Mead School Board to discuss ‘noncompliant’ transgender students policy at Monday meeting

The Mead School Board will evaluate its “transgender students” policy at the next school board meeting Monday as it awaits potential backing from federal officials.

The district’s policy has been deemed out of compliance in a recent civil rights review by the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. But the district’s board says the state is out of compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders on gender, including one that bans federal funding to programs that allow trans girls to participate on girls sports teams.

The board has until May 23 to make changes to its policy so it’s in compliance. Noncompliance could jeopardize the district’s state funding that amounts for more than 80% of their budget.

Earlier this month, the district sent letters to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, asking federal officials to intervene in a “legal dilemma” involving dueling directives from the state and federal government that the school board said would risk funding cuts if they complied with either.

Mead’s policy doesn’t have to be a carbon copy of the “model policy” blueprints provided by the Washington State School Directors Association , but it should ensure the school is following state civil rights laws on anti-discrimination, state Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in a recent news conference.

While it’s scheduled for review at Monday’s school board meeting, just the first reading before potential action on a later date, Mead School Board Vice President BrieAnne Gray said she’s uncomfortable with numerous areas in the state’s model policy, including parental notification if a student is transitioning and teachers’ approaches to asking preferred pronouns.

“ I’m not comfortable with the locker room and girls not having safe places in their locker rooms or restrooms, and the sports and competition area, I’m not comfortable with that part either,” Gray said. “So essentially, most of it.”

Mead’s policy reflects the state’s in that they allow trans kids to play on whichever sport team aligns with their gender identity, reinforced by state civil rights law and guidelines from school sports regulator Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association that allow the same. It’s a policy with which the Mead board has previously expressed its discontent at a board meeting in October.

Mead’s locker room and restroom access policy also follows the state, but omits a line included in the WSSDA model policy stating, “Any student – regardless of gender identity – who requests greater privacy should be given access to an alternative restroom. However, schools may not require a student to use an alternative restroom because of their transgender or gender-expansive status.”

“Girls should have their own space to change in privacy and not have fear of having to change with the opposite sex,” Gray said.

Mead’s policy and the state’s differ on other nuances , but Gray wasn’t sure where specifically they’re out of compliance outside of a couple examples listed in the state’s civil rights report.

Reykdal said his office intends to work with Mead to get its policy in compliance.

Gray hoped for more flexibility in the district’s policy making it so her board could best represent the wishes of its constituency, she said.

“I think that there’s room to discuss what we need to do and the OSPI definitely needs to have some back and forth discussion with us as a district,” Gray said.

Gray said conversations around the “transgender students” school policy, including playing sports, are meant to ensure safety and fairness for cisgender girls, not target any trans students.

“Women are allowed to have their own spaces and safety in bathrooms and at school,” Gray said. “It’s not specifically towards trans girls or trans students, It’s specifically protecting women.”

In this case, that’s not the message it sends to trans kids, said Louis Stay, executive director of advocacy and support organization Trans Spokane.

He was “exasperated” to see local politics influenced by the Trump administration’s anti-trans rhetoric and actions, like a recently blocked executive order expelling trans people from the military, directing agencies to recognize only female and male sexes rather than gender identity and an executive order barring trans women from women’s sports, to name a few.

“Seeing this at a local level, where now we’re saying, ‘Oh, well, should trans kids play in sports?’ It’s just exhausting having it continue to affect this community and continue to affect us in this way,” Stay said.

Trans youth are already a population more vulnerable to bullying, harassment, and mental health issues like depression or suicide ideation. Queer youth in general are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, according to a 2019 and 2020 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trans kids specifically are at a higher risk. They are more than twice as likely to experience depression, consider or attempt suicide than their cisgender queer peers, according to a 2020 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Hearing “hurtful” rhetoric from their school officials and community members speaking at these meetings doesn’t help, Stay said.

“I think the impact is dehumanization, really. It’s hearing people talk about you in a way that basically says that you are an outsider, that you are something other,” Stay said. “I can’t imagine for these kids what they must be going through; the extent that I have as a trans adult, hearing these conversations and hearing people talk about trans issues as if it’s like, I’m a bad thing, that I’m dressing up, that I’m not who I say I am, that I’m disingenuous and those conversations are incredibly impactful. They hurt a lot and they have negative mental health effects.”

It’s especially discouraging, Stay said, to see attempts at excluding trans kids from something as “average” as playing school sports. Reykdal said in a recent video announcement that out of the 250,000 kids in the state who play school sports, five to 10 are trans, according to the WIAA.

“It’s being treated as if we are a safety concern, as if we’re a risk to society,” Stay said.

Trans kids’ sport participation is not the “epidemic” that he feels it’s made out to be.

“The people that are arguing against this are arguing against a fiction,” Stay said. “They’re not arguing against the real five to 10 people that exist. That’s who’s being harmed by these kinds of actions.”

Stay attended school in Utah and transitioned soon after he graduated – as soon as he felt safe to do so, he said. He empathized with trans kids in schools where these conversations are happening, urging them to seek community elsewhere if they can’t find it in school.

“There are people here for you,” Stay said. “There are trans adults that support you and there are allies that support you as well, and you’re not alone in this.”

Namely, Odyssey Youth Movement provides resources for kids and young adults, and Stay’s organization, Trans Spokane, supports trans people over 18.

Mead’s next school board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at Union Event Center, 12509 N. Market St., Building D, in Mead. Public comment is available immediately following the board’s discussion of their policy. No action will be taken.