Another school system ignores the laws so they harass and discriminate against us!
Mat-Su transgender bathroom ban becomes permanent in apparent first for Alaska
Anchorage Daily News
By Zaz Hollander
October 21, 2022
In what appears to be a first for Alaska, transgender students in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District are now banned from using bathrooms and changing facilities that match their gender identity.That's despite protests that the policy could violate federal anti-discrimination laws. The decision also complicates a fundraising effort to create an all-gender restroom at Colony High School.
Reports of a "boy" using a Colony girls locker room — most likely a transgender girl, advocates say — triggered an outcry by hundreds of parents. At a packed a Mat-Su school board meeting last month, the board adopted a temporary policy overturning guidelines in place for more than seven years.
The school board on Wednesday voted 5-1 to adopt the policy permanently. Transgender students must now use bathrooms corresponding to their gender at birth or ask for a private option, usually the nurse's office.
One brave school board member stood up to the right-wing bigotry.
During Wednesday's testimony, one parent called the policy "thinly veiled discrimination against transgender students based on hateful and false stereotypes that gay and transgender individuals are predators and threats to health and safety." Others pointed to studies showing that transgender youths experience higher risk of suicide.
But truth and logic doesn’t win over bigotry, these right-wing has been so riled up that reason doesn’t win them over.
Clemmer's mother, Teresa, started a Gofundme page that as of Thursday had raised more than $5,000 to provide funding for a gender-neutral bathroom, an idea supported by more than 150 Colony students who have signed a petition.
Now the board's decision constrains the school's options for moving forward with the all-gender facility, Teresa Clemmer wrote in an update Wednesday night, but administrators told her they'll use the money "in a way that will help improve the bathroom situation for trans and nonbinary kids."
When I was in grad school I was asked to sign a petition to create gender neutral bathrooms and refused. They were shocked that I wouldn’t sign and they asked me why. I told them that if they ad a statement that it is only an alternative I was concerned that we would be forced to use them and it would be just another form of segregation.
The school district said they based it on legal rulings…
The original recommendation to review the district's longstanding facility use guidelines, from the board's three-member policy committee, was based on the actions of a federal judge in Tennessee who in July blocked the Biden administration from enforcing an executive order designed to protect the LGBTQ community from school and workplace discrimination.
However,
Transgender students have challenged policies that prevent them from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity in at least 11 cases in state and federal courts, the article says. The students prevailed in each case.
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