. She was especially glad that state officials asked transgender students themselves about their experiences to help shape the updated guidance.

The document quotes some of those students anonymously. For example, one student shared that it took about eight months to get a legal name change at school. “They will let you put in a nickname in the system,” the student said, “but teachers never really use it, especially in the beginning of the year.”

The state’s guidance cites a 2016 study that says LGBTQ students who felt discriminated against for their sexual orientation and gender expression got worse grades than students who reported fewer instances of harassment. Those students were also roughly three times as likely to miss school.

Bohm said her organization hears about different ways schools across the state have discriminated against transgender youth, such as people who were told they couldn’t use a bathroom that matches their gender identity. It’s less common to hear examples in New York City but not unheard of, she said.

“This is a document that really, clearly says from the state’s highest education agency, ‘We see you,’ to trans youth, and, ‘We support you,’” Bohm said. “To feel like your state has your back is incredibly powerful.”

Creating this guidance may also mean that students might not have to constantly explain themselves, said Kraig Pannell, director of the Office of LGBTQ Services for New York’s state health department and another advisory member.

“Regardless of how you identify or regardless of what your gender expression is, if you have to go in and explain and teach somebody something, that gets burdensome,” Pannell said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana school librarians worry new law banning ‘obscene’ books will harm their work and students

2023-06-05T12:00:00+00:00

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“Pornographer.”

That’s the insult Chad Heck remembers, hurled by the people behind him as he testified in the state legislature earlier this year.

Like other Indiana school librarians who spoke against legislation seeking to restrict school bookshelves this session, Heck tried to dispel the notion that he and his colleagues were peddlers of porn — and found himself part of the national culture wars that have pitted some parents who mistrust public education against school leaders and staff.

Ultimately, lawmakers passed a bill that forbids books deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors” on school library shelves, following hours of heated public comment. House Enrolled Act 1447 also requires school districts to establish procedures to publish their school library catalogs, and to set up a process for a parent or community member to request removal of obscene or harmful material.

Now, Heck and other librarians with the Indiana Library Federation (ILF) who fought against the legislation are learning to live with the law, but they are still trying to clarify misconceptions about it. They stress that the law is not an outright book ban. They also say many districts already post their catalogs online, and already have procedures for challenging books.

School librarians say that contrary to what some might think, they don’t have obscene or harmful material in their collections. Instead, they worry the law will create what amounts to self-censorship among school librarians — who for the past few years have been the target of public scorn and scrutiny over what, exactly, is on their shelves.

“It contributes to this culture of fear that many librarians are operating under, which does have a chilling effect on our collections,” said Heck, the advocacy co-chair of ILF, which has a subgroup known as the Association of Indiana School Library Educators (AISLE). “And I’m concerned about this.”

In his office, Republican Sen. Jim Tomes — who has tried to pass some version of the new law for years — keeps six books he says are examples of pornography in schools. These include “This Book Is Gay” and “Gender Queer,” both of which are among the top 13 most challenged books in the country, according to the American Library Association. Parents across the state, he said, have reported to him that they’ve found these books in school libraries.

Some of the books offer advice for young LGBTQ adults navigating their sexuality, or serve as a sexual education guide for teens. But Tomes, who co-authored a variation of the bill language that eventually became law, says they show that school libraries have a problem.

“This was raw, 100 percent pornography,” he said. “The wording, the stories, and also the pictures in the books, the illustrations. If this is not pornography, then I don’t know what you could call it.”

Backlash against libraries is worst some have seen

Censorship battles in schools have existed for decades and have origins on the political left and right, librarians say.

How Indiana law defines material school libraries must remove

House Enrolled Act 1447 requires schools to remove library books and other materials that are “obscene” or “harmful to minors.” A key element of the law is how it defines those terms.

Here’s how the law defines obscene material:

“1) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, finds that the dominant theme of the matter or performance, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in sex;

2) the matter or performance depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct; and

3) the matter or performance, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Here’s how the law defines material that’s harmful to minors:

“(1) it describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse;

2) considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors;

3) it is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for or performance before minors; and

4) considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

Source: Indiana Code 35-49-2-1 and 35-49-2-2

But school librarians say they’ve seen an increase in concerns over what’s on their shelves in the past three years, as mistrust of public schools grew in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And some say the anger they’re facing now is the worst pushback against their profession they’ve ever seen.

The outrage has come from groups such as the Indiana chapter of Purple for Parents, which rails against the dangers of social-emotional learning and critical race theory in the classroom. Like Tomes, Purple for Parents insists that there is porn in Indiana schools.

An Indiana version of the “Mary in the Library” Facebook page, which features passages from what it deems to be “naughty children’s books,” has also escalated the controversy surrounding the issue.

But just as those inflammatory social media posts don’t necessarily tell the whole story, Heck said that people involved in discussions of the new law would “just point out one passage in a book” while missing important context.

While the new law prohibits schools from providing students with material deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” it also requires that the material in question lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. In addition, the material must be considered as a whole by readers.

Some school librarians say they don’t have materials in their libraries that meet the statutory definitions of material that libraries must pull from their shelves. And the books in Tomes’ office illustrate how differently both sides view the content.

With the exception of one book he was not familiar with — “Dead End” by Jason Myers — Heck argued that none of the books Tomes kept in his office would fit the statutory definition of obscene or harmful to minors.

Among those books, “Let’s Talk About It” is a guide for teens on sex and relationships that has depictions of sexual organs and sex. “This Book Is Gay” bills itself as an instruction manual for young adults trying to understand their sexuality and “what it’s like to grow up LGBTQIA+.”

And “Gender Queer” is a memoir about the author’s journey in identifying as nonbinary and asexual, described on its back cover as a “much-needed, useful, and touching guide.”

Tomes argued that such books are so inappropriate that he refuses to keep them in his house. But Heck countered that those books do so much more than appeal to an interest in sex, and must be read in their entirety to appreciate their intention. They discuss common issues LGBTQ people face, he said.

Librarians also argue that the process of adding materials to their collection requires careful consideration that includes consulting professional sources, like Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal, to determine what is age-appropriate.

“There’s a lot of thought and effort and time put into having the books in the collection,” said Diane Rogers, vice president of the Indiana Library Federation who’s a librarian at the Ben Davis Ninth Grade Center in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township. “I don’t purchase books on a whim, just like I won’t remove books on a whim.”

But as challenges to books and school libraries have intensified, critics of laws like Indiana’s have worried that groups will target books serving underserved communities — such as LGBTQ youth — for censorship or restrictions, increasing those students’ feeling of isolation.

“Right now, I am more concerned about librarians removing materials that meet the needs of our communities because they’re worried about backlash, or worried about being personally attacked,” Heck said. “And that is having a huge impact on libraries in our state.”

These books in the office of Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, are some of the books that Tomes called pornographic. But librarians argue the content in books must be considered as a whole.

And even though the text of the law targets books that lack artistic or other merits, the prospect of ongoing and intense arguments over what is actually “obscene” or “harmful to minors” has some librarians worried that their colleagues may start preemptively pulling material from their shelves just to avoid a fight.

“There are people who are asking themselves: Is it worth it for me?” said Rogers. “There’s librarians who are asking questions because their administration is coming to them and asking them to pull certain titles, you know, usually in an abundance of caution.”

Librarian leaders hope focus can return to kids

Just how much the law will change school districts’ handling of book challenges may vary when it takes effect Jan. 1.

In Marion County, at least three of the 11 school districts told Chalkbeat they already have some sort of procedure for challenging books or requesting that they be removed. Those include Wayne, Perry, and Indianapolis Public Schools.

The new law requires school districts to hear requests to remove materials during public school board meetings. At least six of the 11 Marion County districts told Chalkbeat that they did not receive any formal challenges to books in the past year.

Tomes did not say whether he had personally seen the books that he keeps in his office in schools; he stressed that parents reported to him that these books were in school libraries. He said it’s great that some school districts and librarians already comply with parts of the new law.

“I’m glad that they are already doing that,” he said. “Not everybody was.”

The law also tweaked the various defenses individuals can claim as protection from prosecution for disseminating material harmful to minors — classified as a felony under state law.

The new law removes the previous defenses that allowed sharing such material if it was done for an educational purpose or shared by a school. However, librarians with ILF and the Indiana State Library maintain that school employees can still claim a defense from prosecution under the law if they are acting within the scope of their employment.

“Whether or not this is intentional or will be changed in some sort of future clean-up action remains to be seen,” the Indiana State Library said in a legal memo it sent to school libraries in May.

As school districts statewide adapt to the new law, librarians with ILF are urging colleagues to lean on each other and embrace a collection method informed by research and professional book reviews.

Mainly, though, they hope the intense public scrutiny aimed at them in recent years will soon end.

“I’m hoping that this is just a storm that we’ll be able to weather, and it’ll pass,” said Emily Wilt, chair of the AISLE group. “And we’ll be able to turn our attentions and our energies more fully back toward the reasons we all got into this profession, which [is] serving our kids.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Pronouns, libraries, and textbook fees: The K-12 policy changes Indiana lawmakers made this year

2023-05-01T21:45:29+00:00

State legislators have introduced more than 100 new education bills and bills impacting schools and students during Indiana’s 2023 legislative session. For the latest Indiana education news, sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free newsletter here.

This article was originally published in the Indiana Capital Chronicle. It has been edited by Chalkbeat Indiana to only include education and student-focused legislation.

Indiana’s Republican-controlled General Assembly convened for 110 days, during which education, health care, and taxes dominated much of the discourse.

The highlight, however, was the passage of Indiana’s $44 billion biennial budget plan.

Here’s a recap of the education issues — some big, some small — and a look at what prevailed and what didn’t quite come together before the 2023 session came to a close early Friday morning.

Holcomb agenda achieves success

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s 2023 legislative agenda highlighted proposals for several major funding increases in the next two-year state budget, including paying for all K-12 textbooks, salary increases for state police troopers, and millions more for public health services in all 92 counties.

A massive private school voucher expansion was the sticking point in the final hours of the session — although vouchers weren’t part of Holcomb’s priorities.

Still, the governor got most of what he wanted — saying he will “gladly sign” the final budget draft — and praised lawmakers for their work an hour after the session’s end.

Indiana families shielded from K-12 textbook fees

Indiana’s governor rallied hard to eliminate textbook and curricular fees for Hoosier kids. Figuring out how to fund the ask proved less straightforward, though.

Holcomb’s proposed budget explicitly included a line item for textbook fees — separate from the school funding formula — directing funds to the state education department, which would then be responsible for dishing out textbook dollars to schools.

But House budget writers originally took a different approach, seeking to require schools to dip into their foundational funding to fully pay students’ curricular materials costs.

Pushback from public school officials prompted changes to that funding mechanism in the final budget plan.

Now, a $160 million annual line item — added by Senate Republicans — ensures that Hoosier families will not have to pay student textbook fees in K-12 public schools. Private school students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch will also see their textbook fees waived, according to the budget.

Grant program for college access gets a boost

The Holcomb administration’s push to get more Hoosiers educated included a move to automatically enroll eligible Hoosier students into Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars Program, a statewide grant program that helps students from low-income backgrounds attend two- and four-year schools.

A bill doing just that advanced to the governor’s desk last week.

House Bill 1449 requires the Indiana Commission for Higher Education to work with the state education department to identify kids who qualify for the program, and then notify students and parents about their eligibility. Students must agree to participate in 21st Century Scholars and can opt out at any time.

Funding for Martin University increases

Also part of Holcomb’s agenda was a proposed $10 million for Martin University — the state’s only predominantly black institution — specifically to help the students from low-income backgrounds, students of color, and adult-learner populations served by the university.

The House GOP budget plan matched that request, but Senate Republicans opted to give every higher education institution in Indiana access to that $10 million over the biennium for students of color, as well as first-generation students and those from low-income backgrounds.

The final budget landed somewhere in between, appropriating $5 million to Martin University, and creating another $5 million pot for all other Hoosier colleges and universities.

Feat of imagination: more kids reading

Country music icon Dolly Parton’s book program mails over two million books monthly to children across the country — and elsewhere — monthly, according to its website. Now, the Imagination Library is set to be available statewide in Indiana.

Launching the program was a priority for Holcomb, as well as some lawmakers, and they saw success in the final version of the state’s two-year, $44.5 billion budget. It’s one line item in the 249-page document: a $6 million appropriation.

Lawmakers address pronoun changes in classrooms

A controversial bill mandating that Indiana schools notify parents when a student asks for name or pronoun changes is now awaiting a signature from the governor.

House Bill 1608 also bans human sexuality instruction to the youngest Hoosier students.

The proposal is reminiscent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that has been described by some as one of the most “hateful” pieces of legislation in the country.

Supporters say parents have the “right” and “responsibility” to control what their children learn — and are called — when at school.

But critics of the bill — which was pared down in its final iteration — have argued that it’s part of a nationwide wave of legislation “singling out LGBTQ+ people and their families.” More specifically, they say that the legislation could put transgender children at risk of harm if they’re outed to unsupportive or abusive parents.

New process to govern school library book grievances

In the final hours of the legislative session, Republican state lawmakers resurrected a much-debated ban on materials deemed “obscene “or “harmful to minors” in school and public libraries.

The bill requires school libraries to publicly post lists of books in their collection and create a formal grievance process for parents and community members who live in the district to object to certain materials in circulation.

As part of that process, school boards must review those challenges at their next public meeting. An appeals process must also be established if officials don’t agree with the request.

Language in House Bill 1447 also removes “educational purposes” as a reason that schools or district board members could claim legal protection for sharing “harmful material” with underage students.

Public libraries would not be affected, however, despite other proposals debated earlier in the session that would have expanded the language’s reach. The bill only applies to public and charter schools, not private schools.

