To teach, protect and…INFORM?

OCEAN COUNTY, NJ. - When Middletown, NJ classes resume this fall, its transgender students will have yet another obstacle in their way as they struggle for identity, freedom, and personal safety in the classroom.

On Tuesday, June 20, their school board voted nearly unanimously to enact a policy which would require teachers to notify parents if their child wants to be publicly known by a different name, seeks to use a different bathroom or locker room other than their birth gender or if a child opts to play on a different sports team.

This is in direct opposition to the State’s guidance which states that schools “shall ensure” students’ preferred pronouns and names be used, that they may dress in accordance with their gender identity and that it be respected, while specifically noting that “parental consent is not required.”

I must confess that in my opinion, there is no definitive right or wrong answer here. But as a former NJ middle school teacher in Monmouth County, AND someone who secretly transitioned in my first year of teaching, I have some thoughts on the subject of ‘outing’ students against their wishes. A school is a microcosm of the community in which it exists. There are few secrets. Gossip flies and teachers hear most of it. Sometimes the students, especially the ones in pain, need to share that pain and occasionally it is a teacher who is entrusted with their secrets.

The only time a teacher is legally bound to inform authorities of a student’s situation is if the teacher believes the child is being abused in some way. Having said that, and knowing firsthand the difficulties of coming out to the world as transgender at any age, I know that a trans child needs a haven to exist in safety, and oftentimes it’s their school environment in which they find it.

One of the first things we learned as teachers is that nothing, NOTHING is more important than the safety of our students. We are duty bound to do whatever we can to protect them both in the school and out.

So you might ask, what’s wrong with notifying parents that their kid is identifying differently in school than they are at home? Well, I think the bigger questions are, why don’t the parents know already and if they don’t why is their kid afraid to come out to the people who are supposed to offer them the safest of all environments?

Over the years, I have met many loving parents of transgen- der kids. And while they may not understand their child’s gender struggle, they make herculean efforts to educate themselves. And to the best of their ability, they support, advocate for, and most of all, love their kids unconditionally.

But there are parents who, for whatever reasons, find the idea of someone being transgender abhorrent—even sinful. And who will resort to extreme measures to ‘cure’ their child of what they perceive to be the disease of being transgender. And as you might imagine, informing a parent of this type could be harmful to a child, especially when they might be under the influence of someone like Washington state pastor, Jason Graber, pastor of Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane, who said he believed parents of transgender children deserved to be killed. One can only imagine what kind of home life a transgender child might have under those circumstances, and it’s easy to understand why he/she/they would want to keep it a secret.

So what is the child to do? It is a fact that a disproportionate amount of homeless youth identify as Transgendered. It is also a fact that a disproportionality high percentage of transgender kids attempt suicide. For many kids, these are their only desperate choices. Implementing a policy such as Middletown’s can only add fuel to an already raging fire of Transgender hate and misunderstanding that is sweeping this country.

There is no doubt that Middletown’s decision, as well as the towns of Marlboro and Manalapan-Englishtown (who have similar policies) can only have a negative impact on these students somewhere down the road and the State of NJ is fighting to keep the original protecting policies in place. The decisions of these districts are no doubt politically motivated. We have an increasing, nationwide conservative movement in this country that will stop at nothing to take away the civil rights of those who dare to be themselves proudly and openly.

I said at the beginning of this piece that there is no definitive right or wrong answer here, but maybe I was wrong. The safety of a child and their right to just “BE” is everything. And if we destroy that right in our schools, whose mission is to teach, educate and protect their charges, then we are responsible in part for the fates of their lives. We spend millions to keep intruders out of our schools, but we put our kids in harm’s way on the inside with policies like Middletown’s.

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is executive director of LGBT Tech.