School boards across Virginia are reevaluating their approach to transgender students.
Last month, Governor Glenn Youngkin's Department of Education released model policies for school divisions across Virginia relating to transgender students. The model policies suggest that parents should have the final say about names, pronouns and bathrooms – not students. Now, the Spotsylvania School Board is the first to adopt those new model policies.
Here's Spotsylvania School Board member April Gillespie.
"It's not up to us to say what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in people's homes and, 'Oh you can do it different here at school. We won't tell your parents.' We can't do that," Gillespie says. "That's not our place."
James Fedderman at the Virginia Education Association says school boards should reject the governor's new model policies.
"The governor and the Spotsylvania School Board are willing to implement policies that are simply cruel," Fedderman says. "All young people in our schools deserve to feel safe and to exercise their right to live authentically."
The new model policies are a 180 from the previous administration's model policies, which said schools should respect the wishes of transgender students to choose names, pronouns and bathrooms. School boards across Virginia are now considering whether they want to adopt the new policies, keep the old model policies or simply keep their existing policies in place.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