Bills on partisan school boards, child care fall short

Republican lawmakers touted big wins across the board at the conclusion of the legislative session, but several big-ticket items didn’t make it across the finish line.

Many of the measures are expected to be reworked and introduced again next year.

A bill that would have let Hoosier communities decide if local school board elections should be partisan died in the House in February.

That means school board races will stay nonpartisan, at least for now. Similar bills have circulated around the Statehouse in years past, and GOP leadership said others are likely to come up again in the future.

With this year’s House Bill 1428, specifically, Republican lawmakers could not find consensus over whether school board candidates should have to be nominated by party primaries or only be listed by political party on the November general election ballot.

Something that didn’t get too much attention through the 2023 session was child care and early childhood education. Though legislators expanded eligibility for On My Way Pre-K from 127% to 150% of the federal poverty limit, roughly $41,625 annually for a family of four, they didn’t add more funding.

Leaders said that current expenditures left money behind, including in the Child Care Development Fund. However, families and businesses alike bemoan the shortage of quality child care available in communities, saying it hampers economic growth.

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

Tennessee school employees could skip implicit-bias training under bill headed to governor’s desk

2023-04-22T01:00:16+00:00

A bill allowing Tennessee school and university employees to opt out of implicit-bias training is headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk.

The measure easily passed Friday in the Republican-controlled Senate and House over the objections of Democrats who argued that the policy is the wrong direction in a state where students of color make up about 40% of Tennessee’s public school population, while the vast majority of the state’s teachers are white.

The legislation is the latest example of the legislature’s efforts to stifle or silence conversations about diversity in education.

In 2021, Tennessee became one of the nation’s first to enact a law limiting how race and gender can be discussed in the classroom, including conversations about systemic racism. Last year, the legislature passed another law that could lead to a statewide ban of certain school library books, some of which deal with matters of race and gender.

Implicit-bias training is designed to increase self-awareness around subconscious prejudices and stereotypes that may affect how individuals see and treat people of another race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background.

A significant amount of research in education says that implicit biases may contribute to racial disparities, such as differences in student achievement, learning opportunities, and school discipline between Black and white students. But it’s less clear whether training about implicit bias actually changes behaviors.

In Tennessee, it has been up to local school districts, charter schools, and public universities to determine whether to offer or require implicit-bias training for their employees.

Sen. Todd Gardenhire said his bill doesn’t ban schools from offering the training or employees from participating. It just protects school employees from disciplinary action or firing if they choose to opt out.

“You want to have that course, have it all day long, but don’t make me do it,” said the Chattanooga Republican.

But Democrats worried that those who opt out might be the ones most in need of self-reflection, based on research that says, for instance, that teachers are more likely to discipline Black children than white children for the same conduct, or give boys higher grades in math than girls.

“This is simply to give our educators another tool to make sure that all students are treated with equity and dignity and respect,” said Rep. Justin Jones, a Nashville Democrat.

Gardenhire and the bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Jason Zachary of Knoxville, charged that some trainings in Tennessee have crossed the line beyond building self-awareness into ideologically driven presentations that are themselves rooted in biases.

“All of this depends on a developer or a designer that designs the course. But who checks the checker?” Gardenhire asked.

In House debate, Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat who voted against the bill, suggested that instead of the state letting employees opt out, trainers and their courses should be screened to ensure they represent best practices in implicit-bias training.

And in the Senate, Sen. Jeff Yarbro said the purpose of implicit-bias training isn’t to make people feel bad about themselves but to educate people who work with students to avoid stereotypes.

“The data is 100% clear that implicit bias is a real thing that has real effects in classrooms across the country,” said the Nashville Democrat, “and certainly Tennessee is no exception.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

As GOP ramps up school culture wars, Democrats weigh a counterattack

2023-04-21T10:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

As the country’s furious political fights engulf schools, Democrats have mostly played defense.

Many critics blamed Democrats for the extended school closures during the early stages of the pandemic, saying they put educators’ interests ahead of students’. Then Republicans cast themselves as defenders of “parents’ rights,” while accusing the left of trying to “indoctrinate” public school students.

“We were in a really bad space politically around these issues,” said Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, a liberal think tank that often advises the Democratic party.

But after putting up little resistance in recent years, there are some signs that national Democrats are ready to fight back.

Party leaders and their allies are piloting new messaging and proposed legislation meant to challenge Republicans’ stance as the party of parents. They are emboldened by polls showing that most parents oppose book bans and worry more about school safety than critical race theory creeping into the curriculum, and are betting that the GOP’s efforts to dictate what students learn and to restrict LGBTQ students’ rights will ultimately alienate moderate voters.

Until recently, “The Republicans felt like, ‘We can’t lose on this,’ and the Democrats felt like, ‘We can’t touch this,’” Erickson said. “That dynamic is beginning to shift.”

Democrats’ interest in a more muscular response will be tested as Republicans escalate the school culture wars ahead of the 2024 presidential election. This week, Florida expanded its ban on classroom lessons about sexuality and gender identity, which has been a top priority for likely presidential contender Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Republicans in Congress advanced new nationwide restrictions on transgender student athletes.

But among advocates who have been urging Democrats to forcefully fight back, some still question the party’s resolve.

“I think they’re doing better,” said Keri Rodrigues, co-founder and president of the National Parents Union, which generally aligns with Democrats on education. “But they’re still terrible.”

Democrats start to fight against the culture wars

The clearest example of Democrats’ new approach came last month when House Republicans proposed the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which would require every school to publish its curriculum and notify parents if a student wants to use different pronouns or restrooms. Democrats branded it the “Politics Over Parents Act” and put forward a counter-resolution, which calls for “authentic” collaboration between parents and teachers along with civil rights protections for students.

The Biden administration echoed the message. After the Republican bill narrowly passed, an education department official told Politico that GOP leaders “are focused more on playing politics than helping our parents, kids and schools.” And in an uncharacteristically forceful op-ed, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona accused Republicans of being out of touch with families.

“Parents don’t want politicians dictating what their children can learn, think and believe,” he wrote in the Tampa Bay Times last month after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected a high school African American studies course. And in a recent interview with Politico, he declared that he will no longer “sit idly” while some lawmakers push for “book banning” and “attacking vulnerable students.”

Democrats’ allies are spreading a similar message. In a speech last month, the head of the nation’s second largest teachers union said the school culture wars are “not what parents or the public want.” Instead, they are a Republican ploy to undermine public education “by stoking fear and division,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

Democratic lawmakers in red states have vocally opposed curriculum restrictions and laws targeting LGBTQ students, while blue state Democrats have passed laws protecting trans youth and ensuring that students learn about marginalized groups.

President Biden has proposed new rules that would codify federal anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students, and prohibit states from enacting blanket restrictions on transgender student athletes. His administration has launched investigations into allegations of discrimination against Black and LGBTQ students, and has backed legal challenges to several anti-LGBTQ state laws.

Aaron Ridings, a deputy executive director at the LGBTQ youth-advocacy group GLSEN, said the Biden administration has done more than its predecessors to protect LGBTQ students.

“Unfortunately,” Ridings added, “the level of harm and the attacks against trans and nonbinary communities mean that we have to do more.”

But Democrats have also been stymied by partisan gridlock in Congress and legal challenges to Biden’s anti-discrimination guidance. As a result, while states with one-party control pass laws around curriculum and LGBTQ students’ rights, national politicians are waging school culture wars largely in the realm of rhetoric.

On that front, critics say, Democrats have had a mixed record. While they have spoken out against bills targeting transgender students and curtailing lessons on racism and sexuality, they have also been eager to change the subject to safer topics, such as teacher pay and preschool.

Rodrigues, head of the National Parents Union, pointed to a January speech in which Cardona laid out his vision for public education — but said nothing about protecting vulnerable students.

“What this moment calls for is courageous leadership and a backbone,” she said, “and we’re just not seeing it.”

An education department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans keep up their campaign

Meanwhile, Republicans appear confident that education, traditionally Democrats’ strong suit, can be a winning issue for them in the 2024 presidential campaign.

They note that Republican Glenn Youngkin scored an upset victory in 2021 in the Virginia governor’s race on a message of parents’ rights, and DeSantis won a landslide reelection last fall after making school culture wars a centerpiece of his first term. They cite surveys showing that most voters oppose classroom lessons on sexuality and gender identity and want parents to have more control over what schools teach. And they highlight polls from last year that found, for the first time in decades, voters trusted Republicans more than Democrats on education.

Republicans have been undaunted by criticism that they are censoring classroom instruction, arguing instead that they are empowering parents and shielding students from inappropriate content.

“This is not about banning books, this is about promoting transparency,” said Rep. Mark Alford, a Missouri Republican, during debate over the federal parents’ rights bill. “It is our responsibility to protect our children from the evils being taught in some classrooms across the country.”

The bill was a pillar of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agenda, even though it stands no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.

In states across the country, Republicans are also continuing to advance legislation that forbids some lessons on racism and sexuality, facilitates book challenges, and targets transgender students’ rights. And the likely contenders for the party’s presidential nomination, including DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, are hammering the message of parent empowerment.

“I will bring parental rights back into our school system,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Iowa last month, when he vowed to cut funding for schools that teach “inappropriate” content or allow transgender athletes to play alongside peers of the same gender.

Democrats insist those policies will turn off independent voters in a general election. They point to the 2022 midterm elections, when several candidates who ran on parents’ rights lost high-profile races, and to polls that show voters favor improving public schools over restricting curriculum.

Now Democrats will try to land a tricky one-two punch: Push back against Republicans’ vision of parents’ rights, then propose an alternative centered on issues such as school funding and safety, which they say reflect most families’ actual concerns.

“That’s how you respond to the parents’ right push,” said Jon Valant, who directs the Brown Center on Education Policy at the left-leaning Brookings Institution. “You make it your own.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Religious charter school rejected in Oklahoma, but a national fight looms

2023-04-12T00:36:59+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

A state board in Oklahoma voted down Tuesday an application for the country’s first religious charter school, highlighting the legal uncertainty around using tax dollars to directly pay for religious education.

In rejecting the school’s initial application, board members acknowledged that the larger issue of whether religious charter schools pass legal muster would likely be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court has already ruled that states cannot exclude religious schools from private school choice programs.

If the court eventually rules in favor of religious charter schools, as some legal experts expect, it could have broad implications for the separation of church and state, as well as lead to more charter schools and less money for traditional public schools.

“This is a huge deal,” said Preston Green, an education law professor at the University of Connecticut, “and not just for red states, but for the entire country.”

The unanimous vote, which came after about two hours of discussion by Oklahoma’s five-member Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, delayed a final decision on the application for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school can submit a revised application, which could come before the board again as soon as next month.

Board members raised a number of issues with the application, from how the proposed charter school would serve students with disabilities to its management structure to how it would ensure internet connectivity for students. But the thorniest question was whether it was even legal to approve a charter school with an explicitly religious mission.

“The constitutional issue is a big high hurdle,” said Board Chairperson Robert Franklin.

Another board member, Scott Strawn, said, “Is it settled law? That’s the gray area we’re all living in.”

The Catholic Church in Oklahoma City and Tulsa proposed the online charter school as a way to reach students in rural areas with few local schools. Named for the patron saint of the internet, the St. Isidore school would eventually enroll up to 1,500 students statewide in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Charter schools are publicly funded but operated by private groups rather than local school boards. Some religious groups run charter schools, but the schools are fully secular.

By contrast, the Oklahoma charter school would be explicitly religious. The school application says Catholic schools are “places of evangelization” that serve the mission of the church. The online charter school would display religious symbols such as crucifixes, and students would study religion and attend church services, the application says.

Before the vote Tuesday, the board heard from several commenters opposed to religious charter schools.

Bruce Prescott, a retired Baptist minister, said religious charter schools would “upend the entire educational landscape in Oklahoma.”

“One of the hallmarks of public schools in America is that they are non-discriminatory and secular in their acceptance of all students regardless of their faith or beliefs,” he said.

A proposed religious charter school sparks debate

Critics say the proposed school would violate state laws and the “establishment clause” in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which prohibits the government from endorsing any religion. They have also raised concerns that the school could discriminate against students or employees based on their religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

In its application, the church said the school would adopt an anti-discrimination policy, but would also defer to Catholic teachings on issues such as marriage and homosexuality, which the church considers immoral when acted upon. In interviews, Oklahoma church officials have declined to say whether the school would admit openly gay or transgender students.

“St. Isidore plans to, or at the very least reserves the right to, unlawfully discriminate in admissions and employment,” said a letter to the state virtual charter school board from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a legal advocacy group that opposes the proposed school.

Proponents of the school argue that it is the state’s charter school law, not the proposed school, that violates the First Amendment. They say that stopping religious groups from operating charter schools according to their faith amounts to religious discrimination.

In December, Oklahoma’s former Republican attorney general issued an opinion saying the state’s ban on religious charter schools likely violated the First Amendment. But shortly after, the state’s newly elected Republican attorney general withdrew the opinion, saying it tried to “justify state-funded religion.”

The state’s Republican governor attacked the move by Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

“You contend that the United States and the Oklahoma Constitutions permit, and indeed require, the state to discriminate against religious organizations seeking authorization to operate charter schools,” Gov. Kevin Stitt wrote in a letter to Drummond. “In fact, the opposite is true.”

Several members of the statewide virtual charter school board noted the differing legal opinions in the discussion Tuesday. Franklin, the board chair, said he asked prior to the meeting if board members would have legal protection and “support from the attorney general’s office” if they were sued after the final decision.

“We’re not going to be able to answer that legal question,” he said.

The big legal question: Are charter schools public or private?

Both sides of the debate about whether charter schools can be religious tend to agree that, under the U.S. Constitution, public schools cannot promote religion. Where they disagree is whether charter schools are truly public schools.

