001okay we'll call the meeting to order to start with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of America [Music] okay just want to review this this is what's called a presentation meeting this is not a regular board meeting so we don't do regular board business it's not structured the same way we don't vote we don't review how things are going on in the different programs and buildings different ones we don't approve Personnel don't do what's regularly done this is a presentation meeting so three times a year the board asks the superintendent and staff if they would be able to provide us some information [Music] on topics that we ask about so the uh this this is one of those and this is how there's a there's also no public input we have
002said though and if people want to leave us questions at or email us or leave us questions at the end or whatever you can certainly do that and leave them with as as Liz no leave them with uh I'll take them Carrie Dr wholey or you can only email them so tonight we have a a couple of topics one we requested some information about RTI practices and supports that are done here in the district and Mr Squire arranged for some of our staff to come and speak to us about that and then we had some uh questions about gender identity and gender in schools and just how uh what we need to do as a district to be sure that we're following the law New York State federal that we're doing what we need to
003do and we frankly this is an area we we want to know about so that's what we invited our attorney actually we're hoping he's on the road and going to be here soon and uh so he can give us a legal parameters of what we need to do and we invited a subject matter expert who's assistant superintendent of a bow season Oswego County and she'll be on Zoom if all works well so those would be the two uh presenters there okay so if we want to start really with I don't think there's anything else I wanted to add let's see so we have several teachers here uh don't you don't you come up so you can yeah I mean I found my chicken over here so yeah okay so good evening I'm Caroline Staffing out
004um I am retired but I do come back in a consulting position to support teachers this is Maureen hotelling she's an interventionist and works out of CE Ann Albert also part of our intervention team in fact that's who all these people are she works at CE Carrie Ann Davidson who works out of eja and Roseanne the bishop who is out of bja so we've been asked here tonight to talk to you about the process of identifying students who need support and we put together some information for you so in the district now we have a plan that we call our mtss plan and we use lots of initials and lots of acronyms so mtss means multi-tiered system of supports and what mtss is is it's a framework it's a tiered frame framework and its data
005informed and we use we use this framework to provide targeted support to our struggling students so in a minute I'm going to show you what these tiers of support look like but as Educators we have worked to ensure that the majority of the students needs are met with core instruction what we call tier one and and students who need additional supports are identified by data and when we we use that data to make sure that we're focusing on the right skills and with the right intensity so this is this framework that we were talking about it's often viewed as a pyramid so tier one is that Universal tier it includes all of our students and we differentiate even at tier one but that's our Universal curriculum so our goal is to have 80 of our
006students needs met there but we're talking about a hundred percent of our students are in that tier and we differentiate there we know why with the assessments that we're going to talk to you about tonight that there are some students who need more support So tier two is what we call targeted support or strategic support this is when we start to figure out what the skill gaps are and how we might best address those for our students and then we have that final tier which is very intensive support so that would include our special education students or what we call tier three students who need smaller very very intensive support in order to meet benchmarks so this whole data process starts with a universal screening our tool that we use here is called sasbridge and
007we use this three times a year we're required to have a screener in place and we use it to identify students at risk these are brief standardized assessments that look at some key reading and math skills so it's not comprehensive but just some key skills all of the students in K to eight are screened with this fast Bridge tool we do it three times a year and if we're looking for an analogy we would say this would be akin to taking someone's temperature or their blood pressure we're trying to find out is there a problem after we complete fast Bridge some students are flagged and they do indeed we have students who don't need Benchmark but we don't know why right like if you go to the doctor and they say yes you have a
008fever doesn't mean we know why we have to find out we have to look a little further so we have Diagnostics assessments we use these to determine what skill students have and what skills students need to be taught they differ they're in depth they're often unstandardized but they're used to pinpoint areas of need so in reading that would be like phonemic awareness or phonics or vocabulary needs and math it might be number identification vac fluency place value these Diagnostics assessments are given to the students at risk after Universal screener and again that the analogy there would be like perhaps Diagnostic Imaging or blood tests so we can get more information now we want to know what is the problem and what are we going to do about it so this just sums it up difference
009between what it what we do at screening that's for all students three times a year Diagnostics of students our diagnostic assessments are for those students who were flagged and we need more information so like Caroline said additional Diagnostics might need to be administered in order to pinpoint those specific skills in reading and math and some examples and reading might be phonemic awareness phonics comprehension and a math number identification place value fact fluency and these really all help us help determine what intervention the child will hold it from whether that be in a classroom or in a pull-out intervention group so here's a list of some additional information that we may review so for example if we look at the common assessments we would look Network some comparative grade level data that would be across either
010the school or across the district if we look at the attendance we might we know that it greatly impacts students so we with consistent attendance it allows for uninterrupted educational program and maximizing learning opportunities for students but with multiple absences we found that there's academic gaps that are created or are widened from that so the last thing at the bottom is the fast Bridge history and this is an individual academic record of reading and math skills that are assessed through the fast Bridge platform and it's for each student and it's for a period of time so there's certain things we might look at when we look at that history like patterns of performance or growth rate over time or progress towards benchmarks [Music] spreadsheets and all of that information is then put into the spreadsheet
011and it's entered we use that throughout the year so every time that is screening or diagnostic Diagnostics is completed you enter that as well but after each time then we sit together as a team and we look at each student and the benefit of using the spreadsheet is because we can sort that you know if we want to look by schools or by skill we're able and we do look at it in various ways to make sure that we are you know finding out which students we need to be pulling so the spreadsheets are very helpful for us to do that and that is done based on a district-wide level the reason why we do it as a district flag level is because we want to ensure that students who meet the criteria are getting
012the services that they need so just because there's two full-time I'm you know providers in one of the schools if the need is higher there then you know we can make adjustments with the I.T providers to allow the other students that need the services so make sure they're getting their services and the goal for that is just to make sure that the students are all equal everybody who falls into that category is getting the same services so if we have we have more kids say at CE that needs Services than they do at eja we have a look at okay well we also have a 12 percentile these kids need to have services and so we focus on a certain level of students and we go we try to keep it below the 20th percentile
013so we can guarantee that those students are going to receive the services that they need and when we do meet together we meet as our team and our team meets publicly well we do three times a year after every time we do our Universal screening but we do I want to say like every six weeks or eight weeks after we do other Diagnostics we get back together to look at the information on the students and the team um consists of us up here and then we have all the building principles we have Mrs Willie on the assistant superintendent employers coach and the district school psychologist and we also have a classroom teacher who joins us on these meetings so you know we have a lot of input a lot of information and once we get
014together the Diagnostics are done and um excuse the universal screenings is done we look at all the students to identify who needs services but once we have them we group the kids based on their skills so we can look at them with the spreadsheet and say okay these particular students need these skills and we're able to group them and make sure that we have like targeted instruction for those students and this is just an example of one of the spreadsheets so you can see a lot of information is placed on these spreadsheets and we do go line by line student by student and like I said before we we really sort it in different ways so that we make sure we're getting the whole picture and then we will put in you know what groups
015what students would be in which groups and then what interventions they would be getting and how we would progress monitor those interventions so everything is on this and we refer to this you know frequently when working with our students finish and then the last thing that we do once we have all this this done we go back and we take to the classroom teachers usually during our plk time or we had a half day recently where we've met with the teachers and we went over all the Diagnostics are mistreating and all the interventions that would need to be done we sat we met with the classroom teachers and explained like what interventions would need to do within the classroom so that would be like the chair one and some of the tier two levels so
016what they would be they would need to provide for their students um the interventions we help them get the materials together and we set up the progress monitoring groups and again we give them access to the Diagnostics that we do ourselves so that way they can see the spreadsheets they have on these students and they can see the progress that their students are making over time so that's it in a nutshell so what are can you describe some of the interventions that you've actually put in place sure so distraction but we're talking about research-based instruction that really focuses on a skill so for example if we know that there's a phonemic awareness issue and a phonemic awareness issue would be being able to hear and manipulate the Sounds in words without attaching those sounds to
017letters we know that's crucial before we get into phonics so we would look and say can this student isolate the first sound in the word so if not we would be working on on targeting that during that time can they manipulate that rhyme or that that chunk at the end of the word can they segment all of the Sounds in a word back at can they blend those sounds together we say that or we say book act and they would say that so we get down to that very specific level to figure out what it is because even within phonemic awareness there's there are different levels of that uh that scale so and we would group the kids accordingly so we'd say oh these kids need to work on very early skills so that's the
