South Side School Board considers new pronoun, athletics policies for trans students
GREENE TWP. ― South Side Area’s newly reshuffled school board will soon weigh a series of policies regulating transgender students’ identification, participation in athletics and restroom access.
Weeks after voters decisively backed a slate of candidates favored by conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty, the reorganized board unanimously agreed Wednesday to review and consider three draft policies governing trans students in the district.
One proposal, titled “sex-based distinctions in athletics,” would effectively bar some transgender student-athletes from joining sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Participation in designated “boys” or “girls” sports would be based on students’ sex assigned at birth, rather than “irrelevant classifications” like race, religion and gender identity, according to the policy.
“Separate athletic teams based on sex preserve fairness, provide increased opportunity for girls and are safer,” the policy reads, citing “preserved sex-based distinctions for interscholastic athletics” under Title IX.
The district would provide “reasonable accommodations” for girls to play on boys’ teams in certain circumstances, according to the policy. Boys wishing to play on girls’ teams would need to meet several conditions, including providing a doctor’s note to the school’s athletic director “certifying the student has not started male puberty.”
Another policy, titled “student records,” would permit students and personnel to refuse to address a transgender or nonbinary student by their preferred name and/or pronoun if doing so would “violate the conscience” of the speaker. The rule would also prohibit staff from “referring to a student by names or pronouns inconsistent with the student's (sex assigned at birth)” without obtaining written permission from a parent or legal guardian.
Parents of transgender students would have to confirm their child’s gender identity by submitting a written accommodation request “specifically naming the gender identity and stating how the student has consistently, persistently, and insistently expressed the named identity, and including any other relevant information.” They may be asked to provide “signed statements from the student's personal physician therapist, or licensed counselor verifying that the student has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” during this process.
More: South Side Area board dissolves pronoun committee, keeps solicitor
School personnel should “endeavor to avoid addressing the student by the unwanted first name or pronoun” if these requisites are met, according to the policy, but staff could still refuse to address a transgender student by their preferred name and/or pronoun “as a matter of conscience.” In these cases, the district would recommend staff “avoid addressing the student by the unwanted first name and pronoun” and replace it with a more “neutral” moniker such as a last name.
The policy would also prohibit district staff from using trans students’ preferred pronouns without written parental authorization, and bar personnel from concealing “material information about a student's mental, emotional, or physical health from the student's parent/guardian, including information related to gender identification.”
A third policy, “sex-based distinctions in multi-user privacy facilities,” asserts students must use multi-user facilities, such as locker rooms and restrooms, according to their sex assigned at birth regardless of gender identity.
Culture wars escalate
The South Side Area School District has remained embroiled in ideological clashes over LGBTQ+ protections, parental rights and free speech for more than a year. The school board in January assembled an ad hoc community advisory “pronoun committee” after scrapping district guidelines directing staff to address transgender and nonbinary students by pronouns aligning with their gender identity.
The directive was rescinded to reinstate high school teacher Daren Cusato, who was briefly placed on administrative leave last year for refusing to recognize students’ preferred pronouns, citing his conservative Christian values and First Amendment right to refuse speech.
The public school-appointed pronoun committee garnered statewide attention for hearing “biblical perspectives” on gender identity at a mid-March meeting. It was dissolved in May.
More: Parents: Christian conservatives steer South Side Area discourse as board weighs new pronouns policy
Meanwhile, a group of South Side Area parents, teachers, alumni and LGBTQ+ allies publicly rebuked what they said were efforts by right-wing conservatives to advance anti-trans policies under the guise of parental rights. They argued policies compelling teachers to out LGBTQ+ students to families without consent threaten the privacy, mental health and physical safety of already vulnerable students.
They specifically criticized members of Beaver County’s Moms For Liberty chapter and Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center, a conservative law firm and legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute known for helping school districts craft policies considered discriminatory and legally perilous by LGBTQ+ advocates.
Independence Law Center senior counsel Jeremy Samek said Thursday the firm continues to advise South Side Area on legal and policy matters alongside the district's solicitor. The firm, he said, drafted the policies introduced Wednesday.
The proposals are “aimed at promoting an environment of mutual respect by providing consistent standards for recordkeeping and addressing students, providing a process for accommodations, and recognizing parental authority to make health decisions for their children,” Samek said in a statement. “These policies provide reasonable accommodations to benefit all students while still protecting the purpose for which women’s sports and separate multi-user privacy facilities exist.”
Attorney Kristina Moon with Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center earlier this year wrote a public letter to the board asserting that any policy permitting the misgendering and deadnaming of students violates Title IX and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.
District resident and parent Christy Gibson, a staunch and vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ protections at South Side, said the proposals, if approved, would violate students’ civil rights and expose the district to costly lawsuits.
The Central Bucks School Board, for example, recently voted to pay more than $1.1 million in legal fees as the district faces a federal investigation and complaints of anti-LGBTQ discrimination related to policies written with pro-bono help from the Independence Law Center. Central Bucks’ legal representation has billed the district $1.75 million throughout the past year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“I don’t know why (South Side’s) board is convinced that LGBTQ+ students pose the biggest risk to the school and are deserving of all this governance,” Gibson said. “In addition to being harmful to students, the language in these policies is the same that is generating lawsuits in other districts … and it’s costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”
Gibson and other parents plan to help connect students with free legal aid in light of the proposals, she said.
Attorneys with Weiss Burkardt Kramer, South Side’s current solicitor, are reviewing the policies and intend to “thoroughly discuss and review them with the board after the holiday season,” said Danielle Guarascio with the firm. Weiss Burkardt Kramer has previously recommended schools adhere to guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights and Title IX.
Newly appointed South Side board President Robert Tellish at Wednesday’s meeting said he’s “not expecting (the board) to pass (the policies) immediately.”
“I think there’s going to have to be a lot of back and forth on this,” he said.
The board’s next meeting will be in January.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: South Side School Board considers new pronoun, athletics policies for trans students