In legal terms, the question is whether charter schools are “state actors.” If so, they cannot impose religious beliefs on students.

Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said charter schools are clearly state actors.

“I would say there’s 101 reasons why they are state actors,” he said, “and none why they are not.”

He noted that charter schools and traditional public schools both receive public money, cannot charge tuition or turn students away, and must adhere to state academic standards. Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools don’t answer to elected school boards and they enjoy flexibility from some state regulations. But those qualities don’t make charter schools “private actors,” Black argued.

If Oklahoma were to approve the plan for a religious charter school, the state would essentially be endorsing the school’s religious beliefs, Black said.

“That is the state adopting private religious beliefs as the state’s curriculum,” he said. “That stamp all by itself is state action.”

But proponents of religious charter schools argue they are more private than public.

Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said charter schools do not qualify as state actors because their actions cannot be attributed to the government. In fact, she argues, the premise behind charter schools is that they operate independently of the state in a way that traditional public schools cannot.

“That’s kind of the whole point of charter schools,” she said, “to foster pluralism and foster innovation by giving them freedom from government control.”

Whether or not charter schools are state actors is at the heart of a legal case in North Carolina, where a student sued a charter school that requires girls to wear skirts. The school has argued that it is not subject to federal anti-discrimination laws because it is not a state actor.

A lower court ruled against the school, which appealed to the Supreme Court. In January, the court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on the matter, which could signal the court’s interest in the legal question.

Based on recent Supreme Court rulings that said states cannot stop religious schools from receiving public benefits, some legal experts think the court’s conservative majority will declare that charter schools are not state actors — and therefore free to promote religious beliefs. Such a ruling would raise a new set of issues, including whether religious charter schools may discriminate against students or staffers on religious grounds.

“Those are questions that remain unanswered,” Garnett said.

Some of the original proponents of charter schools, however, say any attempt to mix charter schools and religious instruction runs counter to the intent of those schools.

“If a religious school receives public funding, that is not a charter school and should not be called that,” said Ember Reichgott Junge, a former Democratic state senator in Minnesota who wrote the senate version of the country’s first charter school law, which passed in 1991. “It’s something else.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org. Cara Fitzpatrick is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

Indiana Senate strikes parental consent requirement from bill targeting student pronouns in schools

2023-04-07T15:15:24+00:00

Indiana’s 2023 legislative session is under way, and state legislators have introduced more than 100 new education bills and bills impacting schools and students. For the latest Indiana education news, sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free newsletter here.

This article originally published in the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

A controversial “parental rights” bill was pared down by Indiana senators on Thursday to remove a provision that would have required schools get consent from parents if a student requests to change their name or pronouns.

The amended version of House Bill 1608 now stipulates that parents only must be notified within five business days about a requested name or pronoun change.

“It started out coming out of committee as (requiring) consent, and that’s important,” Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said of the chamber’s decision to scale back the bill.

“It can be challenging, though, as you play that out,” he continued. “When you start talking about getting consent from a parent, or parents, and there’s lots of divorce situations out there where that can be contentious, and we thought, well, notification advises the parents of what’s going on, and they can then meet and engage in the school, and that’s a satisfactory result.”

An amendment adopted to the bill on Thursday also deletes language that would have protected teachers who refuse to use a name or pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s legal name and biological sex.

Lawmakers update proposal around names, pronouns

Bray said his caucus has had “lengthy communication” with House Republicans about the changes to the bill — which is why it stalled on the chamber calendar for more than a week before it was called down for amendments.

The Senate leader said he expects the House to approve the changes, assuming the bill advances in a Senate floor vote that could come as early as next week.

“It’s a tricky issue. And there’s reasonable people who come down on both sides of that … it didn’t go necessarily along party lines,” Bray said. “There was some question out there about why are we engaging in this space at all? A number of schools wanted some guidance from the state on this because they’re all grappling with it. It’s a pretty challenging issue on the school board level, as well. So, it’s just a very difficult issue to handle and get on top of.”

The latest draft of the amended bill requires schools to inform parents if a student requests to change their name or pronouns for any reason — including to a nickname.

Although an earlier version of the bill would have blocked adherence to the student’s request without a parent’s explicit consent, bill sponsor Sen. Stacey Donato, R-Logansport, said teachers could now grant a student’s request as long as notice has already been given to a parent.

Previous language would have additionally prevented schools from disciplining teachers that still use a child’s old name or pronouns — even with parental permission to use the new, preferred versions — if the employee or staff member does so out of a “religious conviction.” That part of the bill is gone, too.

The bill retains language that would also prohibit instruction on “human sexuality” for students in prekindergarten through 3rd grade, although sexual education typically does not start until the fourth or sixth grades under existing state standards.

Private schools are exempted from the language restricting “human sexuality.”

Democrats’ proposed amendments fall short

Three separate amendments offered by Democrats failed, however.

One proposed change would have given students a chance to rescind their name or pronoun change request in an attempt to give them more time to consider whether or not they want their parents to be notified.

Another would have ensured that school psychologists, social workers, nurses, and counselors would not be forced to violate their professional codes of conduct and ethics to adhere to the bill’s provisions. The bill already says that school staff are not required to break federal laws in order to be compliant.

Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, suggested that — if lawmakers are going to regulate pronouns — they should crack down on words like “mankind” and “manmade,” or phrases like, “Hey, guys,” when addressing groups of students.

“If this is such an issue, when referring to people by their biological sex, then I think language must matter, and we should cease from doing it,” Yoder said. The amendment failed in a voice vote.

Still, Senate Minority Leader Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, said he was “surprised” the GOP caucus supported the changes made to the bill.

“I don’t understand it … it’s causing problems,” Taylor said of the bill overall. “Young people have to make the hard decision to even come out and express how they feel. Then we’re going to make it even harder by saying, ‘If you tell me in confidence, and I’m somebody you trust, I have no choice but to inform your parents.’ Now why would a child tell their teacher first before they tell their parents if they really believe that their parent was going to be accepting?”

Bill author Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, maintains that her proposal intends to “empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children.”

Critics of the bill have argued that it’s part of a nationwide wave of legislation “singling out LGBTQ+ people and their families.” Supporters say parents have the “right” and “responsibility” to control what their children learn — and are called — when at school.

The proposal is reminiscent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that has been described by some as one of the most “hateful” pieces of legislation in the country.

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

Schools could limit transgender students’ sports participation under Biden admin proposal

2023-04-06T21:40:35+00:00

The Biden administration on Thursday proposed a rule that would allow schools to place some restrictions on transgender athletes, particularly in competitive high school and college sports.

In a long-awaited proposal, federal education officials said that K-12 schools and colleges cannot establish across-the-board bans on transgender students participating on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity — a direct challenge to laws in several states. But the proposal would allow schools to keep transgender students off certain teams in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury,” according to an education department fact sheet.

That language echoes complaints by critics, including Republican lawmakers, who say that allowing transgender girls to compete in girls sports gives them an unfair advantage and poses potential safety risks.

Under the proposed rule, schools would violate federal civil rights law if they enact “categorical bans” on transgender athletes “just because of who they are,” the fact sheet said.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

The proposed rule would codify the administration’s position that transgender students are protected by federal anti-discrimination laws. Still, the proposal is likely to face criticism that it still allows schools to exclude trans athletes, and is sure to be challenged in court by Republican-led states that have passed laws barring transgender girls from joining girls sports teams.

If a school chooses to restrict participation based on sex, education department officials said, it would have to consider the individual sport, the age of the students participating, and how competitive the team is.

Officials said they expected most elementary school students would be able to participate on a sports team corresponding with their gender identity and that it would be particularly difficult for schools to exclude them. But schools would be permitted to adopt policies that limit the participation of transgender students in high school and college, especially in more competitive sports.

“It seems like there would be some clarity on the elementary school level, like let’s not ban third graders from playing on a soccer team,” said Suzanne Eckes, a professor of education law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has followed lawsuits over trans student athletes. “At the high school level, we’ll have to see how that plays out.”

Less than 2% of high school students identify as transgender, according to a 2017 CDC survey of 10 states and several large districts, and only a fraction of those students participate in school sports.

Many states have passed laws restricting transgender athletes

Still, at least 20 states have passed laws that ban transgender athletes from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that tracks policies affecting LGBTQ people.

On Wednesday, Kansas became the latest state to enact such a ban, passing a law that bars transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams. The law targets a minuscule number of students: Out of 106,000 student athletes in the Kansas State High School Activities Association, only three are transgender girls, a spokesperson told KCUR.

A number of states that restrict transgender athletes have already sued the Biden administration, arguing that guidance saying federal anti-discrimination laws protect transgender people infringes on states’ rights.

Last June, federal education officials put forward another rule stating that LGBTQ students are protected from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination at school. (That rule is not yet final, but education department officials expect it will be in May.)

At the time, the Biden administration announced it would undertake a separate rule-making process regarding participation on school sports teams — a move that disappointed many advocates for LGBTQ students, who wanted federal officials to move faster to protect the rights of transgender student athletes.

This new proposal wades into that more contentious political territory, though it remains to be seen how strongly the education department would enforce such a rule.

The education department could conduct investigations into whether a school had improperly excluded a trans student from a sports team, a senior department official said. In those cases, officials could withhold federal funding from schools to urge compliance, though no school has ever lost money for violating Title IX.

Trans students have already gone to court in several states to challenge laws that restrict their participation in school sports. In West Virginia, a federal judge temporarily halted that state’s law after advocates sued on behalf of an 11-year-old transgender girl who was stopped from joining girls cross country and track teams.

“The right not to be discriminated against by the government belongs to all of us in equal measure,” the judge wrote in his 2021 decision. However, the same judge reversed his decision earlier this year, ruling that the law did not violate Title IX.

Advocates for the student appealed that decision, and a federal appeals court reinstated the temporary pause on the law. Last month, West Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and allow the law to take effect. On Thursday, the court denied the state’s request, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

Republicans say they are protecting cisgender girls

Like other Republicans, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the law is meant to defend cisgender girls.

“Our case is simple: It’s about protecting opportunities for women and girls in sports,” he told CNN. Critics say such statements intentionally exclude transgender girls.

Republicans at both the state and national level have vowed to oppose the Biden administration’s Title IX rules, saying they will fight to keep transgender girls out of girls sports.

Last month, Congressional Republicans advanced a bill to revise Title IX’s definition of sex to be based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. While the bill is unlikely to pass in the Democrat-controlled Senate, Republicans have made the issue a key talking point. In his policy agenda, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Republicans will ensure “that only women can compete in women’s sports.”

At the state level, 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit in 2021 to block the Biden administration’s guidance extending anti-discrimination protections to transgender students. Last July, a Trump-appointed federal judge agreed to temporarily halt enforcement of the guidance in those states. The administration appealed the decision.

A group of conservative attorneys general also sent a letter to the U.S. education secretary last year that said using Title IX to protect transgender people from discrimination “is an attack on the rights of girls and women.”

“[W]e will fight your proposed changes to Title IX with every available tool in our arsenal,” they wrote.

To Eckes, the matter likely won’t be settled until the Supreme Court weighs in.

“It’s not the end of the conversation,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org. Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

NYC extends deadline for youth jobs program. Here’s what to know.

2023-03-31T17:58:09+00:00

This story was updated to reflect the new deadline.

New York City extended the deadline for its Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, which provides paid jobs and career exploration programs for young people ages 14-24.

Young people have until April 14 to apply, officials announced Friday.

This year marks the $236 million program’s 60th year and will again be open to 100,000 young people – making it the largest public youth jobs program in the nation. The program will run between July 5 to Aug. 12 and from July 12 to Aug. 19.

One new feature this year is an effort to pair LGBTQ youth with affirming jobs, though specifics are scarce. Officials said they’re still working on the details based on how much interest they get, which can be marked on the application.

City officials also plan to nearly triple the number of slots for a small program that offers paid opportunities for youth who are undocumented.

How do I apply?

Youth can apply online here.

The types of programming and pay depends on the participant’s age. Dozens of community-based organizations oversee programming and find work sites that are willing to host youth workers.

What kinds of opportunities are available?

Younger youth, who are 14 to 15 years old, spend 12.5 hours a week gaining work readiness skills and learning about different careers. They also participate in project-based learning, which often involves finding a problem in the surrounding community and creating solutions. These teens are paid up to $700.

Youth ages 16 to 24 are paired with jobs through one of dozens of community-based organizations. Those organizations line up work sites, such as retailers or local businesses, that are willing to host youth workers for the summer. These young people are paid the city’s minimum wage rate of $15 an hour and work 25 hours a week – meaning they can make up to $2,250 by the end of the program.

Work sites range between public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Last year, a majority of jobs – 45% – were in the nonprofit sector. Private jobs were most commonly in retail, followed by day cares and camps, hospitality, tourism and health care, according to a report on last year’s jobs program published by the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, which oversees SYEP. Other opportunities included jobs in media and entertainment, business and finance, arts and recreation, real estate and technology.

In the public sector, about 4,600 youth worked last year for the education department, such as working with staff, in school kitchens, and in maintenance. In the public sector, nearly 4,000 youth last year worked for city agencies or mayoral offices. Nearly 120 youth worked for City Council members.

Applicants are asked to list their top three career choices and the provider they want to work with.

Am I guaranteed a spot?

No. The program has 100,000 open slots, but applications typically exceed that number. DYCD has received more than 126,000 applications so far, according to an agency spokesperson. Last year, the agency received roughly 167,000 applications.

Once applications are submitted, youth are chosen through a lottery system.

However, some young people who might be facing certain barriers to employment don’t have to go through the lottery system and can be directly referred to the jobs program through a city agency they’re working with. This includes youth who are homeless, in or aging out of foster care, are involved with the court system, and in families that are receiving preventative services through the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, such as support for mental health needs, substance abuse, and domestic violence.