018that's the intervention or instruction they will get for part of the time then we will look at their phonic skills are these kids that are looking at letter names are they looking at letter sounds are they uh are they working on CBC words which would be those three letter words with short vowels are they ready to for Digestive Blends so we we we're able with our diagnostic to get down to that very specific level and then do the instruction to match that and you you individually do them you you have like a caseload right so that's what we mean by differentiation at tier one so we're trying to meet all kids needs there but for the kids that need that more support these these teachers will take the students who um are more at risk
019but classroom teachers will also even the students that they see classroom teachers are working with every day and they are also aware of where these students are in this spectrum of skills so that their targeted instruction is happening too you take them out individually or as a group small group small groups but sometimes students depending on their needs that may be seen on a one to one basis and those are usually that sometimes would be like a special education student okay question that's usually asked is how can we as the board support your group um if there's more um things that you guys need more people more I'm going to say that we met today um we we as a team identified something that we felt wasn't working we felt that that at first grade
020some of the tools we had were not very effective and and Dr Houlihan was there and we raised our concerns we went through them with her she was very responsive so we're going to try something different and she's ordering she ordered the materials for us today and it worked very nicely so at this point I I don't know that we need an advocate yet because we are we are also I feel like we're in a uh in a change right now we've got a lot Pilots going on and I'm sure you're familiar with what's being broadcast in the in the media about the science of reading we're learning more about that as well so we're changing our practices and we have been supporting that we have had the opportunity to learn more for ourselves about
021what science says about teaching kids to read and we have been given access to some good materials so and when we asked for time to so when these new manuals come we've asked for time for me to take the team and really go through what these what this program looks like how best to use it where the materials and the resources are how to access those so we have asked for that time and we've been told that we will have it so we felt we felt very good about that today what I know you've mentioned it before but what grade levels do you start at with the services we start writing kindergarten okay not at the beginning of the year at the beginning of the year kindergarteners need a chance to become accustomed to school
022and their teachers so we'll do push-in support but once we're about I don't know would you say like eight minutes then we started to pull the kindergarteners who may need some Services outside of the classroom yes with early intervention we know works best if we can address those skill gaps and close them when they're young we're far more successful than we let them go that cat gets so big and then you go up to eighth grade or is it just K4 okay these teachers were k-4 however um the fast Bridge the screener is K-8 and reading and math and there are intervention services they differ they change as kids go through the grade levels Middle School would look a little different but it's kids in fifth grade still need some phonic support that that is
023part of their program so do you feel as though you have enough staff to cover all the RTI services that are needed in our school I feel like we've been able to because we do have a couple other interventionists from the middle school and we've been able to all work as a team to look at this data and then so like for example two interventionists from the Middle School also have groups in the elementary right now so and our schedules are fluid which means that they'll be changing again so I feel like right now we've been able to accommodate all the needs do you do you see in the future a possibility of supporting or supporting the teachers or of preschoolers I actually pushed into preschool last year when they first started and I um
024with the preschool program so we had tried to find her with a schedule they started to do it but unfortunately yeah yeah because yeah I was wondering about that's what I was wondering about if you could start them in the preaching now that you have preschool to and if you don't have the manpower to do it to train the preschool teachers what to do how to do they all are using the research base it really is integrity which is oh they are and yeah so right so Hagerty is actually a phonemic awareness curriculum but it does put at the early levels it does work on letter names and sounds and so right from pre-k our students are using that and carrion has been supporting them and using it that I think that was a wise
025move because before we had paper beats and we were just using bass Bridge we identified right away we had a phonemic awareness issue we were getting a lot of students every year who were flagged for phonemic awareness interventions and when we were honest with ourselves and we looked at our tier one curriculum we said is it an intervention issue or is it an instructional issue and we decided it was probably instructional so last year kindergarten started with hegerty this year uh and actually Pre-K had it last year and this year we have hegarty at tier one in the classroom Pre-K and wine and then in the in the tears we continue on for students who haven't mastered those early situations it's called Bridge of the Gap so that's what we will use to support that
026have you seen the impact of covid and are you seeing recovery happening from yes slowly I think that one of the things we're still seeing though is that absenteeism that we associated with covid you know we still have some families that have high absentee rates and some of it is legitimate illness and you know I think I I was one of those bad parents that before covid would say to my kid you'll be fine I had a kid throw up in the car on the way to school one morning teach me a lesson come on you know you can do this you'll be fine and and think we're much more cautious now about sending children to school who don't seem well but I know these flip side of that is when you know it's December
0271st and you have a student who's missed 18 days of school it has an impact so uh you know we're still fighting some of that anything else well thank you for coming tonight and thank you for all you're doing for the kids we appreciate it I love you good night okay okay welcome Mr Gregory don't go far we're right into the uh to your portion of the program and I did I think introduce you you are our attorney with a with a firm that we are that we work with right so my name is James Gregory I'm with Ferrara Firenza and come and asked to come and talk about the legal requirements and of transgender students and what schools are required to do let's get your slide back up here in a second okay all
028right if I have a clicker right at this point yep it's on the this thing now I went into a law to report technology so we'll see how this works all right so uh let's start off uh we were talking about the legal requirements we need to talk a little bit about vocabulary um because right law is written with words so we need to know what the words mean all right so we're going to establish a shared vocabulary assign sex at Birth right that's the sex usually male or female it's assigned to a person when they're born it's put on their birth certificate cisgender is a person whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned to at Earth transgender is someone whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at
029Birth so cisgender or transgender gender identity right your gender identity and your sex are not the same thing in the generally speaking and when we're talking about these laws because what laraism we'll get there but there's there are several laws there's a Code section with the code in the section for it uh well Title IX is uh federal law there is New York state executive law which is we're coming to uh transgender protection it's executive law section 296 and then there's several more in a row okay there is the gas up which is particularly for all students at and there are the commissioner of Education regulations under Dasa which you don't see on the screen when we get there thank you and before you got here Mr Gregory we did go over that this is
030a presentation meeting and that we don't have a public input section in these meetings and it's basically the board was asking for your legal expertise around these issues because we're just not sure we want to make sure that we're abiding by the laws great and we offered that if people had questions they could leave them with us and or email us and we can certainly consult with you if all right thank you so gender expression right this is the manner in which a person represents or expresses their gender to others often through Behavior clothing mannerisms most classically right in the United States from the colonial period until the 1940s women almost exclusively wore dresses men almost exclusively wore pants so part of your gender identity would have been are you wearing a dress or are
031you wearing a pant that was that was a signal of what sex you were right as we've moved forward in time the pants and skirts don't follow that so clearly but I want to give you an example of what we're talking about right but there are many other um how you hold yourself up gender non-conforming simply means that your gender expression differs from the stereotypical ex well the stereotypes expected right sexual orientation this really is what your attraction is are you attracted to people of or what sex you're attracted to might be multiple might you might be attracted to women you might be attracted to men it does not go hand in hand with any particular gender expression or gender identity so just let's say you were assigned the sex of female at Birth you
032identify as male so you would be transgender that is not predictive of whether you are romantically and sexually attracted to males or females or both we have to understand from a legal point of view those are separate issues no these are children right we're not in our own this is these are children if you would like to submit things and be happier correct I'm just asking a question are you aware that their children that they were just talking about or did you are you confused so talk regards to transgender students excuse me sir this is a non-questionable presentation it's not gonna be cold again thank you all right so in 2015 New York State put out a guidance and it was saying what they how they expected school districts to enforce gender requirements it was
033put out by New York State Department of Education in conjunction with the New York State Attorney General's office and it was very interpretation of how New York state laws applied and what they said in 2015 was that a person has the right to use the name and the pronouns that they choose you can't enforce what you want to call on that person they get to pick for themselves it said that the student has the right to confidentiality this is a very thorny issue and we'll get into it farther and it said that students have the right to have facilities access consistent with the gender that they saw it their gender identity when we're talking about facilities access we're generally talking about bathrooms locker rooms the biggest problem from a legal point of view with the
0342015 guidance was that it assumed everybody was on the same page and that there was no conflict between the parent and the student about how the student ought to be treated right and if everybody's on the same page it's pretty easy because we're all in agreement so a guidance that tells us what to do when everybody agrees on what to do is not that helpful so so that came out in 2015 from a history point of view you need to know the 2016 the administration at the right the U.S presidential Administration changed they issued a guidance um that before Title IX which provides for uh discrimination against discrimination on the basis of sex in educational setting had said that transgender was protected we had a change of presidential Administration in 2016 they gave new guidance
