By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
It’s deja vu all over again!
At least, that is how it seems to many local parents who have had their eyes on the Clark County School District (CCSD) gender diversity issue which has been discussed and debated repeatedly in recent months.
The CCSD Board of Trustees has, once again, put the subject on the agenda for their meeting to be held on Thursday night, February 22 at 5 pm. As of early this week, the agenda had specified the location of the meeting to be in the trustee board room in the CCSD building at 2832 E. Flamingo Road in Las Vegas.
Though this is the third time in as many months, local advocates are urging parents of Moapa Valley school children to attend and speak up at this public meeting.
According to the agenda, the board will review and discuss recommendations from a gender diversity workgroup which was established last year to study the issue. The workgroup has proposed that there is a need for a new policy to specifically protect gender diversity students in the district.
This same agenda item was raised previously before the CCSD Board in a January 29 meeting. Before that, in December, no less than five public meetings were held by the workgroup to get feedback from the public on the proposal.
Though specific policy langauge has not yet been submitted by the workgroup, loose subject areas were recommended in all of these meetings. These included allowing transgender students to use preferred name and gender on “unofficial” school records, the right of students to be addressed by a preferred pronoun; allowing students access to restrooms or locker rooms of the gender with which they identify; a possible revision of CCSD dress code; methods to support parents, students and families in transitioning of transgender students and more.
At all of these meetings a broad range of parents from across the district showed up in force to express discomfort with the direction that the process was taking. Though there were also ample comments from groups in favor of such a policy, the majority attendance in all of the meetings was clearly from parents who were concerned that the policy would go too far and violate the rights of most of CCSD students.
In the most recent meeting on Jan. 29, CCSD Trustee Carolyn Edwards was forced to withdraw her motion to move forward with drafting a policy. This was because she realized she did not have enough votes from board members to pass it. But she pledged at that time to bring the item back at a future meeting when the full board would be in attendance.
Edwards is finishing her current term as CCSD trustee at the end of this year and will have reached her term limit.
Local advocates expressed frustration last week at being forced to rally parents in the community to turn out yet again on this issue. But they said that they see no alternative other than continuing to make their message of opposition to the policy consistently clear to trustees.
“I feel like we have just got to be diligent and continue to show up on this,” said local parent Erika Whitmore who has long been engaged in the district’s gender diversity policy process, as well as its sex education curriculum issues. “It is upsetting that the same thing keeps coming back, but we have to continue to show up so that they will know that most parents are not happy about this.”
Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) member Lindsey Dalley, of Logandale felt a similar frustration.
“Dealing with this group of Trustees on this issue has been like dealing with a two-year-old,” Dalley said. “Apparently we have to keep sending the same message again and again to them until at some point they grow up and get what we are saying.”
Dalley said that it is important that local parents continue to turn out to these meetings and hold the Trustees accountable for their actions on this issue. Even though it seems like it has all been done before, he said.
“It is frustrating but this is what it looks like to defend the principles that you highly value,” Dalley added. “I wish that there was a more economical and sensible way that took less time, effort and resources. But that is democracy: it’s messy!”
1 thought on “CCSD Gender Equity Policy Raised Again”
I would suggest that our school district confine yourselves to education and stop psychiatric social engineering. You have truly come to the place where the tail is wagging the dog in your efforts to cater to a small group of students at the expense of the majority. In your “wisdom”, you have become fools. This is a very simple matter .If your DNA says you`re a boy, you belong in the boy`s bathroom and locker room. If DNA says you`re a girl, it`s the girl`s bathroom for you. This is not your problem to solve. This is a family problem and a psychiatric problem that should be addressed by the parents of LGBT students not the school board. The community at large is not responsible for the problems created in individual families. Take a good look at yourselves. You have been scammed . You are behaving like fools and it needs to stop.