Yugga Bugga

I just made that title up. This post is a rough draft of a letter to the editor I want to send to our local newspaper about the activities of our local school board, of which I am a member, regarding the "transgender issue." Y'all can help me make sure it's clear and cogent.

As always, I preface my comments with the statement that my opinions are my own, and I'm speaking as an individual board member, and not on behalf of the entire school board. My opinions do not necessarily reflect those of individual board members, nor the district itself.

In 2019 the Lynden School Board adopted a new policy, 3211, titled "Gender Inclusive Schools." This policy was a mandate from state law (RCW 28A.642.090), which itself is the product of Senate Bill 5689. The bill passed both houses of the legislature and signed was by the governor in April 2019.

It is important to pause here and point out that public schools in Washington are governed, primarily, by four entities: the state legislature, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), the Washington State School Directors Association (WSSDA), and local school boards. Obviously there are other entities that have input, such as the federal government, but the nuts and bolts are generally hammered out and implemented by those four bodies.

When SB5689 was passed, it required WSSDA and OSPI to collaborate in order to "develop and amend" a "model transgender student policy and procedure." The law required all school districts to adopt policies and procedures that "incorporate all the elements of the model transgender student policy and procedure" that OSPI and WSSDA came up with. To summarize, the legislature told OSPI and WSSDA to create a policy regarding gender inclusivity, and it required all school districts to adopt that policy.

So far I've described the history of how these gender-inclusive policies were created, but I have not talked about the content of said policies. The legislature was rather vague about the content of the policies. They punted the issue to OSPI, saying they must include OSPI's "rules and guidelines" in order to "eliminate discrimination" on the bases of gender identity. The bill refenced a very short RCW that simply instructs OSPI to create rules and guidelines. The rules and guidelines, as currently published by OSPI, are what you think they are: they require the use of preferred pronouns in both official and unofficial records, unless the records in question require a legal name. They require staff, teachers, coaches, bus drivers, etc., to use preferred pronouns. They require school districts to allow students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. They require school districts to allow students to participate in physical education and athletic activities that correspond with their gender identity.

In 2022, an edit to the gender inclusive policy came to the Lynden School Board's attention, and it was at that time that I first became aware of the policy and the procedure. I had no idea such a thing existed. I had thought that all of this was just talk, and not a matter of state law. At that time I requested a meeting with the district's legal counsel to discuss the policy. The content of that discussion is not public knowledge and thus I cannot share it here. But suffice to say that nothing about what I'd understood before the meeting changed: we were required by state law to have the policy. So we approved the edit to the policy and moved on. But I was never happy with it.

Last year, just before the community elected new school board members (I was up for election), I said to our presumptive board president that I wanted to "find some way" to get that policy back before the board, depending on how the election went. As it happened, the election went the way I expected, and there were now 5 conservative board members who all felt the same way about the issue. But still we needed to figure out what we would do.

Fortunately for us, and I use the term tongue-in-cheek, the state helped us out. Two things happened at the tail end of the 23/24 school year that brought this to a head. OSPI began requiring all schools to publish in their parent handbook the "rules and guidelines" related to gender inclusivity. In May of this year, a male athlete who identifies as a female won a track and field event against actual females. These things gave us the "opportunity" to bring the issues back in to discussion.

What the board decided to do was engage in a multi-pronged approach to the issue. We would would push on all of the agencies and entities involved in order to "move the needle" in the right direction. To that end, the school board has done the following:

• We amended the gender inclusive procedure to remove language that required the district to actively lie to parents.
• We passed a resolution stating our opposition to males participating in female sports, and directing our superintendent to draft an amendment to the rules governing interscholastic sporting events.
• We wrote letters to the three legislators that represent our district urging them to review relevant state laws, and recent scientific evidence regarding the issue.
• We wrote a letter to the interscholastic association that governs sporting events, urging them to review their practices regarding the issue.

Unfortunately, a tiny district in a very blue state doesn't have a lot of leverage with the state governing bodies, but we've got a lot of districts who agree with us across the state. Someone said in one of our board meetings, "Don't give an inch on this issue." The problem, of course, is that all the inches are given. The side of sanity hasn't any more inches to give. What we hope our efforts will do is claw some of the inches back, and that we can use those inches to claw more inches back.