035that said that was no longer covered under Title IX what's confusing about that is those Title IX protections went away but it didn't touch New York State's protections and so in 2016 2018 we were doing a lot of conversations explaining in New York state it doesn't matter what the federal government did New York State protections remained in place in 2018 the New York Department of Education issued new regulations specifically with regard to schools 100.2 KK one of the commissions of Education regulations and it said this is relating to the Dignity of all students act and it said it is bullying and harassment within the meaning of Dasa to refuse a transgender student access to facilities restrooms changing rooms locker rooms or field trips based on their gender identity so if the child says I identify
036as female I want to use the women's locker rooms I want to use the girls bathrooms if the school refuses it's a violation of the dignity all students Act same thing with dress code and grooming standards use of names and pronouns that qualifies and what that matters is when we're talking about Dasa a lot of times what we're talking about is how students treat each other right that's sort of traditional bullying but it also applies to how staff treat students and so this means the school cannot have the School Employees refusing to follow the student's choice because it's a violation of the dignity all students it and it would be pulling so the next law is the New York State human rights law that as I referenced earlier's education law excuse me it's executive law
037296. and then there's an A and A B and A C but 296. and that states and came out in January 2019 they passed gender the gender expression non-discrimination Act for a long time the Department of Human Rights decisions had no impact on students because the way the law was written students weren't back covered schools had to follow human rights law with regard to employees but now with regard to students but that was amended so now New York State human rights law protections apply to students and in gender they specifically made it to cover transgender students so now if the school refuses to much like debt to dot that violation of Dasa to recognize and follow the students wishes it's going to be a violation of the New York State human rights law to follow
038the student's Choice regarding their gender identity and expression in 2021 2020 we've had a change of administrations again at the presidential level right and they again flipped back Title IX and now Title IX again is interpreted to cover transgender status so the current state of the law and I'm talking about this moment in time I can't tell you what's going to happen tomorrow or a week from tomorrow a year from tomorrow because this is a very fast moving area of law but right now school districts are legally obligated under the federal Title IX under New York State Department of Human Rights law and under New York State education regulations and law Dignity of all students Act you are required to protect gender identity you are required to give accommodations to students who are transgender so
039what are the practical implications those are all a lot of big fancy words what does that mean on the day-to-day level so restrooms pronouns name locker room Sports written work formal records right those all are implicated well we are recommending that you do because this is a very complicated area is you have a conversation when a student comes to a member of the school Community right an employee and indicates that they are transgender or are considering their identity and they're not sure that is the beginning of a conversation that you have had and that's a conversation you're going to be having for many years because typically students don't just flip a switch and go from one to the other they have conversations they have explore they're trying things out and I'm not saying that this
040is legally required I'm just saying when we get phone calls that's the typical fact pattern we hear right so you're going to have a conversation first about what do they want what are they looking for one of the most complicated parts of the conversation and one of the part that is subject to conflicting interpretation is what do you do when a kid comes to you and says I'm transgender don't tell my parents we have two laws that are in conflict under gender the department of human rights law and if you read their guidance it is a violation of a transgender person's rights if you tell other people that they're transgender without their permission if you out them without their permission that's illegal that's law number one and if you read the guidance put out by
041the department of Human Rights they talk specifically about college students so we know to cover students they have not given specific guidance about school students at the school level but they've given informal guidance but of course we're going to apply it the same way to students in at the below college level so that's one side the other side of conflict is New York State education law says that for you must tell the parents of a minor significant health concerns so then the question is is the child being transgender a significant Health concern and that's a complicated question because the rule for lack of a better term is that the mere fact of being transgender is not automatically a health concern on the other hand your school counselors and psychologists are going to be able to
042tell you that there is a an elevated risk for depression anxiety suicidal ideation associated with transgender status so there are frequently going to be health issues associated with it you can't assume that it's just because someone's transgender it's a health issue but part of a conversation that you're going to have is exploring are there any health issues mental health issues in particular with that child and the issues that they're going through the other issue you're going to have with that child right they don't want you to tell this is not a large community in the long term that that information is going to get out into the broader community and it's going to get home to the family so part of the conversation you're having it is working with a child in general to get
043them to where their family is going to know about it because it's probably better to better to be heard from the child in a supportive way than to be heard from someone else at the gas station right but that's part of the conversation there's no exact right way to do this all right If the child is okay with the parents knowing you bring the parents in and you have a conversation with the parents about how is this going to work and again this is going to change over time in our experience again this is a general matter my children first want to change their name then they start changing what they wear and then maybe after a little while they start wanting to use a restroom or the locker rooms with their with their chosen
044gender it doesn't usually happen all at once so you're going to be having this conversation again and again and you need to because if you refuse to have the conversation if you refuse to engage with what the child wants you're probably going to depart from what the child wants and then you're going to be in violation of all of the laws and regulations I just talked about since when did the students ever get to decide anything about what happens in schools so [Music] as I have just explained the laws that I just talked about specifically require it um so some Mr Greg like there's a there's a there's an impasse and there's one law says one thing one law says the other like right one law says you don't share the information about the child's
045status the other law says you do share with the parents because it could be a health concern who helps so you yeah it's going to be us okay but in conjunction because the only way to the way the courts work is the court because it's a presentation meeting and he's presenting to the board on our children we're sitting here too are we allowed to ask like you know what what I talked about before is you could submit questions at the end but I don't want to just we're trying to figure this out ourselves yeah no and I respect that thank you all right so yes you're going to bring it when you're going to bring in your own I'm not a mental health expert right I'm a legal expert so that's why you're going to
046be looping in your school counselor your school psychologist um your school social workers did because if the parent If the child says you can't tell my parents you can't the first law says you can't the second law says you can if it's a health issue so we have to determine is it a health issue so that's why we look to him and then we have a conversation and I'm not going to make the call whether it's a health issue except to the extent right you've had your guidance Council you've had all your counselors talk and they say here's the information we think it's a health issue and then you talk to me and you're gonna say what is it and say well your mental health professionals are telling you it's a health issue nowadays right
047another part of this right the rules are changing so quickly 15 years ago 20 years ago being transgender was diagnosable in the diagnostic and statistics manual right it was called gender dysphoria and it was a mental health concern therefore it was automatically a health issue in the more recent additions they've moved away from that and transgender status is no longer automatically a mental health issue what's changed so I will answer that I'm not a mental health professional I can't tell you what they've changed why it's changed but that's taking census it's just love the depression it's not a thing right so so people are depressed um and again just because they might not have a diagnosis of uh gender dysphoria they can still if they're having anxiety if they're having depression if they're having suicide
048ideation if they're having anxiety those are all mental health issues if they're related to the transgender status that information that has to go home to the parent but you probably don't want to be making that call all by yourself on a Wednesday night right all right so factors to be considered the age of the child matters the younger the child is the more likely you are going to have to be to Loop the parent in what's what is the magic age there isn't one this is where they've told us in guidance that age matters but we haven't had enough litigation or further guidance to narrow that down so I can't tell you what the ages are I can just tell you the younger the child is the more likely you're going to have to look
049for parents in earlier any age under a minor should be all right so then parent involvement what do we do we've really already talked about this as a school district you want to bring the parent in because it's going to be very complicated to keep the parents out but right now you either need to determine if there's a health issue or you need to have the child's consent in order to notify the parents part of the conversation that you're having I remember I told you how hard it's going to be you're going to have this it's going to be impossible in the long term for the family not to know I had this issue earlier today at another District we were talking about this do you guys use School tool this is a similar right
050in school tool it was not written to deal with preferred names versus um legal names and and to keep them completely separate so if the child says I don't want I will in school I want to be right my name is James let's say I decide I'm transgender I'm a student I want to be called Janet I don't want my parents to know in school I expect all of my teachers to call me Janet my papers are going to be Janet Etc the rule says you guys have to follow that I don't want my parents to know there's no apparent mental health issue you can't tell them and school tool the parent portal is going to have one or the other and it's going to be the same as what your teachers have so because