Just like other young people, these youth also participate in either career readiness programs or are paired with jobs through a program called SYEP Emerging Leaders.

I am undocumented. Am I eligible for this program?

Generally, no. The program is only open to New York City youth who are legally eligible to work in the United States — an issue that has caused some advocates and lawmakers to push for more opportunities for undocumented immigrant youth. As of 2019, 77,000 undocumented youth ages 16-24 lived in New York City, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute.

However, a fraction of undocumented youth will have access to a small DYCD program this summer. Last year, the city agency quietly offered stipends to 282 high schoolers who “face obstacles” in applying to SYEP. The program, called SYEP Pathways, provided up to 60 hours of a paid work readiness and project-based learning program for students attending a handful of schools that already offered CareerReady, which is a year-round program that helps students gain career readiness skills.

This year, officials are hoping to expand that program to 750 children. Community organizations directly recruit youth for this program.

Because of federal regulations that limit how much you can pay someone without work authorization, students who participated in this small pilot were paid $552. Officials did not immediately explain how students can sign up for this summer.

Children’s Aid was one organization that oversaw programming for 25 teens in last year’s pilot program. They developed projects, “listened to presentations from a variety of professions, went on educational trips, and presented what they learned at the end of the summer,” said Sandino Sanchez, director of workforce development programs at Children’s Aid, in a statement.

While advocates have praised DYCD for offering some sort of opportunity for undocumented young people, they’ve also raised concerns that the pay is inequitable compared with other youth participating in SYEP. But there might be other, private options for undocumented youth where they can receive more money.

For example, an organization called Oyate plans to pair 60 undocumented youth this summer with jobs at local college campuses, said Lymarie Francisco, a project manager at the organization who works with young people. Those youth will get $500 Visa gift cards each week.

Oyate received 312 applications for the program, prompting them to recently close the application, according to organization officials.

Eilen, a 15-year-old girl who participated in Oyate’s inaugural jobs program last year, said her job at Fordham University helped her become more disciplined about forming a daily routine. Additionally, the $500 gift cards allowed Eilen — who moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic two years ago — to help buy things around the house as her mother prepared to move them to a new home. She was also able to buy a new cell phone and pay for a gym membership.

“I didn’t have to ask my mom for anything,” she said in Spanish.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

I’m a trans student. Here’s what my chosen name means to me.

2023-03-31T12:00:00+00:00

When I was 11 and cut my hair short for the first time, a male friend saw me and said, “You look like a boy.” It felt validating, especially coming from a boy.

A few nights later, I sat cross-legged on the bed in my dark room, illuminated by my laptop screen. A quick Google search provided the further validation I was seeking: “Why do I feel like a boy if I’m a girl?”

I’m transgender. That’s what the word glowing on my laptop told me.

Deep down, I’ve always felt this way, but slight unease escalated to full-fledged dread as I went through puberty and entered middle school. Up until then, I had built my entire personality on what was expected of the girl I wasn’t — dresses, makeup, and boys — when I had no idea who I was.

Identifying with the word “transgender” helped me recognize that conforming to what other people wanted and expected meant suppressing the real me. For the first time I asked myself, “What do I want?” and, after struggling with my sexuality and gender identities for as long as I could remember, they fell into place with ease. Wearing boys’ clothing and my new, short haircut felt as second nature as breathing. When I looked in the mirror, I saw myself for the first time as the person I’d always been inside.

Unfortunately, as I began researching what it means to be trans, I came across hateful and ugly messages online, which made me afraid that I would be bullied or harassed at school if people found out. I didn’t have support or guidance at home, either. My deeply conservative parents refused then, as now, to accept that I’m trans. As painful as their denial is, it doesn’t change who I am. It does mean that I have to make my own path.

I came out to my friends and asked them to call me a more masculine version of my deadname, thinking it would make the transition easier for them. But this new name didn’t feel right — it didn’t feel like me. And it didn’t make my transition easier for my friends. After my name change, my friend group rejected me outright, saying that in their eyes I’d “always be a girl.”

During this time I started working on a novel, and named the main character “Spencer.” At first, he was everything I thought I could never be: tall, strong, masculine, and confident. But I realized that even if I wasn’t the tallest or the most masculine guy in the world, I could still go by Spencer because it made me happy.

My new name helped me gather the courage to start socially presenting as a boy. While I didn’t say it aloud to anyone yet, I changed my name on Discord and my social media profiles, and started dressing for the joy of feeling like myself, rather than to meet the expectations of others.

Almost two years later, I arrived on my first day of high school. Coming from a small middle school where everyone knew me as someone I wasn’t, I was eager for this fresh start in a new school with about 4,000 students. I was ready to let people see me for the first time, but I was also terrified of what they would think or say.

Getting ready to leave my house, I spent nearly an hour fussing in the mirror, stressing the question, do I pass as a boy? Wearing my tightest sports bras underneath the most masculine clothing I owned, I started the 30-minute walk to school.

In my global history class with Mr. Monte, I sat in the back, as far away from the teacher as possible. What-ifs swarmed in my head. What if he doesn’t call me ‘he’? Or won’t call me Spencer? What if someone makes fun of me? What if I get bullied?

Mr. Monte took attendance, and I winced when he called out the name I was assigned at birth, but I couldn’t find the courage to tell him my real name just yet. It wasn’t until later in the class that I shakily raised my hand.

I was ready to let people see me for the first time, but I was also terrified of what they would think or say.

He walked over to me with a warm, reassuring smile. “Is it OK if I have a nickname?” I asked.

And he responded, “What’s your nickname?”

“Spencer,” I said, and it felt real. For the first time, I was Spencer. I’d said it out loud, and I knew, finally, it was me. Then he asked, “What are your pronouns?” and I relaxed a little.

“He and him.”

He nodded, wrote it down, and then said, “I understand.” I suddenly felt less alone — there was someone who knew and accepted me.

It was an act of kindness that changed the trajectory of my high school life. Had he not offered me his understanding and respect, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to share my name with my other teachers, and I’d have been stuck living and presenting as someone I never was.

But not all of my teachers were as understanding as Mr. Monte. They’d call me Spencer, but still she — no matter how many times I told them my pronouns. That took a toll.

Worrying that I’d be misgendered by my teachers made it hard for me to want to raise my hand. The hardest part was not knowing whether they were even trying, whether they were making genuine mistakes or were deliberately dismissing me.

A 2014 study in the journal “Self and Identity” showed that participants expressed feelings of low self-esteem surrounding their appearance and identity when they were frequently misgendered. Similarly, being misgendered made it harder for me to look in the mirror and see Spencer, and to be sure of myself. I wondered, What’s the point of being out of the closet if most people don’t see me as him?

Because I’m a minor and my parents don’t support my transition, I haven’t received a gender dysphoria diagnosis, and I’ve been unable to start medically transitioning, or even use puberty blockers.

The school doesn’t have a clear policy for someone like me when it comes to bathrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, etc. I live in a gray area, among other trans people who aren’t able to transition yet. To put it bluntly, it sucks.

During one of my uglier experiences at school, a student in my gym class called me a homophobic slur. Another time, after sharing my pronouns, a sophomore boy snidely asked about my genitalia. Harassment like this has become a common part of my high school experience.

I don’t know how I would have dealt with these negative emotions and the bitterness they created in me without the support system that I started building at school.

I formed a group of friends who call me “he” without issue. We all got to know each other through Drama Club, which seemed to attract a lot of other LGBTQ students. When we’re together, I don’t have to hold my breath whenever they’re about to refer to me in the third person.

My Drama Club adviser and algebra teacher, Mr. Lasher, struggled with my pronouns sometimes, which stung and made me wonder if I was doing something wrong. Should I not talk because my voice is an octave higher than it should be? But I knew he didn’t mean it. What was most important to me was that he tried.

“I get it,” I told him one day, “It takes time. Even I misgender myself sometimes.”

“I know,” he said, “And I know it hurts you more, but it hurts me, too. To be messing up this much.” I almost cried as the father-like compassion of his words struck me. It was the first time since coming out that I felt something like parental support.

When I shared with him that, “everyone is still calling me she,” referring to my other teachers, Mr. Lasher reached out to my guidance counselor, and she sent a gentle email to all of my teachers reminding them that my pronouns are he, him, and his. From then on, he became the trusted adult in my life.

Eventually, I want to be a teacher, too, so that I can give other kids the support that Mr. Lasher and my counselor have given me.

Now, as a sophomore, I’ve learned to take a deep breath when I’m misgendered, to count to 10, and remind myself that I’m still Spencer. I’m proud of how far I’ve come.

My friends elected me president of the Drama Club, and I do my best to maintain it as a safe space for them, just as they made it a safe space for me where I can be myself. When I’m surrounded by their smiling faces and laughter, I know who I really am. I’m Spencer, defined by my personality and actions.

I used to be scared of being myself. I wouldn’t even use my chosen name for something silly like my Starbucks order. Back then, Spencer represented a version of me that I thought could only exist in fiction. Now, it’s a symbol for choosing myself in real life. Telling people my name reminds me that I’m writing my own story.

Spencer Katz is a sophomore at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. He began writing at a young age and aspires to be everyone’s worst nightmare: an English teacher. He hopes to inspire other queer youth to be their authentic selves and never shut up.

A version of this piece was originally published on Youth Communication.

The books we ban are the books we need

2023-03-30T11:00:00+00:00

It was my older brother who turned me on to books.

His enthusiasm for “Huckleberry Finn” came first. Then it was “The Swiss Family Robinson,” “The Outsiders,” “A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “1984,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Great Gatsby.”

When he burst into my bedroom one evening, madly waving his copy of “The Catcher in the Rye,” I finished it in one night, riveted by a voice that channeled my 13-year-old brain. Finally, I thought, an author had given us something real, a character who validated my growing despair. It was 1968; Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had just been murdered, and I stood at the edge of adolescence. I felt understood.

My love of books eventually inspired me to a 33-year career in public education, first as a high school teacher and later as a professor and academic dean at a public college. Now, as I watch states and school districts sanction the removal of essential books from school libraries, I see young people being robbed of their own heroes and anti-heroes, or kept from a frank look at our history in the interest of whitewashing truths. The effect on education is only one casualty; the effect on personhood is the real loss.

This loss was brought into sharp focus for me as I read the words of George M. Johnson, author of a recently banned book, “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”

It stirred a painful memory from 1964. My brother and I, home alone during summer vacation, sat reading. I noticed him paging through the Life magazine he’d just pulled from the mailbox when, suddenly, he stopped short, pulling the magazine closer. I strained to see over the top, intrigued by what might be so compelling. I caught a glimpse of a few men standing in the shadows of a darkened room, a mural behind them their mirror image.

When I asked, “Whatcha reading?” he became unusually defensive. In moments, he dashed away — the magazine stashed under his arm — ran into his room and locked the door. His hasty retreat was confusing and hurtful. He almost never shut me out.

One day, I sneaked into his room hoping to get a look at whatever had upset him. I checked his bottom drawer where he kept his treasures. There, stuffed under his crayons and comics, his Communion catechism, his silver dollars, and his six-foot Teabury gum chain, I found it: the June 26 issue of Life. I paged to the article with the scary-looking men in the picture. Then I read, “These brawny young men in their leather caps, shirts, jackets and pants are practicing homosexuals … part of what they call the ‘gay world’. . . a sad and often sordid world.” I didn’t know what some of the words meant, but I knew “sad” and “sordid.”

Whenever I recall that episode, I imagine the devastating effects that language must have had on this boy I loved with my whole heart, a boy growing up gay in a small upstate New York town in the 1960s. The memory evokes the pain the hateful words must have caused him, this beautiful boy whose gayness was as much a part of his DNA as were his green eyes and thick dark hair. I remember his loneliness, his unrelenting feelings of otherness, the way others bullied and berated him. And I cannot not help but think, if only he had read these words, by George M. Johnson, instead:

“As a child, I always knew I was different,” Johnson wrote in “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” “I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I now know it was okay to be that different kid. That being different didn’t mean something was wrong with me but that something was wrong with my cultural environment, which forced me to live my life as something I wasn’t … I learned that kids who saw me as different didn’t have an issue until society taught them to see my differences as a threat.”

“The Bluest Eye,” “The Hate U Give,” “Beloved,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Flamer,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” are all among the 30 most banned books in America last school year. Number two on that list: “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”

Jennifer Boulanger is a writer living in upstate New York, who recently retired from a 33-year career in public education. Her memoir, “Unending Duet: A Sister’s Memoir of a Brother Lost to AIDS,” is forthcoming.

Senators advance bill targeting student pronoun changes in Indiana schools

2023-03-23T13:55:05+00:00

This article originally published in the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Indiana senators made multiple amendments on the fly Wednesday to a controversial “parental rights” bill that seeks to restrict pronoun usage of transgender children and instruction about “human sexuality” in schools.

Critics of the bill argue that it’s part of a nationwide wave of legislation “singling out LGBT people and their families.” Supporters say parents have the “right” and “responsibility” to control what their children learn — and are called — when at school.

House Bill 1608 would require schools to inform parents if a student requests to change their name or pronouns for any reason — including to a nickname — and block adherence to the student’s request without a parent’s explicit consent.

It would also prohibit instruction on “human sexuality” for students in pre-K through 3rd grade. Sexual education typically does not start until the fourth or sixth grades under existing state standards, however.

The proposal is reminiscent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that has been described by some as one of the most “hateful” pieces of legislation in the country.

The measure advanced 9-4 Wednesday from the Senate Education Committee after three hours of debate — much of which included passionate testimony in opposition of the bill. Loud chants, cheers and booing echoed outside of the Senate chamber and through the Statehouse hallways amid the discourse.

