School policy conundrum: students versus their parents
Is helping students conceal their gender identity from their parents the best way to support and protect transgender and gender-nonconforming youths?
For a parent, there would seem to be a simple answer. No.
For school districts, it’s not so simple. They have to deal with group realities and the fact that not all parents are open-minded when it comes to gender identity issues.
New Jersey Department of Education policy 5756 creates that conundrum.
The NJDOE’s Transgender Student Guidance for School Districts runs more than 3,000 words. I wrote in a story in last week’s edition about citizens voicing their opposition to the policy in the Ocean City School District. The policy intends to ensure a nondiscriminatory environment for transgender and gender-nonconforming students.
For many people opposed to the policy, there is quite a bit that is objectionable. What upsets them most is the section that says the district doesn’t have to let parents know what the students tell them.
“A school district shall accept a student’s asserted gender identity; parental consent is not required. Further, a student need not meet any threshold diagnosis or treatment requirements to have his or her gender identity recognized and respected by the district, school or school personnel. Nor is a legal or court-ordered name change required. There is no affirmative duty for any school district personnel to notify a student’s parent or guardian of the student’s gender identity or expression,” that approach reads.
That means if the student requests to be identified by a different gender and/or a different name, the district accedes to their wishes. It also means the district isn’t obligated to be proactive in notifying the parent or guardian about the student’s wishes.
Critics and supporters of the policy can agree that transgender students, and others in the LGBTQIA+ community, are among the most vulnerable. Youths in general have significantly higher rates of suicide.
They can agree that they want to do everything they possibly can to protect these vulnerable students. No parent wants their children having suicidal ideation, much less attempting to take their own lives.
And most parents who have gone through the child-raising experience can attest that some of the most turbulent years are during adolescence. Their children don’t have to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community for that; it can be rough for anyone in middle school or high school for any number of reasons.
It is a time when young people withdraw and pull away from their parents, who simultaneously want to know more about their children’s lives but often find themselves shut out.
Then throw a crisis of gender identity or a child’s earnest self-realization into the mix and …
There are young people who feel comfortable confiding in their parents. There are young people who don’t.
There are parents who are supportive. There are parents who aren’t. That is what school districts are trying to deal with through this policy.
There is a caution in the guidance that a student’s pronouns, preferred name or gender identity may be revealed inadvertently to parents through other students. There is a proviso that the school may have to reveal that information to parents in the case of a HIB incident (harassment, intimidation, bullying), but in such a situation the student would be given the chance to reveal that to the parents first. There also would be counseling “to facilitate the family’s acceptance and support of the student’s transgender status.”
With vulnerability and the potential for self-harm on the line, the NJDOE policy on transgender students takes the view that the district must do what it can to protect those students, even if it means not revealing information to parents.
Most loving parents would want their children to confide in them and would want the district to let them know something as important as this, but there are families in which students are not going to find acceptance or support. There are families who do not accept transgender or gender-nonconforming as valid categories.
They would agree with President Donald Trump’s executive order that the federal government recognize only two genders assigned at birth — male and female. The president’s order means erasure of the transgender community; it is a policy that states something that exists does not exist. That transgender humans have no legitimacy in this world.
How does that order, much less parents’ alignment with it, affect vulnerable students who are struggling with their sexuality and identity?
It’s where a district’s concern for students who fear their parents’ response runs smack into parents’ right to know. That’s where the conundrum lies.
The guidance acknowledges a major pitfall, which is the reality that parents may find out how their children identify indirectly through another student’s chatter or an HIB incident. In that case it advises districts to provide counseling for the parents and child.
By that point, however, it may be too late for the district to be viewed by the parents as anything other than an antagonistic force putting up a roadblock to learning vital information about their child.
School districts go to great lengths to ensure they are safe spaces for students. That includes security from outside threats, protection from inside threats — harassment, intimidation and bullying — and watching out for suicidal ideation.
How can a school district’s policy be one that exposes a student to any forces that deny their legitimacy, especially if those forces are the students’ own parents, who may in turn cause students to threaten their own existence?
The responsibility to prioritize students’ well-being is what practically forces a district to adopt a policy that may lose the trust of parents in the interest of protecting the trust of the child.
David Nahan is editor and publisher of the Ocean City Sentinel and its sister publications, the Upper Township Sentinel, the Sentinel of Somers Point, Linwood and Northfield and the Cape May Star and Wave.