051of the technology it's very difficult to call me Janet on all of my school work and to call me James for all of the schoolwork that my parents see that's just going to be very very difficult and that's part of the conversation you have with the student right while they may want it to be confidential and in the short term you can keep the confidential in the long term that path it's going to be very very difficult and the longer that they wait the harder it's going to be because the older you get the more your legal name matters right when you go for a driver's license I don't get to put my nickname on it it's my legal name and just to get it I have to bring legal documents that show right my
052birth certificate other forms of ID would have my legal name the older when you go to college in your transcripts right those if those things don't match it creates problems this is a conversation you have you don't need to have a conversation about college transcripts and driver's license with a sixth grader but you do with an 11th grader right so this is all part of working it through with them pronouns pronouns they get to pick what they want That's the Law I'm not here to agree or disagree with it I'm here to tell you what you're legally obligated to do um one of the things that people worry about is what if I get it wrong am I harassing and bullying someone if if I they want I want you all call me Janet you
053call me James because you know me as James for years and years slip ups are okay right we've talked about the dignity for all students active bullying it is okay to make a mistake it is not okay to refuse we have had situations where employees have said it's against my beliefs to recognize you as transgender I'm not going to do it that is automatically harassing under Dasa because it's intentional a refusal to recognize a person's roles foreign once informed you're going to do your best we're all human mistakes to be made as long as you attempt to correct your mistakes that's the best way to limit your liability um when when kids or teachers or other staff make mistakes be cautious about disciplining them unless you believe it's intentional right if it happens again and
054again and again and again in all cases regarding discrimination and harassment whether it's under Dasa or sexual harassment under Title IX or Title VII your standard your duty as a district is to make sure that when you learn about it you don't ignore it you take reasonable steps to make it stop and if the reasonable thing you did last time didn't make it stop you have to escalate the consequence right we use Progressive discipline all the time and when we talk about students we use Progressive discipline when we talk about staff it's the same thing here you have to have Progressive responses um and we're not punishing people for mistakes but at some point is it a mistake right that's a case-by-case decision give us a call if you think right this person is not
055doing it on purpose or with the deliberate disregard for what's required and what's our liability risk there if a person is just doesn't want to acknowledge that there's a child who wants to use a different name sure and you what what's the rights of the child it's a family too right so um it's going to depend on where we find the violation remember I've talked about three separate laws so under Dasa there is no fiscal consequence right now but a violation of Dasa is also likely going to be considered to violate the New York State human rights law when New York State human rights law that is where there are monetary consequences involved um but the first will be educational right because well the first thing that this they look at because we're talking about
056students here who's been injured here we're talking about students is a loss of educational access right you can get fined um you can be put through the ringer and you can be required to provide additional um services to the child uh if you get if you're found under 1983 that's a federal law section 1983 and that's for deliberate violations of someone's constitutional rights then you're talking about monetary damages we haven't seen that for a Title IX for a student in this case yet but I suspect that it will become right and you don't want to be the test case the other cost always are your legal costs right because legal costs are not free and uh your administrative costs are also going to be significant because I'm going to be talking to I'm going to
057be making all your staff what does what's the legal entity that this process goes through division of Human Rights courts or so there's a number of them but so Title IX is done through the New York excuse me from the federal department of educational office of civil rights but it can go on to the courts New York State Department of Human Rights they oversee the human rights law and it can go on to the courts Mr Gregory um for an employee for religious reasons doesn't want to follow the regulations there's no exemption for that there is no exemption for there's no exemption for religious um yeah against recognizing some of the transgender students that is correct um the the think about it from the current legal perspective as a transgender student has the same rights
058as a person does who's of a minority and race and a minority in religion you can't say I don't believe you should have those rights right call them by their name now you may have covered it but um if if if it was a non-public school a private school a religious school do they fall under these same categories I can't answer that question because I don't represent any uh private schools my understanding is that Title IX does apply to non-public schools I don't know whether uh the human rights law does I believe it does but I can't say that with authority okay thank you what happened to a student that doesn't come forward with us so we're going to now talk about we're going to skip amending records um there's a process under for amending
059records it's related with when a child wants to change the records to match their name but that's a that's sort of beyond the scope of what we're talking about here all right let's talk about restrooms so for restrooms um right now the move is the child gets depict they don't get to go back and forth and you can offer the child the option to use you know a staff rescuer to use the restroom and the nurse's office or some other single bathroom but you cannot require it if a child says I'm going back James and Janet I my name is Janet I want to use the girls restrooms you cannot require me to use the nurses you can offer me that that can be part of the conversation which you can't ever require is there
060a corresponding or how do you figure the corresponding rate to the person who doesn't want to share the restroom with someone they believe is not the same sex there is no corresponding right the courts analogize it to going into a diner and saying I don't want to you to serve the black person next to me right we had that argument in the 60s and the courts say the same thing right you have lots of Rights you don't have the right about who gets to use the access next to you foreign [Music] what you can do if you have because you are going to have cases where the other people are uncomfortable right one of the things that the guidance talks about the 2015 guy just talks about is it they talk about for instance in
061in multi-stall bathrooms and in locker room hanging up privacy curtains right anybody can use those so if you have a student who comes to you and they say I'm not comfortable because Janet's going into the locker room with me you can say well you're welcome to use the Privacy curtain as well you know if you hang one or more you can go use those that's the extent of the rights or they could go use the single yup bathroom all all love does that discriminate then against them or so it doesn't discriminate if a child individual child chooses to go and use another restroom that doesn't discreet me but we have had we had a case where a group of students decided they did not want to change this was in a gym situation right we
062had a transgender student what using the locker and several students decided they didn't want to do it and they went all they wanted to go down and use the nurse's office well the nervous nurse's office had one bathroom so they had to stand in long line now ultimate that could have been harassment and discrimination right children are under Dasa are not allowed to bully other children either and under the human rights law you have an obligation to make sure just like you're not supposed to allow employees to to harass a child you you're not supposed to allow students to harass the child so if they are again it's Progressive discipline just like we talked about you're going to treat it like as a Das a concern is the child refusing to use the other child's
063name because it's an accident or are they actively refusing it's refusing as an accident they have a conversation we had this conversation we had this issue with a district where a student right we had a very young transgender student and some of the other kids were mixing up their names and the student was very concerned and actually the student was transgender said if you call me by the wrong name you're going to get such the principles the teacher correctly said no mistakes are not going to be treated that way right that's not going to happen right and one of the kids who was not the transgender student was very worried about being sent to the principal's office right went home told their mom and and that was a hold to do but to correct the
064teacher did the right thing for mistakes we're not going to punish anybody and repeated mistakes are we're human I have three daughters I get their names mixed up all the time and I've lived with them for years right um you're going to make mistakes it's it's the teacher's job and then the administrator's job to decide is it a mistake or is it harassment and bullying personal opinion I find it hard to believe that students who are uncomfortable using the um restroom or locker room and they leave how that can be harassment because they want to protect themselves so it's what would be harassing just the active leaving in and of itself probably isn't but we all know that in many cases forget transgender you you'll have a group of students who will just cut that
065other student out right and we know in in Dasa cases that's bullied if you don't let the kids sit with you if anytime the kid comes in everybody else leaves over time debt splitting and harassment because they're deliberately ostracizing that student so the question is when does a couple of students going away because they're not comfortable become ostracizing and the answer is when they all agree this is what we're going to do we're going to show them we're going to show that person totally two different things so but how do you know which it is you don't know until you ask questions until you investigate right because the other thing right someone's going to come and complain to you and tell you what's happening well I don't know how many of you have kids but
066when my kids you have a problem what the first one that comes to me isn't the one who's right right they're just the first one to get to me you have to listen to all sides of the story then you figure out are these people who are just leaving because they want to change somewhere else or is this deliberate ostracizing and cutting out of the person that wouldn't happen please if that's your job under the dignity for all students that's the legal obligation that you have and when you don't know gather the facts call us we'll help walk you through it because it's absolutely absolutely a legal Minefield right now because the law the laws are so new the concepts are so new and they're changing so quickly all right education law 409 m requires
067that all single stall bathrooms in a school be labeled as gender neutral just use one you've got the great the right side um all right let's talk about the lockers we talked a little bit about it already in general transgender students are allowed to use the locker that correspond to their gender identity as I said you can offer them opportunities to dress somewhere else you can't require them to dress somewhere they don't want to you can only offer it's part of the conversation what if a school has a girls locker room a boy's locker room kind of transgender locker room do they have to get dressed as a transgender or they can choose like Janet can go into the girls that's a great question to which I do not have an answer I don't know