“If you pass this bill … expect the youth homeless population to rise, expect the teen suicide rate to rise, expect the incidence of violence against LGBTQ+ people to rise,” said Quinn Mackenzie, a nonbinary Hoosier who spoke before the committee. “There are those who want you to believe that this bill protects children. As a parent with genuine religious conviction, I understand that — I want the best for my children, too and I want to protect them. But trans and queerness is not something that children need to be protected from.”

Notifying parents about nicknames

An amendment filed by bill sponsor Sen. Stacey Donato, R-Logansport, stipulates that teachers have to seek consent from a parent — not just notify them — to call a student by a different name.

Multiple other spontaneous amendments to that amendment followed, too. Democrats on the Senate committee asked to hold off on the changes and a vote on the underlying bill because of the confusion, but were turned down.

Although the latest version of the bill would apply to all Hoosier K-12 schools, private schools are exempted from the language restricting “human sexuality.”

Provisions about requested name changes require teachers to obtain parental consent within five business days, regardless of whether the name matches a student’s assigned-sex, according to the bill.

Although not specified in the bill, that teacher-parent communication could come in the form of a phone call, text message, email, or physical letter, according to Republican state lawmakers.

“A school should tell parents about any student requests to change their names, pronouns or etcetera, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the gender transition,” Donato said, nothing that if a student wanted to change their name from Stacy to Susan, for example, the school would need to notify parents and get consent to go ahead with the request.

“It’s easier for schools to administer, because they won’t have to decide if a name change is masculine or feminine. If a student wants to change the name, you just tell the parents, period,” Donato continued. “Secondly, with this language … I believe that if a previous transgender student asks their school to change their name back to something that matches their sex at birth, parents would want to know about that, as well.”

Another provision additionally prevents schools from disciplining teachers that still use a child’s old name or pronouns — even with parental permission to use the new, preferred versions — if the employee or staff member does so out of a “religious conviction.”

Bill author Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, maintained that her proposal intends to “empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children.”

“I believe that parents know their children best, and their authority should not be superseded by teachers and or school administrators,” she said.

“By allowing our schools to instruct our young elementary students in human sexuality, and allowing students to decide on different identities without their parents’ knowledge and consent, creates an unacceptable intrusion into the parent-child relationship and would be inconsistent with our traditional presumption of parental competence and good intention,” Davis continued. “Engaging in any type of sexual relationship discussions in schools — especially for pre-K through third graders — is inappropriate.

Opposition mounts against ‘anti-trans’ legislation

State lawmakers have directed intense legislative focus toward transgender Hoosiers this session — much of which has centered on school-age children.

Melanie Davis, a transgender mom from Bloomington, said language in this bill and others reflects old, “harmful” stereotypes about transgender people. She emphasized that House Bill 1608 is dangerous to LGBTQ children and protects “abusive” school faculty who refuse to use preferred pronouns.

“We have moved on. We have grown up as a nation. … These kids are living in a world where they can actually be themselves for the first time in our history as a nation,” Davis said. “Now, you’re invalidating — you’re stripping this away from their future.”

Katie Blair with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana, added that “vague language” in the bill “could create serious, unforeseen consequences for schools, teachers and families.”

She said the bill, if passed, would make “age appropriate and clearly school appropriate conversations” illegal in Indiana classrooms.

“LGBTQ teachers could find themselves in violation of the law simply for acknowledging that they are married within the context of the school. Teachers who happen to be transgender could lose jobs just for existing. Children of same sex couples should be allowed to bring their dads or their moms on school trips and visits just like any other child,” Blair said. “But it’s easy to see that this bill would significantly chill a school’s ability to be welcoming for those kids. “We need to stop forcing teachers to be gender police and from making personal, subjective judgments about whether or not a student may be showing signs that they are transgender and to report on them.”

Donato said the amended bill does not stop schools from providing “age appropriate instruction on sexual abuse.”

Rep. Davis declined to give specific examples but claimed that parents in her district have reported “human sexuality” instruction in their young children’s schools.

Still, the definition of “human sexuality” remains vague. Davis describes it as “just the way people experience and express themselves sexually,” but conceded that “everything is open to interpretation.”

She said an amendment to the bill to clarify what teachers can and can not talk about is “definitely something” lawmakers should consider on the Senate floor, “that way, teachers know exactly what they can and cannot do in the classroom.”

The bill is likely to be up for discussion in the full chamber next week.

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

Tennessee bill would widen who can complain about teaching of banned concepts

2023-03-17T21:17:43+00:00

Few complaints have been filed — and no penalties levied — since 2021 when Tennessee enacted a controversial law that seeks to regulate discussions on race and gender in K-12 classrooms.

But that could change under new GOP legislation that state lawmakers are scheduled to take up next week.

The bill, filed by Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would allow any resident within a public school zone to file a complaint under Tennessee’s so-called prohibited concepts law, which restricts teachers from discussing 14 concepts that the legislature has deemed divisive.

Currently, only students, parents, or employees within a district or charter school can file complaints involving their school, which can lead to disciplinary action. If the state determines that educators have violated the law, teachers can even be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.

The proposed change, which observers have dubbed “Prohibited Concepts 2.0,” could open the door to conservative groups like Moms for Liberty to flood their local school boards with complaints about instruction, books, or materials they believe violate the law, even if they do not have direct contact with the teacher or school in question. The organization, with chapters in seven Tennessee counties, has channeled the frustrations of conservative mothers to target issues like mask mandates and curricula that touch on LGBTQ rights, race, and discrimination.

Ragan says investigations should weed out unfounded claims and that he’s more concerned about “taxation without representation.”

“These people are taxpayers who are footing the bill for schools,” he said, “so they should have the right to file a complaint.”

However, the law’s detractors say the change would make a dangerous policy even more dangerous.

“This will place an even greater burden on district personnel to have to chase down complaints,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, state director for the Education Trust in Tennessee. “And it’s going to have another chilling effect on what teachers can teach and how they teach it.”

The legislation is the latest effort by Tennessee conservatives to tamp down on classroom discussions that veer into ideas like systemic racism, sexism, and gender identity, even as the law has generated few formal complaints thus far.

Critics say it’s another attempt to weaponize public education in the current political climate by using charged words such as “indoctrination” to stoke parents’ fears and inflame disagreements about which classroom discussions are appropriate and which ones cross the line.

Few appeals filed, no penalties levied so far

Tennessee was among the first states to enact a prohibited concepts law amid national fury from conservatives about critical race theory, an academic framework that’s sometimes studied in higher education to examine how policies and laws may perpetuate systemic racism.

After reviewing more than 900 public comments about the new law, the state education department developed enforcement rules for everything from how to file and investigate a complaint to how to appeal a decision and what penalties that teachers and districts could face if found in violation of the law. Those rules also set who is eligible to file a complaint.

Since the rules went into effect in late 2021, the department has received two appeals of local decisions, according to spokesman Brian Blackley.

One was filed by a Blount County parent over the book “Dragonwings,” a novel told from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant boy in the early 20th century. The state denied the appeal based on the results of its investigation, Blackley said.

The second was from the parent of a student enrolled in a private school in Davidson County. Because the law does not apply to private schools, the department found that the parent did not have standing to file an appeal under the law.

The department also declined to investigate a complaint from Williamson County, south of Nashville, filed soon after the law was enacted. Robin Steenman, chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, alleged the literacy curriculum “Wit and Wisdom,” used by Williamson County Schools in 2020-21, has a “heavily biased agenda” that makes children “hate their country, each other and/or themselves.”

Blackley said the department was only authorized to investigate claims beginning with the 2021-22 school year and encouraged Steenman to work with Williamson County Schools to resolve her concerns.

State rules were set after lengthy public comment process

Steenman was also among hundreds of Tennesseans who wrote the department in 2021 about its pending rules. She asked the state to widen eligibility to file a complaint under the new law.

“Under this rule, our current complaint gets tossed out again (because) I’m not a parent of a currently enrolled student,” she wrote. “Never mind that I am speaking on behalf of hundreds of parents of currently enrolled students! And what about grandparents? How many grandparents are in this group in the defense of their grandchildren?”

Others urged the state to limit eligibility to those who interact directly with the educators they might complain about — criteria that the department went with in its enforcement rules.

But Ragan, the House bill’s sponsor, contends the department missed the mark on complaint eligibility.

“I wrote the original bill. I established the legislative intent. They ignored it,” he told Chalkbeat. “This newest bill would carry out what I originally intended.”

To address concerns of unfounded complaints, the bill says a resident who files a complaint must have “actual or constructive knowledge of the violation.”

Asked whether he’s concerned that time-consuming investigations could distract district personnel from their core duties, Ragan was unapologetic.

“Our system of government is not constrained by how long it takes or how tough it is on employees to do their job,” he said. “That’s what we hire them for.”

His legislation also would require districts and the state to publish on their websites the outcomes of their investigations, as well as “the department’s rationale for upholding or overturning” an appeal.

A chilling effect

The bigger goal, Ragan says, is to encourage teachers and school leaders to review and adjust their instructional practices before a complaint is filed.

While he has called for “facts-based teaching based on the state’s academic standards,” The Education Trust views Ragan’s bigger goal as essentially censorship.

“As a former history teacher, I can say that this law has teachers thinking very carefully about a whole list of topics in their classroom going forward,” said Pupo-Walker. “Portraying slavery in a neutral fashion or the Holocaust in a neutral fashion seems completely absurd, but that is the expectation of lawmakers who support this kind of legislation.”

For instance, after investigating the parent’s complaint in Blount County, the Knoxville-area district announced last August that excerpts from the novel “Dragonwings” would be optional for sixth grade teachers to include in instruction this school year.

In Williamson County, where local complaints about “Wit & Wisdom” led to a months-long review of English language arts curriculum in the its elementary schools, the district removed one fourth grade book, the Newbery Award-winning “Walk Two Moons,” and made “instructional adjustments” to seven other texts.

“Ultimately, this process is tearing at the fabric of connections between schools and communities and their families. It implies that you can’t trust teachers with your children,” said Pupo-Walker.

“Parents know implicitly that’s just not the case with the teachers in their children’s schools,” she added. “But this onslaught of bills is undermining people’s confidence in the intention and the integrity of our educators. It’s destructive.”

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

NYC to match LGBTQ+ youth with ‘supportive’ summer jobs, officials say

2023-03-01T23:06:43+00:00

As some states pass anti-LGBTQ+ laws, New York City is moving in the other direction with plans to offer “safe and affirming” jobs to LGTBQ youth through its sprawling summer employment program.

The effort will be part of the city’s now 60-year-old Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP, which last year provided about 100,000 paid jobs and career exploration opportunities to young people, ages 14-24.

Mayor Eric Adams has shown special interest in the summer jobs program — with hopes that it would help reduce gun violence among young people — and expanded it last year by adding 25,000 more slots. As part of his annual State of the City address in January, the mayor’s office noted plans to create “supportive work opportunities” for LGBTQ+ youth.

Details are so far scarce on what the initiative — dubbed “SYEP Pride” — will look like, or what will define a safe and affirming workplace. Officials are hoping to reach “a few hundred young people,” but the ultimate program will depend on how many LGBTQ+ youth apply through March 31, when the SYEP application period closes, said Mark Zustovich, a spokesperson for the Department of Youth and Community Development, or DYCD, which oversees SYEP.

“SYEP Pride will connect young people who identify as LGBTQ+ with supportive, safe and affirming work and career exploration experiences,” Valerie Mulligan, deputy commissioner for Workforce Connect at DYCD, said during a recent City Council hearing focused on youth services. “The program will also allow employer partners to offer unique employment and learning opportunities that will support and empower LGBTQ+ youth through the SYEP program.”

City officials did not immediately say why they’ve decided to launch this program now. But it comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights have taken center stage nationally, as conservative states have proposed anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including banning discussion of sexuality and gender identity in classrooms.

Discrimination in the workplace has long been an issue for this community, including youth. Just over one-third of young people reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace, with higher rates among transgender and nonbinary youth, according to a 2020 survey of 40,000 LGBTQ+ youth, ages 13-24, conducted by The Trevor Project, an organization that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ young people.

More than 80% of youth who reported discrimination said it came from co-workers, while half said it came from supervisors. Youth who said their employer was LGBTQ+-affirming also reported slightly lower rates of attempting suicide compared with those who didn’t feel their workplaces were welcoming.

“Further, our data indicate an urgent need for companies to develop diverse and inclusive hiring strategies as well as to create workplaces that are affirming and supportive of LGBTQ+ youth, particularly those who are transgender and nonbinary and/or youth of color,” the Trevor Project survey brief noted. “Doing so will not only require companies to train all staff on diversity and inclusion but also to create a culture in which diverse identities are appreciated and celebrated.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana lawmakers advance bill banning education on ‘human sexuality’ through the third grade

2023-02-20T23:36:58+00:00

This article originally published in the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

More than four hours of “We say gay!” chants echoed through the Indiana Statehouse Monday as hundreds rallied against a bill that would prohibit Hoosier educators from talking about “human sexuality” through 3rd grade.

The latest draft of the proposal also targets transgender students by prohibiting school employees from using a name or pronoun that is inconsistent with a student’s sex without a parent’s written consent.

Schools would additionally be required to notify parents if a student requests to change their name or pronouns.

The bill advanced along party lines 9-4 to the full House. The chamber must approve the bill and send it to the Senate by Feb. 27, or it dies.

Lawmakers on the House Education Committee met Monday to debate House Bill 1608, authored by Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Greenwood. The proposal is reminiscent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that has been described by some as one of the most “hateful” pieces of legislation in the country.

“The goal of House Bill 1608 is to empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children,” Davis said, noting that the bill is a response to “numerous concerns of parents in her district.

