“The Parental Authority and Gender Fluidity Matter” policy passed by a 5-2 vote by the Board of Trustees on April 8. This policy institutes new rules regarding students who go by different pronouns, a different gender than their sex, or a different name than their birth given name. The objectives of the policy were to: safeguard sex-specific places such as ‘private facilities’, Ensure pronouns used on campus are consistent with a student’s sex, and prevent ‘gender fluidity’ content from being taught or promoted. Some key changes are restricting ‘private facilities’ and sport teams based on sex, banning instructional content on the concept of ‘gender fluidity’, giving teachers permission to ignore students requesting to use different name and pronouns even with parent permission, and notifying parents if a student chooses to go by a different name or pronouns then what was assigned at birth.
This policy change should be reversed.
The people who are affected the most by these negative changes are transgender students who now need parental permission to use their preferred names and pronouns. What this change essentially does, no matter the intent, is force transgender students to adhere to the identity that their parents assign them rather than their own. While the idea of this seems logical in that children may be unable to understand their own identity due to factors such as peer pressure and puberty, it really doesn’t turn out that way. In school, children will find a social identity that they are more comfortable in and may be different to their identity at home, which can cause transgender children to develop this new identity and this new gender away from home. Transgender children within unknowing families may fear to tell their parents about their identities. This causes a gap between their identity at home and their identity in school. The introduction of this policy forces these two identities to clash and can be disastrous for both mental health and relationships with family members that aren’t supportive of this new identity. By forcing parental involvement onto the school identity, the policy takes away one of the only safe spaces transgender students with a poor home life may have.
This is not the only issue with this policy. Another change is the ban of ‘gender fluidity’ instructional content. This will hamper classes that involve modern history, society, and government as it bars teachers from talking about the social construct of gender and how it affects society, based on how the policy is read. This hurts teachers of these subjects as it forces them to either simplify or ignore topics entirely. This lack of context may inadvertently hurt student learning or send a message that a teacher may not have intended to give their students. Gender roles and the construct of gender are very important in things such as the feminist movement, the diverse cultures of places like the US, and LGBTQ history, which are all part of modern history. History is vast and complex – there will always be oversimplifications. But for classes that teach this modern history, some of these topics have to be understood by students for them to understand the full picture.
Some may say that this policy will help FBISD achieve their goals more effectively by making a safer and more understandable environment for students. However, this goes directly against FBISD’s Profile of a Graduate and their Strategic Plan. How are transgender students supposed to feel that they are in a ‘supportive climate’ when they are barred from being themselves? How are cisgender students supposed to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘understand cultural differences’ when some of these cultures that have differences like transgender students are disallowed from being public with their identity? It’s clear this policy does not align with campus goals and will make the lives of transgender students, who are already oppressed in many other aspects of life, worse.
Overall this policy should be reversed as not only does it hurt students and teachers, it also goes against our diverse district’s mission.
Terminology defined:
1 – Private facilities include restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and similar facilities as designated by the Superintendent.
2 – Examples of gender fluidity instructional content: gender as a social construct and how it fits into society, the possibility of a person to be any gender or no gender, an individual’s sex can be changed to ‘match’ a different gender from that person’s sex, supports hormone therapy or other medical procedures to alter a person’s body so that it ‘matches’ a different gender than that person’s sex.
3 – Transgender denotes a person whose gender identity does not correspond with the gender assigned to them at birth.
4 – Culture includes the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.