068any schools that have three locker rooms my guess not yet right not yet my guess is that that is going to be a violation because you are would you say transgender are we talking about is that for transgender males and transgender females yeah because the transgender male is going into the female James who wants to be identified as Janet is going into the girls locker room right so yeah right so my guess is that that will be found to be discriminatory because you're singling them out and treating them not is the gender they want to be but as this third category right when you're the law is written for better or worse than if I'm trained if I'm Janet I get to be treated but as a female to the maximum extent possible you don't
069get to say Oh no you're not really female we're carving out the special category for you which is what the third locker room does that's a projection I've not seen a case on it but I can tell you that the way the laws are written the way the agencies are interpreting the laws and regulations and the way the law Works generally you can't carve out a third special right that's not separately that would be the term you're trying to create separate equal and that generally does not survive scrutiny so then you open up the lawsuits so unlock touching and viewing all right from one child to another Athletics let's talk about Athletics School your principal so I'm going to me to leave if you don't stop please Athletics this is another area it causes a
070lot of consternation and rightly so because the rules are new what the rule currently says the New York state right the High School Association this hot says that they will recognize transgender status so Janet right I'm James I've identified as Janet I want to play on the female sports team what happens is we go to the superintendent the superintendent confirms yes Janet really has identified as transgender and I get I get played in the women's sports that's the way the the way the rule is right now and then and then install the events and then and that's different right if James wants to play on the women's sports team I James under the rules and I'm I'm not Janet right I'm cisgender James and I want to play on a women's sports team if there's
071a male sports team I can't right if there's men's and women's basketball I can't play but if you only have women's field hockey you don't have men's field hockey I'm allowed but I have to go through a process to make sure that I feel through a physical process in review and be signed off and similarly if you don't have a football team for women and you've got a girl who wants to play they have to go through a process um and be screened um and to be allowed to play and those are designed to make sure that people are not physically mismatched by too much of a size for better or worse that's the theory behind it it does not apply in transgender and everything you're talking to is New York state everything I'm seeing
072is New York state for in these rules the federal law is a floor you can't be you can't provide less protection in the federal law but you can provide more this is the federal law this is Title IX this is New York state right so your held to this standard what happens in other states and if people bring to you guidances and recommendations and regulations from other states it doesn't matter right what New Jersey is doing or Alabama is doing in Vermont is doing is irrelevant because every law every state gets to set its own rules as long as they are equal to or above the federal floor so and that sort of sorts of great confusion right because people go out they research it they've got questions understandably so they go online they start
073pulling these things out and they say wait I heard that Gregory guys speak this is completely different well the first thing to check is is it a different state is the guidance will will probably be calling you a lot of this is a situation where we're dealing with but I got a little lost like so this the idea of a like a girl wants to play on the football team that's all male that's not a transgender what I'm telling you is that before transgender matters really came to the fore yeah and we started having specific regulations about how to treat transgender people the old cisgender rules okay under commissioner's regulations was that if you wanted to play on a on a sport that was the opposite of your sex um you had to go through
074a process to make sure that you were not so large you were going to crush everybody on the other side or so small you were going to get crushed right that that was the idea behind it when it came to transgender they said none of that applies but it all still applies with regard to cisgender of sports players they didn't take that rule away for everybody they only took the rule away for two people who are transgender and it's on a it's on a season-by-season basis so Janet plays on the women's uh basketball you you write a letter saying yes Janet's been identifying as transgender when it comes to the spring Sports season it takes another letter oh every yeah season every right now it's yeah on a seasonal basis I promise you that's going
075to be the rule tomorrow but that's what the rule is today and that's a superintendent level decision it's a suit right what happened so nisma sets the rules for All inter-school Sports in New York City and what what Nissa has said is this is the structure how we're going to deal with transgender students in sports return to the superintendent because we need to know that the student is quote unquote legitimately transgender not just trying to play you know to win more and so we go to the superintendent and superintendent says yes this person right we've been having the conversation Jasmine Janet um and then Janet gets to play on the the women's softball but there would have had to have been a conversation right it can't just be I want to play correct correct because
076probably what happened so if James comes I've never had any conversations I've been James right from kindergarten and I'm not and I'm now in the 11th grade and I say hey I want to play in the girls sports team my name is Janet probably what the superintendent is going to do is going to call us up and say do I got to do this or no yeah we're going to have a conversation and I'm going to say do you have any indication that it's anything other than trying to pick the team that I want to play right but legally there's nothing from me you know what I haven't talked to anybody but I'm Janet I want to be Janet all concerned I want to be Janet by my name I want to be Janet using
077the locker rooms and I want to be Jennifer Sports I guess part of this is protecting the district around liability issues it is because people can say whatever but then if they don't like the district's response Sue yes right sure so what about I mean there have been situations where my daughter went through school here she had a friend that wavered right decided one month they were you know she was a sister well she was born and female decided one month but she wanted to identify as male went back and forth a little bit and then you know like finished I think it was with junior year she was a male and then Senior Year back female and now as an adult because my daughter's 26 at this point there she's a female getting married
078you know what I mean so like if there's a history of someone that wavers back and forth like what so I can tell you that our regulations and our laws and our guidances are so not ready to deal with that so when you talk to my 19 year old they'll say oh yeah that's gender fluid that's a thing notice how gender fluid was not any of the terms yeah I still have the tricky part because sometimes at this age and look I have family members that have trans you know whatever it doesn't matter the point is that I get it if someone wants to be something that they were not born ever I also know that it's tricky sometimes being middle school or in high schooler and finding a group that accepts you and so
079you what so sometimes you're not really something but you're just trying to find groups so like how do we protect well aren't all middle schoolers trying to figure it out trying to figure out their identity so no I'm agreeing with you because what's happened is they're figuring it out who I am and is now expanded to include what what gender I am in and when people go back and forth it's going to be part of the conversation and I don't have an answer for at some point going back and forth is not going to be right when we're talking about restrooms currently going back and forth does not work with regard to restrooms but I can't tell you that that's going to be the same answer in a year from now right we may we
080may see New York State past agenda they may add gender fluid to it right and at some point we may have individual stalls the response may be individual stalls in all bathrooms and all the locker rooms that may be where we're headed I don't right but right if I could predict the future I'd be playing the stock market and I'd be in a Beach right now I I have a question I'm I'm sorry I'm stuck on that nice okay um you're Janet you're going into the locker room yes well I'm Susie and I feel very uncomfortable but I'm just a general ed student that what are my rights well amen what I can tell you is what I can only tell you what the law says [Music] I'm not defending I'm not saying it's greater
081okay what the law currently says is you don't have right to reject that person or be rude to that person and to the extent you don't want to change in front of them it is perfectly reasonable to say hey can we have a privacy pertinent here I would like a privacy curtain okay right you can do that it's okay for you to say you know what I'm going to wander down and use another restroom to change but a lot of times students are for instance are not allowed to change in the nurse's room without specific permission um so the nurse isn't going to be set after a lunch um so where your rights are I mean I pretty much Define them all right now right there under the law you do not have a right
082to reject it [Music] do much of anything at all so yeah all right that's really the end of my presentation tonight do you have any more questions right I expect right just like I told you when it went from when someone comes in here to one of your staff members and says I think I'm transgender that's the start of a conversation this is going to be a continuing conversation because the law is moving so quickly right we talk about gender fluid we've talked about what happens when right we have a season by season approval for playing on sports if the student goes back and forth is that okay we don't know the answer we don't have any of those cases yet I'm if we get the situation we're going to have a conversation about is
083the student going back and forth because they're picking the most advantageous team to be on or is this truly right they're comfortable with they're comfortable with one or they tried it out and they hated it right it's okay to try something out and hate it right that's part of being a student so and there's no easy answer we have to have a conversation and figure out what's happening in that particular student's case and what happened in that particular student's case does not automatically apply to other transgender students it's going to be a different conversation with each student and I have a question I don't know if it's for you or if it's for us later our counselors do they get training on how to remain neutral like don't push them either way just kind of
084talk about their feelings um because it's a big deal and our counselors need to know what to do in these situations and I don't know if they get trained so I don't know what mental health training they go through because I'm not a mental health expert right so they go through lots of training to become to get their license what that entails in that particular question I don't I don't know that would be a question to have with your school counselors and school psychologists Mr Gregory have you had any conversations with school districts that are planning building projects for the future as to what uh some changes they may want to look at and plan for any new regulations or adapting to the current regulations yeah well the the biggest thing that we're seeing in