“Parents know what’s best for their children, and their authority should not be superseded by teachers and school administrators,” she continued.

Earlier language in Davis’ bill banned K-3 classroom instruction or discussion about sexual orientation, gender fluidity, gender roles, gender identity, gender expression and gender stereotypes.

The committee nixed that list of topics and instead changed the bill’s language to bar younger kids from being taught about “human sexuality.”

Davis said that encompasses “the way people experience and express themselves sexually.” She noted that the change intends to prevent sex education from being taught to younger Hoosier students.

Davis conceded that Indiana schools do not currently teach sex education to students that young. The introduction of those concepts usually starts in the fourth grade, according to state standards.

Bill targets pronouns

Education advocates argued Monday that the bill, as amended, is an “attack” on LGBTQ Hoosier youth — especially transgender students.

A provision to the legislation prohibits schools and teachers from using “a name, pronoun, title, or other word to identify a student that is inconsistent with the student’s sex” assigned at birth unless a parent requests the change in writing.

The bill advanced along party lines 9-4 to the full House. The chamber must approve the bill and send it to the Senate by Feb. 27, or it dies.

Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, said that the pronoun language, specifically, “makes the bill far less palatable.”

Still, Republicans on the committee maintained that the bill would not apply to curriculum for academic standards or prevent students from having private, one-on-one conversations with a school counselor, social worker or therapist.

But the bill isn’t so cut and dry.

Language in the bill reads that “a school, an employee or staff member of a school, or a third party vendor used by a school to provide instruction” can not provide any instruction on “human sexuality.”

Additional amendments adopted to the bill on Monday clarify that teachers — if asked — are allowed to answer students’ questions about “human sexuality” and other topics. It’s not exactly clear what educators are or are not allowed to say, however.

“(A teacher can respond) any way that is the correct answer … You can have two moms, you can have two dads, you can have a mom and a dad. The rest of the discussion should be with the parents,” Davis said, when asked what a teacher would be able to say to a first grader who asks why a peer has two moms.

Private schools were also carved out of the latest draft of the bill.

Majority of testimony in opposition

Only a handful of people testified Monday in support of the bill.

That included Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, who said K-3 teachers should be focused on improving dismal math and literacy scores, not “unnecessary controversies.”

“Parents are free to talk to children about these issues. But when the teacher, counselor or guest speaker does it, all that will do is cause heartache for school administrators and the school board, at some point,” Clark said.

Damon Clevenger, a music teacher in Lawrence Township in Indianapolis, said, “As a young LGBTQ+ child, I was constantly a target for bullies and close-minded people who would rather isolate me than accept me for who I am. I honestly don’t believe I wouldn’t be standing here today if it had not been for my teachers who saw me accepted me, and the proud, out educators who let me know that I was not alone in this world. This bill would take that away from our children today.”

He also promised that students will always have a safe space in his classroom.

Jennifer Laughlin of the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) said current state law already protects students of all ages from “obscene materials” — which is what some of the bill’s supporters say they want erased from classrooms.

“This bill is about scoring political points, rather than addressing the real issue,” she said. “Regardless of this bill’s merit, it’s based on a bad faith argument from the start. This bill brings to light issues that are a part of a national trend designed to sow doubt and further a false narrative of our great public schools.”

Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, held that state lawmakers should not “create a universal standard” that imposes Christian values and beliefs on all Hoosiers.

“The bottom line is that we’re here in education and in government to serve people … and to get so upset about pronouns … that we lose the educational focus — we’re here to educate children, not to sanctify them,” Smith said. “We need to make schools inviting … we’re creating a problem that we don’t need to create.”

Paula Davis, mom of three school-age children, an educator, and a chapter president of Moms for Liberty, disagreed.

“This is not about whether or not I agree with homosexual lifestyle. This is about my right as a parent to guarantee my children are not being told the morals and values of their parents are wrong.”

She added that the bill “is guaranteeing that my children do not have an educator introduce them to a topic that I do not believe should be discussed outside of my presence. It is creating a neutral space so children are not forced to participate in something that is so divisive, especially when they may not feel like they have a voice or the power to challenge the teacher.”

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

Indiana lawmakers to discuss bill similar to Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law Monday

2023-02-16T22:35:29+00:00

Indiana House lawmakers are scheduled to hold their first discussion Monday of a bill that closely resembles a Florida law banning the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in early grades.

The House Committee on Education will take up House Bill 1608 Monday at 8 a.m., per an agenda posted online.

The two-page bill is one of several proposals from legislators this session that address how schools must handle controversial social issues involving race and sex. It prohibits school staff and contractors from teaching lessons that “study, explore, or inform students” about topics like gender roles, stereotypes, and identity, as well as sexual orientation, in kindergarten through third grade.

It’s similar to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education statute that gained national attention last year as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Author Rep. Michelle Davis, a Whiteland Republican, previously described her bill in a statement as common-sense legislation.

“The goal of this bill is to empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children,” Davis’ statement said.

The education committee usually meets on Wednesdays, but lawmakers are facing a crunch to hear bills in committee before reading deadlines during the last week of February.

Rep. Bob Behning, the GOP chairman of the education committee, did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the bill, or whether his committee will meet again on Wednesday.

The ACLU of Indiana has called for a rally at the statehouse Monday morning to oppose the bill.

“This bill sends a dangerous message to these already vulnerable youth that they are a threat to public discourse,” the organization said in a Thursday post.

With deadlines to move legislation looming, Senate lawmakers this week also scheduled a discussion for this week about a bill that would ban certain topics on race and racism from the classroom.

But the bill was unexpectedly pulled from Wednesday’s committee agenda shortly after a rally by groups who oppose such legislation.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Overworked, underpaid, under attack: Survey shows Colorado teacher challenges

2023-01-25T00:30:16+00:00

Colorado educators feel overworked, underpaid, and under attack, and they think students’ education is suffering as a result.

Those were the findings of the Colorado Education Association’s most recent survey, completed in late 2022 by more than 1,600 of the union’s 39,000 members and released Tuesday.

According to the survey, 85% of educators say the shortage of classroom teachers in their school is worse than in previous years and 90% say the shortage of support staff is worse.

Two-thirds of educators worry about a mass shooting at their school. Just 34% feel that elected officials respect them.

Sixty percent of educators said they’re thinking about leaving the profession in the near future, with 21% saying they could be driven out by politically motivated attacks on curriculum and teaching.

That’s actually an improvement from last year, when two-thirds of respondents said they were thinking about leaving the profession soon, but a CEA spokesperson said the union doesn’t know if morale has improved or if some of those thinking about leaving last year have already left and didn’t respond to the survey.

“We obviously didn’t see 67% of our educators leave the profession [last year], but it is a warning sign that people are feeling defeated and deflated and burdened,” CEA President Amie Baca-Oehlert said.

Burnout and high turnover lead to higher workloads for the staff who remain, which lead to more burnout and turnover, local union officials said on a press call about the survey results. It also means teachers can’t teach at the level they’d like to or work together to improve instruction.

David Lockley, president of the union in Adams 12 Five Star Schools, said dozens of vacancies in special education mean 30% higher caseloads for special education teachers. And when instructional coaches have to fill in on special education, they aren’t available to help newer teachers refine their craft.

One survey respondent told CEA, “We don’t have enough aides to support our special needs behavior students. We often lose support staff in the middle of the year. Subs do not fill most of the time. … We have had to cancel every team planning day for the last year and a half because of lack of subs.”

For the first time, the union asked LGBTQ educators how safe and supported they feel at work. The results were alarming but not surprising, union officials said.

The vast majority — 85% — said they did not feel safe being out at school, and 80% said there was not a gender-inclusive bathroom in their building. Forty percent said they had witnessed students being discriminated against due to their gender identity or sexuality, and 45% said that equity work at their school didn’t include LGBTQ perspectives.

Kasey Ellis, president of the Cherry Creek teachers union, said LGBTQ teachers have received derogatory notes and comments. When parents call for books with LGBTQ characters or themes to be removed from school libraries, as has happened in Cherry Creek, it also makes educators feel unsafe and unwelcome.

When educators aren’t out, that also affects students, the teachers said. Last year’s Healthy Kids Colorado survey found that fewer than half of LGBTQ students felt safe at school.

“If an educator is not accepted, what does that mean for me as a student?” Ellis said.

Lockley said many districts have anti-discrimination policies in place, but administrators often aren’t trained in how to support LGBTQ staff or navigate conflicts. The message ends up being that it’s better to stay in the closet, he said.

Baca-Oehlert said political rhetoric that casts teachers as “groomers” who indoctrinate students has made the situation worse. She said there is work to do at the state and local level to build more welcoming communities.

“That’s something we’ve really seen wear on our educators, that they aren’t trusted to teach in an age-appropriate way and teach appropriate content,” she said. “We need to work harder against those attacks that teachers are indoctrinating our children.”

The teachers union’s annual survey represents a snapshot of the concerns and hopes of educators around the state. Colorado Education Association also uses the results to support its legislative agenda. This year that includes more school funding — always a priority for CEA — plus affordable housing, gun safety regulations, youth mental health and more.

The survey found that while educators are worried about violence at school, a large majority said arming teachers would not make them feel safer. A fifth of teachers supported policies to beef up physical security, such as adding metal detectors and better locks, while 39% said their top priority for enhancing school safety was better mental health support.

Baca-Oehlert said it’s important for school districts to hire more professional counselors rather than ask teachers to do more. They said the state needs to fund those efforts along with bolstering community mental health resources.

Gov. Jared Polis has proposed a new Office of School Safety. Baca-Oehlert said CEA hopes those efforts don’t lead to more students being ticketed and arrested, and don’t focus on “hardening” schools without attention to student well-being.

Baca-Oehlert said there is also more the state could be doing to address the teacher shortage. They’re backing legislation to increase stipends for student teachers and make it easier for teachers from other states to get Colorado teaching licenses. They’re also backing affordable housing policies that would make it easier for teachers to live in the communities where they work.

Increased school funding in recent years has helped fund raises in many school districts, but they haven’t kept pace with the rising price of housing. And Colorado teachers pay a big penalty for going into education, earning almost 36% less than other workers with college degrees, the widest such gap in the nation.

Baca-Oehlert said she would like to see more political will to find new revenue and increase school funding dramatically.

“What we’ve been doing for many years is putting Band-Aids on a gushing wound,” she said. “We would love to see [lawmakers] get behind a systemic fix.”

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills would ban teaching of gender identity, sexual orientation

2023-01-20T16:47:43+00:00

This story has been updated to include a bill filed in the Indiana Senate and a statement from Rep. Michelle Davis.

Bills to ban the teaching of gender identity, gender roles, and sexual orientation in schools have been filed by GOP lawmakers in the Indiana legislature.

House Bill 1608, introduced by Rep. Michelle Davis, would prohibit all Indiana schools and their third-party vendors from providing any instruction in kindergarten through third grades with the intent to “study, explore, or inform” students about six topics: gender fluidity, gender roles, gender stereotypes, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

Another bill, filed in the Senate by Sen. Gary Byrne, would go a step further and ban the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in all K-12 grades. Senate Bill 413 would also require schools to disclose to parents if their student is permitted to use a bathroom not designated for their biological sex.

Such bills have been anticipated since Rep. Bob Behning, chair of the House Education Committee, said in December that Indiana might follow the lead of Florida, which last year enacted similar legislation called the Parental Rights in Education Act that’s frequently referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Separate legislation introduced by another Republican legislator, Rep. Jake Teshka, would prohibit schools from encouraging the use of a pronoun, name, or nickname to identify a student or school employee that’s “inconsistent with the … individual’s sex.”

These and other bills indicate that Indiana lawmakers might continue or even expand on efforts from last year to control how teachers and schools address controversial cultural and social issues. Davis was the architect of last year’s state ban on transgender girls playing in girls’ youth sports; she called it a means of maintaining fair competition in female sports. A lawsuit challenging that ban was recently dismissed.

In 2022, amid a surge in Republican efforts nationwide to regulate teaching materials and classroom discussions, Indiana lawmakers debated but ultimately failed to pass a bill that aimed to restrict how teachers talk about race and racism with students.

The Indiana General Assembly is also considering several other bills focused on minors’ gender identity, including one that would require school employees to report if a student requests to change their name, pronouns, or attire. Davis has also introduced one of the bills this year that seeks to ban medical professionals from providing gender transitioning or puberty-blocking procedures to minors.

The bill from Davis that’s similar to the “Don’t Say Gay” law appears to be missing some components of the Florida statute, including the option for parents to sue a school district for violating the law. But Byrne’s bill in the Senate, which also covers parental consent for giving students certain health surveys, does create a pathway to filing a lawsuit.

Davis called her bill “commonsense legislation to support parents’ fundamental rights” in a statement.

“The goal of this bill is to empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children,” Davis said in a statement.

It’s not clear whether such proposals will receive support from the broader Indiana Republican caucus. So far this year, GOP lawmakers have focused on expanding school choice and a voucher-like proposal about job training in high schools.

Teshka’s bill would ban schools from encouraging the use of names or pronouns that are inconsistent with an individual’s sex, but it does include an exception if a student’s parent makes the request in writing with documentation from the student’s health care provider.

The ACLU of Indiana has referred to the bills as a “slate of hate.”

“A number of these bills represent a coordinated, hate-driven campaign to push trans people out of public life,” Katie Blair, ACLU of Indiana Advocacy and Public Policy Director, said in a statement. “LGBTQ people belong everywhere, including in our state and we will not stand for these attack bills.”

The bill from Davis banning the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in early grades, as well as Teshka’s bill, have been referred to the House Committee on Education, which doesn’t yet have its next meeting scheduled. Both bills were posted online the week after the Jan. 12 filing deadline for House bills.

