SPOKANE, Wash. — The Mead School District decided to delay voting on its newly proposed transgender student policy on Monday night.
The proposed policy is the result of the district’s attempt to balance school policy with both federal and state law.
Much of the previous discussion has revolved around transgender students’ participation in sports, after President Trump signed an executive order in February banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.
In contrast, Washington state law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender and allows students to participate on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
In February, the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) deemed Mead’s transgender policy as non-compliant with state law.
The newly proposed policy, however, does not include any changes to transgender participation in schools.
In some ways, the proposed policy favors federal law, but also stays consistent with state law in certain ways.
Some points of the policy include having the district asses locker room access for transgender students on a ‘case-by-case basis’ and that for any overnight school trips, students will be assigned rooms based on their sex at birth.
The policy also gives guidelines for family involvement and pronoun usage.
At Monday night’s meeting, a few people spoke out against the proposed policy.
“How could forcing these kids into overnight rooms that are not consistent with their gender identities possibly be safe for them? How are you planning to carry out that policy? Are we going to have a registry, genital checks, a snitch form? Are we going to do chromosome testing? You inspect one kid, you’re going to have to inspect them all,” said one speaker.
The School Board said they decided to delay the vote due to having received feedback on the policy from OSPI just hours before the board meeting.
Board members also said OSPI urged them not to pass the proposed policy.
“I feel like we need to look over this with the legal team and have time to come back and have further discussions with the board and get more clarity with OSP and go through each item instead of just this summarization of their opinion,” said board vice president, BrieAnne Gray.
In March, the Mead School Board asked for the Departments of Education and Justice to step in amid their battle with Washington state policies on transgender athletes.
On Monday, the board said it hasn’t received an update specific to their district. However, following several Title IV complaints across Washington, the Departments of Justice and Education, announced on April 4 that they’ve launched a Title IV special investigations team.”
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