085building projects is moving more towards single stall right moving away from um for instance Community showers to stall showers right simply because it's easier to deal with it's on the bathroom level on the locker room level we're seeing that as a conversation right the issue is they're more expensive because it takes more space to accommodate the same number of people and right you money is you don't have infinite money so it's it's part of an ongoing conversation that you're done you're going to have other than Locker other than bathrooms and locker rooms is there any other areas that we need to look at in terms of capital projects right regarding this topic those are the those are the two most common I don't I'm not getting calls about other areas if you've got a particular
086idea or a concern or a thought you know bring it up and we can talk about it um okay right but the other issue that you isn't a capital project issue it's dealing with with records right and how do you deal with the fact that the law says you are supposed to use the student's preferred name on all records to the maximum extent possible but super important official school records have to stay in their legal name and they're not telling us where that line is how do you deal with the fact that um School tool and other school-based software is not caught up to what the legal requirements are right now how do you ex how do you spend money to make to fix that that's not typically a capital project but it's a significant
087significant expenditure particularly right you've got schools are buying or giving so much access to so many so much third-party software right and we've seen that all dealt with with education mod 2D right if you're if you're allowing students to go out and use websites as part of the classroom 2D isn't implicated right because it's illegal for schools to provide student information for commercial purposes and whatever vendor you are using can't sell but then go around and sell that student information well what happens when Janet says I want to be Janet but I'm required to sign up as James to use those third-party tools or because the school software isn't set up it gets leaked out as James or comes back as James we're seeing those issues right not a capital project issue but expensive okay
088thanks so there's not a lot of case law yet right is that what I'm hearing very little case law to guide to guide us and that's part of the problem so what I'm giving you is the most conservative protected district from liability point of view right my advice is your attorney I don't represent the administrators I don't represent the community I represent the school board has led some other school board be adventurous that some other School Board gets sued and that some other school board make the case law that will then help us decide what we need to do with whether we need to change or not because when there's a lawsuit I'm the only one who's having any fun right it's my job I enjoy it you all right and picked much more sane
089professions and you're here to educate the kids and to run the school so you don't want to see me but often that's how things are shaped through those through court so absolutely that hasn't happened yet all a lot of this stuff hasn't gone through judicial review it's been there's very little okay that's correct there's been some but there's been very little and the other thing right so gender was passed in 2019 and then we had coveting schools right there was no time to make any case law right can we ask again the kids let's let's hold on so uh write that to us so anybody else have any questions for Mr Gray on the board I have a question from Mr Gregory well that would have to be if you send it to us or
090write it down just want to know if this information I know I'm in charge of the meeting so um right do we have I don't want any other questions you have my email address if questions get forwarded to you yeah please you decide I'm happy to respond I appreciate we do appreciate your availability absolutely almost 24 7. okay how's the other situation is that set up yep yeah is she on blind yes so thank you for coming my name is Mike Donahue I'm the board president you have the whole board but one here and uh administrators and some folks from the public and this is our presentation meeting so we thank you for coming and offering your expertise in this area yes on everything okay hmm foreign oh taking the Mark at least according to
091the many students that I've spoken to around New York State so affirmation is more about actions so regardless of how I'd identify regardless if it's transgender or I'm a student with a disability or you know my religion is different than the dominant religion here at this school am I represented am I recognized am I encouraged approve value and accept it and that's the piece where students tell us you know that a lot of New York schools especially when we reach high school are not meeting the mark and and I've seen it and kids have kind of you know explained it to me this way they're like those great posters kind of look like this I'll have a council say be all that you can be but it's unless somebody has decided you're too fat you're
092too skinny you're too short or Too Tall and you're too ugly that we think you're stupid that your appearance is not Blended as accepted and you've had posters that say do what you love and love what you do but then someone here or at any society besides you know what I do is weird it's not the way it was done in my day or it's not appropriate based on whatever your gender is and often kids are told to be unique but then when they present as unique um yeah don't be too big you still need to fit in so I have to share with you that oftentimes when I travel the state last year I presented it 72 school districts and 30 about 30 25 to 30 of those presentations were to students and students
093love to share too much information with a stranger right because they they might not feel comfortable telling somebody who they're going to see every day like their teacher thinks so after I present kids will come up to me and they'll say I gotta tell you I gotta tell somebody this so I I'm going to share with you a few of those things I've collected a lot of statements for students over the last few years and here are some of the things that make kids feel that they don't belong or they're not welcome and you know like from a transitioning transgender student my teacher refuses to use my trip's name he has said things like I only have to use your god-given name and none of these people says I just want to punch him in
094the face every day it's all I think about and if that couple of students thinking about they're certainly not getting any learning in and then another transitioning transgender student says all of a sudden ever since you know I have come out as transgender my teacher has started lining her class up by boy and girl and started these Boy versus real competitions in class and then every time she says so which one are you going to meet today and I don't and I am not making these like stories up I didn't need to because students have shared and then I will share with their administrators and and these are confirmed incidents that students in New York state have been experiencing and a student who identifies as gay which is not transgender I get called that quite
095a bit I just take it now when I recorded it the principal very nicely like not in any way said with the lifestyle you have chosen you're going to have to grow some thicker skin and a transitioning transgender student said to me oh that's that's just that's the same one I had on the last night I apologize but from what I got to pull into this is when we talk about brain research when we feel like we don't belong our brain naturally spends its time scanning for threats and that leaves fewer resources for higher order thinking and learning and our brain feels like if I feel like I belong that's an emotional threat about scanning so but I don't want to paint our schools as as those examples with adults as negatives because students also
096come up and say to me you know in our English class we recently read a story where one of the main characters was a transgender female and was a positive role model and that was amazing um a student who identifies as a transgender male said to me recently my social studies teachers use my deadly if you don't know what that means the dead page is a way that some transgender students refer to as their birth name I understand it you know I know I know I've been known by my dead man for many years but what was really great was that he quickly apologized and he used my correct name and that goes right along with what your attorney was saying that errors or mistakes that are corrected are not harassment are not believing it
097this one is interesting because of most of my cappucci has has begun to switch to this a student saying I was driving graduation because the tradition of my school was that boys were one color down and girls were another I had a counselor tell me I need to wear the Gown color of my sexy I was considering skipping graduation but some of my friends that most of my classmates asked for us to switch to one color ground for all graduates I've never felt more accepted and loved for who I am that's affirmation and Justice to a student who identifies as gender fluids that last year high school changed all besides on the small bath happens to gender neutral and it's made my life easier I feel like I belong and so why does this topic
098we know throughout New York today I'm also a certified desk coordinator trainer trainer for over 10 years I've been training about digit yet and consistently we know that students who identify within the lgbtq community are the most bullied and harassed group in grades 9 through 12. in grades K through 12 if you were to say what's the most material incidents or belief group in New York state that students with disabilities but when he disaggregate separating data out by grade level once we get to the high school level it's lgbtq students who receive and experience the post harassment so this is just kind of a setup for us to talk about those things that you know maybe we never learned about gender and I knew that when I was growing up I was taught that a
099biological sense that sex and gender for binaries now binary means two so the binary that I was taught growing up because man's email but what we know now is that both medical and scientific communities support the biological sex of gender are non-binary meaning more than two and so we're going to spend some time talking about that and hopefully you know provide you with some information that maybe you you didn't know or that you were unaware of and what I had learned and it's it's been a learning curve don't don't get me wrong it's been a learning curve I make lots of mistakes and I still make mistakes but I am comfortable in embracing the discomfort of it because I'm working with children and children who I very much know would not be choosing this um
100because it's not an easy road and it is not um it is not an easy road to travel so a person's gender is this complex interrelationship between lots of dimensions of expression your body and your exactly and when I talk about the dignity Act if your attorney emphasized and this is the actual language of the education law that yeah the dignity act definitely is about harassment discrimination bullying by employees or students on school property or in school functions and the reason I put this slide up here is that one of my first steps into this topic was because when I presented this slide in NASA trainings people would be confused listed under the second bullet are protected classes in New York state so people that can't get the rules that have protection based on their
101uh the fact that they're in this group so Grace lady national origin ethnic group Etc people don't have an issue understanding or differentiating goals but when we get to sexual orientation gender gender identity identity gender expression or sex people will say gosh there's Adam the way I was raised Bell rolls into one for me how come they're listed as separates so that's where our learning curve starts especially people that are in my generation or maybe in in that sex assignment verb gender identity gender expression and attraction all exist independence of one another you know when I grew up I was taught that these were all one ball of wax and that meant if a doctor declared that you were born a girl that you would automatically feel like you were a girl you would express