Byrne’s bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana bill would require teachers and schools to report student requests to change names, pronouns

2023-01-13T22:19:07+00:00

Gender identity and transitioning are the focus of a number of bills filed by Indiana lawmakers in the 2023 session, including one that would require teachers and schools to disclose if students request to change their names or pronouns.

The focus on transgender youth this year builds on similar themes from the 2022 session, when lawmakers passed a controversial bill to ban transgender girls from girls’ sports. At the same time, lawmakers appear to be steering clear of bills on other controversial social issues in schools that have sparked previous disputes in Indiana and elsewhere.

The proposed legislation is causing alarm in some camps, including the ACLU of Indiana, which has called for action to stop the “record number of anti-LGBTQ bills” in the Indiana legislature, referring to them as a “slate of hate.”

Senate Bill 354, authored by Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz, chair of the Senate Education and Development Committee, primarily deals with school accreditation. But Raatz’s bill would also require teachers and school employees to report to the school if a student indicates that they would like to change their “name, attire, pronoun, title, or word to identify the student in a manner that is inconsistent with the student’s biological sex at birth.”

They would also have to report if a student expresses having “conflicted feelings about … or difficulty handling” their gender identity or gender expression. The school would then be required to disclose this information to the student’s parents within five days.

GOP Rep. Michelle Davis, who authored the legislation banning transgender girls from girls’ sports last year, has introduced a bill this year that would prohibit medical professionals from providing gender transitioning or puberty blocking procedures to minors.

Another bill, authored by Republican Rep. Ryan Lauer and co-authored by Davis, specifies that a child could not be removed from their parents’ custody if the parent declines procedures or therapies that “affirm the child’s perception of the child’s gender or sex if the child’s perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.”

At least one prominent lawmaker pushed in the opposite direction. A bill by Senate Minority Caucus Chair J.D. Ford, a Democrat, would extend anti-discrimination protections at schools to students based on their gender identity and sexuality.

Ford’s legislation, Senate Bill 39, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to state law prohibiting discrimination in public schools, which currently includes disability, race, color, gender, national origin, religion, and ancestry.

The bill would prohibit segregation based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and ban schools from denying students admission on that basis. It would also prohibit discrimination in hiring teachers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Aside from the early focus on transitioning and gender identity, the General Assembly seems to lack the appetite to tackle other bills about controversial social issues bills that marked the 2022 session, including another attempt to ban certain topics on race and racism from classrooms.

And despite earlier reports, lawmakers don’t appear interested in debating legislation similar to a Florida bill — commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year — that restricts discussions of sexual orientation in early grades.

The House’s deadline for filing bills was Thursday, while the Senate’s deadline was Friday afternoon.

The bills from Raatz and Ford have been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development, which meets for the first time on Tuesday. Neither bill is currently on the agenda for that day.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Sen. J.D. Ford's title.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Book challenges may have ‘chilling effects’ on new LGBTQ books in school libraries, study finds

2023-01-11T11:00:00+00:00

In the months since Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, spoke at a public meeting against restricting access to LGBTQ books in local libraries, she said she’s faced a barrage of online harassment.

Jones said she’s worked in her district for more than two decades, but never seen this level of backlash before.

“I know some librarians who are afraid to order those titles — titles that their students want and that are age relevant — because they don’t want to be targeted,” she said. “When people want to relocate LGBTQ books to a completely different section, it’s like telling the students, ‘You don’t belong with the rest of the kids.’ That’s horrible.”

Recent years have seen schools and libraries centered in a widespread conservative effort against antiracism and LGBTQ inclusion in schools. And as Jones and other librarians are sounding the alarm over the potential fallout from the shift, a new study finds evidence that the rise of book challenges in local districts may have a “chilling effect” on future library acquisitions.

“Over the past school year, we saw this skyrocketing, record-setting number of book challenges,” said Kirsten Slungaard Mumma, a researcher at Boston University and the author of the study. “It’s become a key political issue with some very real political consequences.”

Schools in districts that saw book challenges in the 2021-22 school year were 55% less likely to have a title from a list of recently published LGBTQ books, according to the study, which analyzed the availability of hundreds of titles in over 6,600 public school libraries.

Slungaard Mumma identified 82 schools across 43 districts in the sample that saw such challenges occur in the school year.

Without comprehensive school library collection catalogs at her disposal, Slungaard Mumma compiled lists of hundreds of books across subject areas that have faced challenges that would conceivably be held in a school library and checked them against each library.

School libraries in conservative areas tended to have fewer books containing LGBTQ issues, focusing on race and racism, or containing abortion — while stocking more Christian fiction books and Dr. Seuss books that were pulled for racist imagery, the study found. The difference, for example, between a swing district that went slightly for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election and a conservative district with a more than 30-point swing for former President Donald Trump, meant finding an LGBTQ book on the study list at a high school library was about 13% less likely. For those concerning race or racism, that jumped to 20%.

Paula McAvoy, a professor who studies relationships between schools and democratic society at North Carolina State University, said the findings were concerning but not surprising.

“You want schools to be places where kids learn to engage with ideas that are new and different to them, and that aren’t just mirrors of the community that they live in,” she said. “There’s a democratic concern if schools can’t maintain the willingness to expose kids to new ideas.”

Still, she noted the relationship between school libraries and the probability of having a newly published book in stock could also be connected to resources, with the study also finding schools in low-income areas or that served traditionally disadvantaged student populations tended to have fewer staff and less-up-to-date collections.

“To what extent is it fear of adopting the books?” McAvoy said. “And to what extent was it just the choice between new math textbooks or new books for the library?”

Slungaard Mumma stressed the study was descriptive, and did not necessarily imply a causal relationship.

But despite the observed differences in the study, she said she was surprised to see books on the list generally remained available across school libraries, regardless of local political leanings. Even in school districts in the most conservative counties, 96% of high schools had at least one book from the list on race or racism, 95% had at least one on abortion, and 94% had at least one LGBTQ book.

Though the study notes that for elementary and middle schools, only 70% of schools in those counties had at least one LGBTQ title — nearly 13% fewer than in the most liberal counties.

Jones, for her part, says she’ll continue to acquire books that help her students feel reflected and a sense of belonging, despite local challenges or backlash.

“It is pretty heartening to me,” Slungaard Mumma said. “To think that these school libraries were making this kind of content available even in places where there could be parents or administrators or political groups that would find it objectionable.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering national issues. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

13 Chalkbeat stories that defined 2022

2022-12-21T19:15:00+00:00

This was the year when many of the pandemic-era challenges facing America’s schools went from acute to chronic.

Classrooms fully reopened, but attendance and enrollment have yet to fully rebound. Tutoring and mental health programs got off the ground, but staffers remained in short supply. Students began making academic progress, but new national data underscored how far they’d fallen behind. Each step toward recovery, moment of joy, and successful lesson came with a reminder of the pandemic’s ongoing fallout.

Meanwhile, the nation’s conflicts continued to envelop schools. Republican lawmakers and local activists redoubled their efforts to restrict what students can learn about racism and LGBTQ issues. And shootings erupted on and off school grounds, cementing gun violence’s new status as the leading cause of death for America’s young people.

Below are 13 stories from Chalkbeat reporters across the country that documented those forces in action and explained what it all meant for America’s schools:

February 3: Schools got $190 billion in COVID relief from the feds. What’s happened to it?

This year, schools were figuring out how exactly they were going to use the biggest chunk of their billions in federal COVID relief. Tutors? Building renovations? Both? Matt Barnum explained the state of play — and how to find your district’s plans for yourself.

“The idea that schools aren’t spending it quickly partly reflects a monthslong lag in the data, not local officials dragging their feet. And the best evidence available suggests that schools are making seemingly reasonable purchases: buying masks, computers, and air filters, while adding summer school programs, tutoring, counselors, and teachers. But district plans vary widely in quality, and there are more than 13,000 school districts across the country. Zoom out further, and, so far, information at the state and national levels is limited, incomplete, or nonexistent, making it difficult to closely monitor this unprecedented infusion of federal cash.”

March 11: Iowa scrapped teacher training on equity. Students of color felt the sting of that decision.

Volta Adovor was one of several high school students asked to help shape a conference for Iowa’s teachers focused on racial equity in 2021 put on by the state education department. Once Iowa’s legislature began considering a bill that would restrict how teachers talk about racism, it all ground to a halt, as Kalyn Belsha reported.

“The deferred conference stands as just one illustration of the nation’s about-face on centering race and equity in teachers’ work over the last year. For the students, though, the fallout has been both local and personal. After state officials asked them to share their time and experiences as students of color, the apparently open-ended postponement has left some feeling doubly dismissed. ‘We wanted to give solutions,’ Adovor said. ‘It was just us talking about things that we cared about.’”

March 19: As schools try to recover, COVID’s toll lingers: ‘We haven’t seen fine, ever’

This story, by Kalyn Belsha, Melanie Asmar, and Lori Higgins reporting from Tulsa, Denver, and Detroit, captured the exhaustion of last spring, when schools were inching toward “normal” but nothing came easily.

“When the virus seemed like it was under control, the omicron wave of cases brought half-empty classrooms or temporary returns to virtual learning. It’s been a year of survival and triage for teachers, school leaders, students, and their families. Now a shift is underway. Mask mandates have largely lifted, and more Americans say they are ready to leave the pandemic in the rearview mirror. But teachers like [Ana] Barros are still grappling daily with issues that COVID has left in its wake, most of which defy easy solutions. ‘I really feel scared to say that we’ve turned a corner,’ she said. ‘The things that we were struggling with, even outside of COVID, are just still there.’”

April 12: ‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

As laws restricting how teachers can talk about gender and LGBTQ issues took effect, Kalyn Belsha chronicled the effects on classrooms in Tennessee and beyond.

“A history teacher skipped over PowerPoint slides about the fight for gay rights during a lesson on the civil rights movement. Another English teacher hinted that Oscar Wilde was, ‘you know,’ instead of saying he was gay while teaching ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ Queer symbolism throughout the text went unmentioned. To 17-year-old Aneshka, who asked that their last name be withheld, these were all indications that a new law requiring teachers to notify parents about lessons on gender and sexuality had had an effect at their eastern Tennessee high school.”

June 7: Student voices on Uvalde: Our leaders ‘are just not going to protect us’

After 19 children and two adults were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, we turned space over to students to reflect. Meleena Salgado, then a junior at John Hancock College Preparatory High School in Chicago, wrote about the moment she heard what had happened.

I was feeding my dogs, and my dad rushed in and said a school had been shot up. My heart just sank. I was frustrated that there was another one. I hate to use that term because there were people who were lost. But I was just like, come on. No matter how many are hurt, [politicians] are just going to say, ‘Oh wow, what a tragedy,’ and then we’ll find out about the next one. I’ve been worried about a school shooting since I was little. The oldest fear I have about being shot up at school is when I was, maybe, in third grade. I was in the bathroom alone and heard this really loud bang, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, maybe this is it.’ (That bang turned out to be someone dropping a textbook in the hallway.)

Aug. 1: As fewer kids enroll, big cities face a small schools crisis

Mila Koumpilova, Matt Barnum, and the Associated Press’ Collin Binkley looked at one consequence of the enrollment declines many cities experienced during the pandemic — more tiny schools — and the pain ahead for communities that will be forced to reckon with their cost.

Chalmers [School of Excellence] lost almost a third of its enrollment during the pandemic, shrinking to 215 students. In Chicago, COVID-19 worsened declines that preceded the virus: Predominantly Black neighborhoods like Chalmers’ North Lawndale, long plagued by disinvestment, have seen an exodus of families over the past decade. The number of small schools like Chalmers is growing in many American cities as public school enrollment declines. More than 1 in 5 New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over 1 in 4. In Chicago it has grown to nearly 1 in 3, and in Boston it’s approaching 1 in 2, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

Oct. 24: Nation’s report card: Massive drop in math scores, slide in reading linked to COVID disruption

Matt Barnum dove into one of the biggest stories of the year: scores on national exams that offered the most authoritative accounting yet of learning lost because of the pandemic.

Students in fourth and eighth grade saw unprecedented declines in math and significant dips in reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, according to the results of national exams given last school year and released Monday. The declines were broad-based — affecting students in every state and every region of the country. ‘The results point out and confirm that this is a pretty massive hit to student achievement in our country,’ said Scott Marion, a testing expert and member of the board that oversees the tests.

Nov. 2: A look inside Colorado’s yearslong push to change how schools teach reading

This year saw more schools, school districts, and entire states take a hard look at their reading curriculums and push for changes aligned with the “science of reading.” Colorado was among the most forceful in requiring districts to make changes, and Ann Schimke has followed the story closely.

Peter and his classmates were learning a rule about the English language that they applied over and over that day — when reading and writing ‘hope,’ ‘cute,’ ‘tape,’ and ‘slide.’ Such lessons reflect both a districtwide and statewide shift in how children are taught to read in Colorado. Gone by the wayside are reading programs that encourage children to figure out what a jumble of letters says by looking at the picture or using other clues to guess the word — a debunked strategy still used in some popular reading curriculums. Now, there’s a greater emphasis on teaching the relationships between sounds and letters in a direct and carefully sequenced way.

Nov. 7: Not ‘present,’ and paying a steep cost: How pandemic recovery in Detroit and across Michigan hinges on getting kids to class

Districts across the U.S saw chronic absenteeism spike last school year, and the numbers have prompted a variety of campaigns to boost attendance. Detroit’s challenge is especially acute: Two-thirds of the city’s students missed at least 10% of last school year. The issue extends beyond education, as Koby Levin, Ethan Bakuli, and Kae Petrin explain.

