001all right we head to fairfax county now where the school board is voting on several key issues for students and one of them is all about pronouns and misgendering families are split on this a proposed policy could punish students who don't call their peers by their preferred names and pronouns casey nolan is at the meeting with what's happening now and what parents have to say about this casey leslie this is a late night session for sure the board meeting is still going on as the board wrestles with what is essentially an update to its code of conduct and one of the more contentious issues as you mentioned is either an issue of inclusivity or infringement depending who you ask time to stand up americans do it for the kids [Applause] at issue is the annual
002review of what's called the students rights and responsibility policy the fairfax board actually just passed in the last couple of minutes here an update to make it a discipline issue to misuse a person's pronouns or to do what is known as dead naming using a transgender person's previous name that they no longer use before the meeting two groups showed up both to denounce and support this change outside of the school board meeting here we spoke to two mothers of students in the district we are not anti-pride that's not what we're about we're not against the lgbtq plus community our issue is different we're against compelled speech we think that changes to the srnr the student rights and responsibilities document is actually a violation of children's and families first amendment rights it has nothing to do
003with my feelings towards the lgbtq plus community it can be used the dead naming the misgendering those things can be used in a in a way that's similar to bullying similar to as you would we know any type of racial slurs or things like that and that's really what we're trying to address is trying to make those things that intentional speech to address it as a form of verbal bullying that was something that the board said in the meeting tonight they said this is all about malicious speech just like they would prohibit any sort of hate speech in the school and again just in the past 90 seconds or so it did pass i spoke to one parent tonight who said now they are obliged to sign this student rights and responsibilities that their students
004will come home with some parents i'm told who are against this say they might start a boycott refuse to sign it leslie casey just just clear this up one more time so starting tomorrow what happens starting tomorrow the consequences are a little unclear that's what was not clear in the meeting tonight and something they talked about for a long time but it will now say in their code of conduct that a person is supposed to use the proper pronouns and the proper name that a person prefers but again the board says what they are targeting here is any malicious misuse of those terms all right certainly more more context and more things coming out about this to come casey thank you one more note about this the school board is also debating whether or not
005the use of cell phones should be limited on school grounds we're going to keep an eye on this and we'll let you know what happens