102yourself as a girl and you'd be attracted to men uh this may very well be what you believe and I'm not trying to change that belief system but I am going to share some science with you because the science is what helped me choose my perspective and at the very least gave some understanding of this topic and empathy students so we have what's called a gender grad person here there's lots of Graphics that have been created to explain this idea of independence of each one of these things but for this presentation I've primarily use the gender manner so I'm using this bear to sum off that these four things exist independent of one another but create the whole of any one of us so if you see the star on this bear the star represents
103the sex that you were assigned at first that being the green thought bubble um represents our concept or internal sense of our gender which is gender identity the blood flu outline on the shirt represents the way we express ourselves our clothing our mannerisms Express that masculine feminine organism and then finally you'll see there's two so the two hearts represent both sexual and affectionate attraction because there's two types of attraction so we're going to start with number one sex designs at Birth so biological sex is assigned at Birth and that absolutely centers around a person's Anatomy and you know there's no offense I hope moving forward we're all adults I'm going to be saying penis a vagina a lot of your words so we can kind of say that I'm average now have penises female pet
104vaginas males have X Y chromosomes and females have X facts males have more facial hair and body hair than most females and that is absolutely on average but some people have ambiguous or dual genitalia some people have one of 13 16 other chromosomal actions they're not x-axis or XY and some people who are male can't grow a beard but some females can so there are in fact you know many biological markers of sex but we don't generally in it when a child is born we don't generally need to look at all of these biological markers we only need to look at one so but the biological markers that actually determine what your biological sex may be log in your chromosomes your gonads your hormones your secondary sex characteristics which often won't fully present until 2008
105then your internal genitalia your skeletal structure your Gene Expressions your uranium structure hormone receptors the thing is is that when a baby is born and because it is accurate the majority of the time the only thing that doctors look at is external gematalia you know that idea a penis is a boy a vagina is nothing yeah but it's important to know that wild biological facts has these two Polar Opposites of male and female if you took a minute to imagine biological facts as a football field Andy the end zone is male or female and that is you know absolutely all 16 of those markers are male or all 16 of those markers are female but think about every yard line or every 10 yards between those end zones can have variances so you could be
106born with a penis but have hormones that are related to estrogen you can have lots of differences amongst those yard lines now you wouldn't understand or know that something called the Prater or Quincy sound scale is used to make some of these determinations if you or your children were born without these differences but what I'm showing you now is called the crater or Queen Beast ale and this is actually used to make determinations almost in that end zone type of approach that when you look at them if you look at them right from the left you have what would be considered fully formed female fully formed out and in between you have what I talked about before which is ambiguous genitalio the Dual genitalia and the Freighters gas is used to determine something that is
107called intersex and intersects with something where 1.7 of the human population is born with General male or female sexual and hormonal traits and in 2019 it has been found by not just African society but several medical societies that one in every 1 000 babies that are born worldwide are born with inter sex traits and I have to tell you when I learned that number that absolutely floored me I had this perception that intersects with something really really rare if anybody gets intersex I it must be very rare but I really thought I didn't know anybody and then the more research I did this is kind of it helps me to frame it that being born with intersex trades is just as common as being born with three knives with red hair or being backward of
108down syndrome so if you step back and save yourself do I have someone green eyes yeah do I noticing somebody with red hair yeah do I know somebody with young syndrome yeah do I know somebody who's intersex probably but it being intersex is not something that is frosting like I call frosting it's not something on the outside it's not something we can see and so I have since found out in the last few years that I do know intersex individuals um but intersex individuals have often been um told not to tell people about their Traditions they've been treated you know as very different and feel ashamed of being intersex and you know stories like these like understanding that being born intersex is naturally occurring variation in humans it's not a medical problem but things like
109this have happened historically and continue but not as much like this young person was born healthy but because he was born with a dual genitalian the the surgeon said you know he's not going to be able to pee standing up and at four months old they started the surgeries and in his age now in his late 20s he's had more surgeries than he can remember because of complications um you know not giving a say and was healthy and knowing like this person I actually like chromosomes I have evolved I have internal testing I make testosterone I I and when I make testosterone my body turns into disaster jokes you know this person I have access to chromosomes I have ovaries and I have thicker body hair I have no periods for me you know I
110actually have a dual genetic helicopter and this person I was born X Y I have a volvoya but I don't have ovaries I don't have any Testaments I can't make my own hormones you know but I'm I'm still here I'm still human there's not anything wrong with me I'm not a medical problem but healthy um but that's not how we've treated intersex historically now there's many cultures that treat intersex and as actually a gift so it's an interesting variation amongst cultures so when I talk about intersex I'm absolutely not talking about transgender here I'm talking about you know biological markers of sex so some changes as your attorney spoke about that you know changes are occurring on a regular pretty Speedy maker the United States has several states that now offer non-verified area identities in
111New York is one of them so now when a child has been born uh they're they're a birth certificate can we male female or intersex so additional identifications like this this is a New York state license and the difference is if you look under where it says that it says X and that means intersex so as I speak to you about this tonight sex assigned at Birth is the anatomy that you're born with and what doctors and your parents assigned a person when they were born it's a biological assignment it is separate from gender identity from gender expression and gender attraction so that's the definition of sex assigned at Birth the next one we're going to talk about is one that often will create some confusion because this is about how a person thinks about
112themselves and a person's concept of their own gender is one that people feel like they can debate with them so gender identity is your internal personal sense of your own gender it is the way that they feel about what they what their gender corresponds with whether or not it corresponds with the sex they were assigned at Birth or when whether the gender attributed to them by Society so when you hear those things about human ity Etc really as scientists do more and more work what they keep telling us in most of the things that I read are that gender identity is on a spectrum in that Spectrum has level of fluidity meaning you know that when you hear gender fluid it means change over time transgender your identity is different than the sex assigned at
113Birth non-binary means I I'm not I am neither male or female gender queer I fall between male and female cisgender is my gender and aligns with the sex I was assigned ever into Spirit embodies both male and female and is attributed to indigenous and native tribes and one of the things that's really confusing at times is the way that language evolves and there's so many gender terms and it's overwhelming it's a Time feels silly right and but it's no different than how language has evolved in our world it's just happening at a faster pace and most things happen in a faster case because of Technology then they happen in the past so note that as language evolves a person's name for how they represent the gender might evolve it doesn't mean their genders change but
114rather like the words that describe the gender are shifting and more and more emerging research and as you as you see and you know you have access to these slides obviously I do have um references on on most of the slides so that you can see the research that was used for this presentation but there's emerging research um from the Cleveland Clinic and from others that shows that who you know let's say was assigned the sex of female at Birth but feels that they are a mouse so it transgendered him right that's what I said no Chan transgender map um what they're finding is that the transgender brains when examining the brains with MRIs and with pet scans that transgender grains resemble the gender identity of not the biological sex that was assigned at Birth
115but of the gender they identified with so when presented under MRI scanning with certain tasks watching certain things that a person who was a side like male at Birth their brain actually looks you know they believe they're female their brain actually uh operates like other female brains so that that does a lot in the sense of it's explaining that feelings that people have that we don't understand if we are cisgender this was a tough topic for me because you know what I was assigned female at Birth I've always felt a female I was attracted to men I fell into that kind of majority group so trying to put myself in the shoes as somebody who doesn't feel that way was a pretty big list but I've been able to do that with through I said
116once again experiencing people in person talking with children reading their their stories children and adults now this is a controversial piece and I am not suggesting in this when I say this that that you know elementary school kids should be able to identify that parental response or anything I'm not saying no what I am saying is that in every biography I've written that I've read and the research from the American Academy of Pediatrics under the age of four most children actually have stable sense of their gender identity even if they're not able to express it even if it's confusing upon looking back a lot of autobiographies for people who are transgender say it was about when I was four or I that I realized I was different um so I I'm certainly not saying that
117that's the date we should allow kids to make choice is on their own without parent permission I'm not saying that I'm just sharing that even the American Academy of Pediatrics says that by the age of four or five many kids know now the next one we're going to talk about is the blue shirt and if you're taking notes or you're you know you're you're writing about anything the blue shirt the gender expression is the one that leads to dignity at violation it is the thing that actually leads to harassment um this gender expression is a person's clothing their hairstyles their mannerisms their interests it's the things that we see it's the outward appearance and that's where our implicit biases come into play I will give you an example of implicit bias if you look at
118the person on the right in the first picture I have a student about 10 years ago who looked like that student and I had gained like a relationship with that student I working in a very small rural district and one day he was talking to me and he was very upset about something and I jumped to the conclusion and I said well you know it must be really hard coming out as gay in our district and he's like you think I'm gay and I'm like yellow because when I looked at him I automatically said he has to be gay he's a guy and he's wearing mascara and he's like I'm gonna give you Mrs face I I am I'm you know I'm straight I like women I just love the way makeup makes me feel