Absences seldom boil down to a decision to skip school, experts say. Interviews with parents and researchers show that families generally understand the importance of regular attendance and do their best to get their children to class. Instead, absences often result from painful but rational choices between a family’s basic well-being and attending school. Problems with housing, health, work, or transportation can quickly spiral into a crisis for a family that lacks money or a social support system.

Nov. 9: Hope, healing, and the return of an annual camping trip for Brooklyn high-schoolers

A multi-day hike outside New York City this fall was much more than a field trip for one group of high-schoolers, as Michael Elsen-Rooney wrote. It was a return to tradition and a chance for students to grow as leaders after several trauma-heavy years.

Surrounded by her classmates on a bright October morning in the woods of Fishkill, New York, Diana Ramirez had no trouble making herself heard. The 14-year-old enthusiastically initiated chants and cheerfully shouted instructions to her peers during team-building activities on a multi-day camping trip organized by their Brooklyn public high school. Speaking up hasn’t always been so easy for the high school freshman — especially during the past several years overshadowed by the pandemic.

Nov. 17: Schools across the U.S. have turned to Paper’s online tutoring. Some worry it’s falling short.

Virtual tutoring has grown in popularity as schools look for ways to help students catch up and struggle to staff up in-person programs. Kalyn Belsha took a look at one popular program, Paper, and found low usage rates and concerns it wasn’t helping the students who needed it most.

The district spent $913,000 in COVID relief funds for Paper to provide its middle and high school students with access to 24/7, on-demand tutoring. But Columbus quietly cut ties with the company in September because too few students were using the tool. District records obtained by Chalkbeat show that less than 8% of students with access logged on last school year. Half of those students used it just once. In some schools, not a single student logged on.

Nov. 18: School psychologist, counselor hiring lags nationwide even as student mental health needs soar

As students struggle, many schools have talked about the ways they are adding mental health support for students. But this fall, many still hadn’t managed to add counselors or psychologists, despite an influx of federal relief money, Patrick Wall, Kalyn Belsha, and the Associated Press’ Annie Ma documented.

Among 18 of the country’s largest school districts, 12 started this school year with fewer counselors or psychologists than they had in fall 2019, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat. As a result, many school mental health professionals have caseloads that far exceed recommended limits, according to experts and advocates, and students must wait for urgently needed help. ‘They have so many students that they’re dealing with,’ said Mira Ugwuadu, 17. ‘I personally don’t want to blame them. But I also deserve care and support, too.’

Dec. 9: How one Chicago school social worker is grappling with COVID’s toll on students

Chicago has doubled the number of social workers in schools. But each of them is still juggling hundreds of students’ needs, as Mauricio Peña documented, at a moment when students are struggling with academics and behavior.

In the bathroom, [Mary] Difino took another deep breath, then headed back to her office. There she tidied up and fixed her desk. She grabbed her soccer bag from that morning’s Piccolo girls soccer team practice and a binder full of drills and activities. Her role as coach for second, third, and fourth grade students is a reprieve from her frenetic duties during school hours. She thought about what was needed to calm the fights and help her students: a restorative justice coordinator, smaller class sizes, perhaps another social worker. But as Difino left for home that night, that wish list seemed far away — and she just felt exhausted.

‘The hardest years of my career’: Principals say political combat has engulfed schools

2022-12-01T01:08:38+00:00

High school principals stand on the frontlines of the education culture wars. What they’ve witnessed\ there is troubling.

In Nebraska, someone brought a gun to a school board meeting. In Iowa, a classroom discussion about current events dissolved into a shouting match. In California, one irate parent called a principal a “liberal communist moron,” and another told a school board: “We’re coming for you.”

Those incidents are examples of the hostility that increasingly surrounds schools, according to a new report based on a nationwide survey of public high school principals. Nearly 7 in 10 principals said that conflicts erupted in their school communities last academic year over hot-button political issues, and almost half said such controversies occur more frequently now than before the pandemic.

Schools in politically divided communities experienced a greater number of conflicts, which have been fueled by a conservative campaign to limit teaching about race and racism, curtail access to books deemed inappropriate, and restrict LGBTQ students’ rights, according to the report by researchers at UCLA and the University of California, Riverside.

In Palmer, Alaska, Principal Mary Fulp faced intense criticism this fall after word spread that a transgender student at Fulp’s high school had used the girls’ locker room. After a public outcry, the school board last month banned trans students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.

“It is the hardest time to be an educator that I’ve ever experienced,” Fulp told Chalkbeat. “The pandemic, the political climate — it is all hard.”

In recent years, schools have moved ever closer to the center of the country’s hyper-partisan political debates as efforts to promote antiracism and LGBTQ-inclusion in some schools sparked a conservative backlash. Republican lawmakers in dozens of states have proposed laws that restrict lessons on contentious topics and erode protections for LGBTQ students.

Based on a nationally representative survey this summer of more than 680 high school principals, the new report shows how thoroughly that backlash has engulfed schools.

In different survey questions, half of principals said that parents or community members have tried to limit lessons on race and racism, roughly half said LGBTQ-inclusive policies have faced challenges, nearly 40% said social-emotional learning has come under attack, and a third said attempts have been made to stop students from accessing certain books.

Each of those challenges occurred more often in schools in politically divided communities, which the researchers defined as those congressional districts where former President Donald Trump received around half of the vote in the 2020 presidential elections. The researchers attribute this not only to people with different values living in those communities, but also to efforts by conservative activists and politicians to rile up parents for political gain.

“What’s changed in the last four years is this targeting public schools as the site of conflict,” said UCLA Professor John Rogers, who directs the school’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access. “It’s not just that schools are mirroring these broader dynamics, but they become the theater in which these conflicts are playing out.”

Rogers co-authored the report with Joseph Kahne, a UC Riverside professor who co-directs that school’s Civic Engagement Research Group; other researchers also contributed to the study.

Previous studies and reporting have shown how the new laws and public scrutiny have led teachers to cut short classroom discussions about racism and sexuality, either due to pressure from administrators or self-censorship. The new report centers high school principals, who often are well-known in their communities and subject to intense political pressure.

In addition to the survey, the researchers also interviewed more than 30 principals, who are given pseudonyms in the report. Able to speak freely due to the anonymity, the school leaders expressed frustration and fear about the effect that partisan clashes have had on their faculties and students.

Nearly 70% of principals said students have made disparaging remarks about classmates due to their political beliefs, and more than 60% said political disagreements have made classrooms more tense.

An Iowa principal said her teachers are scared of being “accosted by a student or a community member for what they’re teaching.” After some students started “screaming at each other” during class, the principal told the teacher to end class discussions about current events.

“There’s a level of intolerance and refusal to understand the other side that I haven’t seen before the pandemic,” a Tennessee principal told the researchers.

The principals also said that hostility toward LGBTQ students has become more common. In politically divided districts, about a third of principals said students made anti-LGBTQ remarks on multiple occasions last school year — three times the rate in 2018. Many parents also expressed anti-LGBTQ sentiments, the principals reported.

A California principal said some parents opposed policies meant to protect transgender students and lashed out at staffers for supporting LGBTQ students.

“My teachers, administrators, and nurses came to me on a weekly basis in tears because parents are shouting and cursing at them for doing their jobs,” the principal said. “One counselor described to me how a parent screamed at her on the phone and called her a ‘homo lover.’”

The distrust and even rage directed at schools has made it harder to hire and retain teachers, some principals said. The backlash has also created a chilling effect, with some school boards and superintendents restricting lessons about race and racism, according to the survey. Once again, the restrictions were most common in politically divided districts.

“My superintendent told me in no uncertain terms that I could not address issues of race and bias etc. with students or staff this year,” said a Minnesota principal quoted in the report.

The constant strain of trying to avoid or weather controversy has worn educators down, several principals said. A Massachusetts principal said criticism of him and his school has felt “nonstop” and “borders on harassment and bullying.”

“The past two years have been the hardest years of my career,” he told the researchers, “and they have left me worried about the future of public education.”

Still, the report does include examples of principals standing up for what the researchers call a “diverse democracy,” where people with different viewpoints and identities listen to one another and work together. Some school leaders defended the rights of LGBTQ students and encouraged frank classroom discussions about difficult topics, including racism.

Fulp, the Alaska principal, who was not part of the study, said she saw the recent controversy surrounding her school as an opportunity to model civility. She listened with an open mind even when community members disparaged her online and a parent confronted her in the post office. And she told her students that everyone deserve respect and protection, even after the board restricted transgender students’ rights.

“I feel like history is being written in our schools today,” she said. “So what story are we going to contribute to?”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Inclusive social studies standards pass Colorado State Board

2022-11-11T01:53:04+00:00

Colorado social studies lessons must include the experiences and contributions of diverse groups: Latino, Indigenous, African American, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, religious minorities, and LGBTQ people.

In a series of 4-3 party line votes Thursday, Democrats on the Colorado State Board of Education approved social studies standards with an expansive view of the American story and who has a place in it. The decision restored many specific references that had been cut from the draft standards in response to negative feedback from conservatives.

And the board also voted unanimously to make changes to standards that guide instruction about the Holocaust and genocide, clarifying that the Nazi Party was fascist, not socialist, and adding historic and contemporary atrocities to the list of what students should know.

The decision moves Colorado in the opposite direction of states under Republican control that are passing laws to limit how teachers can talk about race, gender, and sexuality and also to limit how they can support students.

The State Board heard months of debate and received hundreds of emails about the standards. Conservative parents said the standards would divide students by race and ethnicity and introduce ideas about sex and gender at a young age, potentially in violation of parents’ values. Republican board members largely agreed.

In response, a standards committee made up of teachers, community members, and other experts stripped out many specific references in favor of terms like “diverse groups” and “marginalized perspectives.”

After those changes, other groups including parents, students, and teachers, rallied in defense of the more inclusive and specific version of the standards. They said students would benefit from seeing themselves in the curriculum and in American history.

In particular, queer youth said they would have understood themselves better and feared less for their futures if they had learned about gay or transgender people living full lives and contributing to their communities. They also want their peers to understand them better.

“My existence is not political,” said Reina Hernandez, a trans Latina student at Cherry Creek High School. “It’s simply been politicized to pursue a political agenda. Will you support my right as a student to exist publicly?”

Approved standards name groups, require specifics

The State Board restored most of the cut material Thursday, with some formatting changes to reduce repetition.

In preschool, rather than asking students, “Why is it important to hear and share multiple diverse perspectives?” a teacher would ask, “Why is it important to hear what friends from different backgrounds (cultures, races, languages, religions, family composition, etc.) have to say?”

In eighth grade, rather than ask students to “analyze evidence from multiple sources including those with conflicting accounts about specific events in both Colorado and United States history,” the standard names the perspectives that should be considered: “Indigenous Peoples’, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and African American perspectives on Western colonization and enslavement, Asian American and Latinos’ perspectives on immigration, the Indian Removal Act, the Buffalo Soldiers, and the Sand Creek Massacre.”

Republicans focused their concerns on references in early grades to LGBTQ people. One preschool standard says students should show interest in interacting with and developing relationships with people from a range of backgrounds, and names LGBTQ people among other groups.

Democratic board members said this would look like children sharing freely about their families and bringing in family photos, whether they have a mom and a dad or two dads. Republican board member Steve Durham countered with the example of drag queen story time sessions held at some libraries.

He described the standards as “anti-parent,” and some parents in the audience agreed.

Mary Goodley described teaching her toddler to sit, then walk, then run, and said teaching younger children about the contributions of members of the LGBTQ community would be like asking them to run before they could sit. She imagined her child entering school, learning about a notable leader in the LGBTQ community, and then wondering what LGBTQ means.

“I don’t want my child’s first grade teacher to introduce him to these vast sexual complexities,” Goodley said. “Teaching children about particular sex and gender notions is a clear violation of parental rights … and decreases trust in the public education model.”

And parent Janelle Rumley said the idea that students need to see themselves in the curriculum disturbed her, because it suggests white children like her own couldn’t learn from or be inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. or Harriet Tubman.

But other parents said without specifics in the standards, their communities’ history just doesn’t get taught.

Maria Guadalupe Cardoza said she has nine children in the Boulder Valley school district, and “the only thing my children learn about our history is from people of their same color.”

Hernandez, the Cherry Creek student, has been working to develop a class that would cover LGBTQ issues and ethnic studies. It’s been hard to convince administrators the topics are as important as other academic subjects, she said. Having social studies standards that list by name the groups whose stories should be told would help students make their case.

“For a very long time, I was scared of who I was,” she said. “With education, it helps.”

Standards will shape instruction, but not dictate it

Colorado does not set curriculum or choose textbooks at the state level. That will be up to school districts. The standards lay out what students are supposed to know, and school districts usually try to pick curriculum that aligns with state standards. However, there is little enforcement, especially in subjects like social studies.

The State Board was required to update the social studies standards to comply with several new state laws that require the inclusion of more diverse perspectives in social studies, call for more robust civics instruction, and make learning about the Holocaust and genocide a graduation requirement.

All three requirements became politically contentious. Republican board member Deb Scheffel wanted Colorado civics standards to be based on the conservative American Birthright standards, an idea Democrats rejected. And Durham shaped the standards around the Holocaust and genocide to associate Nazis with socialism and emphasize the dangers of left-wing governments, leading history teachers, Jewish groups, and others to call for changes.

Also on Thursday, the State Board voted unanimously to make changes to the genocide standards before finalizing the social studies standards. After reading out a quote in which Hitler attacked Jews for being capitalists, Durham voted with other board members to add the word fascist to the description of the Nazi Party at the suggestion of board member Rebecca McClellan.

Board members also voted unanimously to restore references to Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur that had been lost and, at the suggestion of Board Chair Angelika Schroeder, added a requirement that students learn about the Sand Creek massacre as a genocide.

“I don’t want people to think with all the -isms that this only happens in other countries,” Schroeder said.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.