119that's new for me right I make the assumptions based uh the way this person was expressing themselves I made assumptions about their sexuality and that's essentially what the state is what we call gaydar is lots of people in my friends will be like I've got a great gaydar I can tell you who's gay you'll think they will tell me that and um actually gay R is just stereotyping right many people have shown that when we rely uh stereotypes and just what a person looks like to determine if they're gay or transgender um that that we're really not very good at determining who's getting or who's transgender Etc but these stereotypes really come from this we have two systems in our brain that we use system one is fast and automatic it's based on our limbic
120system it's not a lot of effort it's for example system one is driving your car is the system one activity system two is where we have to be deliberate and think and be reflective so driving your car a system but if you have to parallel park without the help of you know assistive technology in your car if you have to really parallel park on your own then you have to switch the system to thinking the majority of the things that we do um on a daily basis things are coming out of Staff come through system one and when we see someone walking towards us we can't see their genitals we can't see their chromosomes they're horrible levels or intimate behaviors but based on their gender expression we use system blood in the immediately categorize them
121yeah that is to inform us what that person is and that's the way our brain works if we have a brain we have five our brain is is actually you know created to categorize to say which thing doesn't belong which thing actually doesn't fit in this category so an example of like how gender expression can go go wrong is like think to yourself like what is the affectionate label we use to describe young girls who display masculine dreams we tend to call ourselves hi what is the affectionate label we use to describe young men who just who just play female per feminine traits there isn't one it's it's bad so ciety we actually through gender expression set things up in a way that masculine trades um are preferable and that's all based on this thing
122like I said frosting we can assume that that frosting is chocolate but you know you might taste it and it might be awful it have like mocha coffee in it or something that grows like we do not it's that don't judge a book by a cover piece because we just really don't know what's inside by what is is somebody's frosting but yet be perpetuated through gender expression things like girls just don't do that Real Men Don't Cry and should not hear jewelry you know take care of their eyebrows Etc um you know that this person you might look at and say well he's confused when is he going to transition what is it Halloween when in basketball he's like I'm genderqueer please stop asking me when I'm going to transition my transition hasn't been from
123one gender identity to another and to just rewards that gender expression is a cultural construct think about the idea of purses right in Europe a man with a purse is a masculine expression in the United States a man with a curse is not a masculine expression and in the right you know in India for instance which tends to have you know Supreme homophobic viewpoints as societally um we know that is holding hands heterosexual or homosexuals if you are of the same gender well we can see two females holding hands can we have questions in the United States necessarily whether they're homosexual or heterosexual but if we see two men holding hands we jump to system one that that they must be gay in India men hold hands pretty regularly as a symbol of loyalty and
124Trust nothing to do with sexuality so this is gender expression and that's why homophobic flies a little bit transpose the harassment bullying and discrimination is often precipitated by gender expression not by your gender identity it's about how you look and how you act our last category of our bear comes down to the two hearts so this is sexual and romantic attraction and trust me folks I didn't know there were two I just thought there was sexual and in fact there are two attraction and intimate behaviors these are who you have relationships with that meet your deeply felt needs for love attachment intimacy not all orientations and attractions are sexual attractions may be sexual or romantic so I'm going to give you a little back story here I once again jump to conclusions with one of
125my relatives on her Facebook page she's at College all of her pictures with other women and other girls were very intimate very embedded together they're kissing they're hugging it was very outside my comfort zone and I'm like okay she's gay you know she's lesbian you know so when I stalk her on a break I'm like so do you have a girlfriend she's like yo I have a lot of girlfriends and I said no you have a girlfriend she's like do you think I'm gay and I'm like I know that they are bad because it's a second or third time I screwed him up and I'm like yeah I did I'm like you're knocking she's like no I'm bi-romantic and I'm like what is that and when she explained it to me I'm like gee maybe
126I want to be by romantic too because what biomantic is in by affectionate is she goes Anderson what that means is that you know I've always felt extremely comfortable holding hands and cuddling with other women it fulfills the need for me it feels it feels an affection mean for me and what that means is that I don't need to go out and find a guy I don't have to jump her boyfriend or boyfriend I have always had some um affectionate needs met by females in my life I don't want to have sex with females because I want to have sex with men but I can have affection that needs met by females and so I'm just like please understand folks that when I talk to students ages like 13 and up they know all these
127terms already like like they're teaching me and it's it's far from my comfort zone at the at the beginning but this is their normal lexicon of um so you know sexual and romantic attraction for many of us are the same meaning I am sexually and romantically and affectionately attracted to men but that is not the case for everybody I think there are many people who are you know when it comes to sexual activities like passionate kissing interpersonal sex they're they are attracted to to both or nobody and romantic if action can go that way too so know that confusion over these attractions and behaviors is at the heart or a lot of misunderstandings about gender and sexuality so my final visual for you brings you the flying gender uniform now this is a more in-depth
128graphic which uh this one I've used mainly with my um my older high school students when I'm doing this presentation because it in addition to like saying the leaf um or uh you know belief for your genitals and birth and having the two hearts this one actually goes into hormone levels through chromosomes and it has pictures of genitals on it so but there's lots of Graphics out there to help really explain us the idea that these things are separate they're not rolled up into one bottle of death so your attorney shared this with you but I I will just reiterate it New York state says that the person best situated to determine the student's gender identity is the individual student that it's recommended that schools accept that student's assertion um in our in our region
129just as a reference point for you as a county we kind of came up with some agreeing terms especially because we have kids from all nine districts that come to BOCES so we want to be as consistent across the region as possible so when it comes to elementary students who identify as transgender if a parent is in support we get our gender um you know our gender plans in place for that student but if the parent is not in support we we do not move forward with the child's wishes but pretty consistently amongst our region assigning and moving towards the students wishes begins in middle school so some of our just in some of our districts that's fifth grade and some of our districts that's sixth grade so consistent disregard for a transgender student's preferred
130name and gender pronouns like your attorney said is a form of discrimination one thing that your attorney did speak to a little bit but I would share with you and I could get you a more specific Word documents of this is that I've really found that having a district support and communication plan is is a good piece and I I heard one of the questions was about you know our counselors and do they know what to ask and I have found that the gender support plans that we have created embed lots of questions and help guide counselors and others when they have both an adult or a student who come to talk about their gender and that these forms are consistent across the district one of the biggest complaints I've had from teachers has has
131not been like that I don't want to do this or I won't use that term it's been I didn't know and you know that student wasn't in my class but I launched Monitor and I didn't know that they had a different game than we wanted to use and I feel terrible I wish I knew so we're having a system the right people know and this also embeds that piece that your attorney talked about with having meeting updates within the gender support plan so you know whether it's every three weeks every once a month you're meeting with the student again you have certain questions to ask you update the plan um and to update the communications in your District so I have also invented you know two pretty good articles and those of you who are
132seeking more knowledge for me this was the best book I've read it's called The Savvy Ally Written In terms that like I can understand from the perspective of somebody who is cisgender um and the author's name is of gene gainsberg so if there are some of you who are like I want to know more I want to move forward in this absolutely um this is a reader-friendly version of the complexitys and questions that people might have about this topic sure that was a whole mouthful I I am uh done with my presentation and but very open to um sharing or answering any questions that anybody might have Roseanne can you just share that story about the BOCES student okay [Music] right yeah so uh something that really got me turned on to this topic is
133that in our region I was like a little ahead of the scale with with gender identity because of groups that I surround with the state so we switched our gender identification name having gender support plan several years ago and I was in a classroom and it's been more than one but I was in culinary one day and a student said to me I can't stand culinary I'm like well then why did you choose it and they're like because I knew that if I came here um you would use my preferred name in my school district Mall and one of my friends who's from another District who's transgender told me you got to go to BOCES because they they treat you like you belong and so kids who actually didn't really want to be in heavy
134equipment or culinary we ended up having a group of students here and you know going you know actually to the point of forming a gay and lesbian and lions at BOCES because they were like we were told that you'll use our name here that you'll put on my on my certificate for high honor to put my preferred name um you know you'll put the name that I've chosen so um our districts have come around differently but but when I shared that story with our superintendents they were like oh you know I don't want kids leaving our district because they feel more welcomed at BOCES than they do in my own my own District foreign meetings but I'm happy to do it if it helps you know your your board moved forward with you know what's
135a very difficult Topic in many places so thank you thank you thank you right and like I said my number's there if you have any questions resources that were mentioned I'm happy to provide them all right have a great evening everybody thank you okay yeah next meeting is December 15th I don't know if it's hearing from you've done that in Athens okay 6 30 yes and then the emotion to move to Executive assessment discuss the personnel