001welcome to this evening's meeting at the westerville city schools board of education there are agendas available on the back of the table or in the back of the room on the table you can also follow along on the district website there will be one opportunity to address the board before it enters a warp session a sign up sheet is located on the table in the back of the room and each speaker will have five minutes to address the board and a timer will be shown on the screen and with that miss marshall will you please call the roll mr bell here mrs meyer here dr nasterbaker here mrs altman here mrs davidson here will you please join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america
002and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we do not have any public comments this evening 4.1 a resolution to suspend robert's rules of order may have a motion so moved second mr bell yes mrs meyer yes dr nasterbaker yes mrs altman yes mrs davidson yes and 5.1 board member professional development and with that i would like to call anitra up to the podium to address our speaker this evening we're introduced good afternoon at this time i would like to introduce our speaker of the evening that's going to be doing our professional development they are from kaleidoscope youth center that is ohio's largest and longest-serving organization in ohio solely dedicated to supporting lgbtqia plus youth ages 12 to 24. our presenter this evening
003will be lane cherelle they are the community education and research manager lane is a recent addition to the kaleidoscope team they graduated from the university of iowa with a bachelor of arts in english and human rights they led the ohio thrives needs assessment that focuses on the intersection of race developmental disabilities and lgbtq plus identities lane also facilitates workshops for professionals caring for lgbtq plus youth they previously worked with iowa league legal aid on their intimate partner violence project and at the iowa non-profit resource center when not working lane loves to bake bread and go for long walks with their dog at this time i would like to introduce to you lane sherelle all right hello everyone thank you for having me is this working no it's working okay everybody can hear me then so
004yes my name is lane cheryl i use they them pronouns and i'm the community education and research manager at kaleidoscope youth center oh thank you there you go so as anitra said kaleidoscope is the largest and longest serving organization in ohio dedicated solely to serving and supporting lgbt lgbtq plus youth we opened in 1994 as a crisis line and have since turned into the organization that we are today we serve youth in a number of ways our most recent is the community education excuse me the community-based wellness department in this department we serve youth ages 16 to 24 who face housing crisis issues we do this through wraparound case management services providing clothes food toiletries sleeping bags tents rental assistance and then finally emergency housing assistance if needed we're most well known for our drop-in
005center which is open for youth ages 12 to 21 youth can come on their 12th birthday and age out on their 21st birthday when they are at kaleidoscope they can participate in affinity groups and discussions where we talk about gender identity and sexuality but they can also come and enjoy movie and pizza night and creative art club and just be a kid around other kids and create community among one another and then our last little piece is the community education and outreach department which i am a part of and our goal is to extend the safe space we create at kaleidoscope into other areas of our youth's lives sometimes youth will come into the center and we will be the only affirming adults that they encounter in a single day and we go out into
006the world and teach professionals how to interact with them and care for them so that we're not the only ones so before we start talking about this community we need to talk a little bit about context which is one of historical inequality so we know that from 1953 to 1972 the american psychiatric association categorized homosexuality as a mental illness that needed to be cured and it wasn't until 2015 that we saw the legalization of gay marriage and now it's under fire once again so these slides say historical but all of this is happening today it's not old it's right now and because all of this is so recent there's a lot of discrimination and stigma surrounding lgbtq identities and we like to think that because our youth are young they're not experiencing it in the
007same ways that adults do but we know that's not true they're interacting with our institutions every day so they similarly experience racism sexism homophobia transphobia ableism classism the list goes on and one ism that we get on a soapbox out about at kaleidoscope is adultism so a lot of people have heard of ageism which we typically associate with discrimination against older folks in the workplace adultism is the reverse of that it's discrimination against somebody on the basis of their youth and so in order to demonstrate that think about a young person who says i dislike being called a boy because i'm a girl and if they're a cisgender child will get into terms cisgender means your gender identity aligns with the sex you were assigned at birth so you were born a boy and you
008identify as a man you're cisgender transgender means that your gender identity doesn't align with the sex you were assigned at birth so you're born a boy and today you identify as a woman or someone who's non-binary and so you're transgender adults will criticize young people coming out because they're too young to know we've heard we've all heard that right you're too young to know you're too not too young to do this but at kaleidoscope we believe every person is the expert in their own identity and so when a youth comes out to us or tells us something about their identity we believe them because we could never know them better than they know themselves so on today's agenda we're going to do gender 101 which is essentially what do all the letters mean we're going
009to talk about affirming language and language to avoid an application for what might be useful for y'all going into the new school year and then we'll have q and a if there's time but before we get into that i have a little bit of a warm up for us so this is called imagining transgender if you're comfortable i encourage you to close your eyes but i'm going to read this to you it's about a page long and then we're going to talk about it i would like you to imagine with me an average day as a young person who is transgender around the age of seven years old if you currently identify as a woman please imagine that everywhere you go the people around you treat you as if you were a little boy you're
010expected to act and dress like a boy everyone refers to you using male pronouns and nicknames he him his little man buster champ or son even though you know in your heart and mind that you are a girl everyone around you insists that you are a boy and demands that you act accordingly if you currently identify as a man please imagine that everywhere you go the people around you treat you as if you were a little girl you're expected to act and dress like a girl everyone refers to you using female pronouns and nicknames she her sweetie girly or darling even though you know in your heart and mind that you are a boy everyone around you around you insists that you are a girl and demands that you act accordingly when you get out
011of bed in the morning you survey your closet and you aren't happy with any of the clothing options you see these clothes make you feel really uncomfortable and upset when you wear them your parents tell you to hurry up and get dressed so you pick the clothes that are the least uncomfortable they make you feel more like yourself when you get on the bus in the morning some of the other kids tease you they say mean things like what are you gay or something and why do you dress like that other kids ignore you you feel isolated and alone once you get to school you are asked to line up by gender and you consistently get yelled at for where you go and the teacher tells you to stop causing problems and get in the
012correct line or they will call your parents during recess the other kids group together by activity but you have a hard time choosing when you do what you really want to do it results in more teasing you are sad frustrated and confused imagine now that you were 14. for the past few years your body has been changing in ways that are profoundly uncomfortable you're starting to have sexual feelings and fantasies which are confusing because it feels good but it also feels uncomfortable you've asked your close friends questions to see if they have similar feelings but so far no one else has had a similar experience at the same time everyone else is suddenly interested in hooking up and dating and that feels overwhelming sometimes you feel like you should just hook up or date so
013that people will stop harassing you about whether or not you're gay and besides you really want to be in a relationship but things are so overwhelming you know that you are attracted to one gender but think that you might also be attracted to the other gender maybe all of this discomfort is because you are gay you seek out information online about being gay but somehow it doesn't seem to fit you found a transgender teen support forum and a lot of what you find there it makes sense but it's super scary you wish that someone could understand where you were coming from explain why you feel this way and help you figure out how to make it stop feeling so bad you can't talk to your parents about this over the years you've noticed your parents
014saying little things here and there about how transgender people are freaks and how they would never let their kid do that you're afraid of how they will react if you tell them and life is hard enough as it is you don't want to risk they're rejecting you because you just aren't sure that you'll be able to handle it besides you know that your parents are struggling for money and dealing with your aging grandparents and your siblings you don't want to add to their burden when they're already so stressed out every day starts to feel like a battle and you are exhausted feeling increasingly depressed and start looking for things to help make you feel better you consider experimenting with drinking and drugs or maybe cutting anything that might help you see that it gets better
015videos online but frankly you just can't see how that can possibly be true for you take a moment now to reflect on how you're feeling when you're ready please open your eyes so some questions to consider after that what feelings came up for you as you listen to this story specifically what might you be feeling if this was your consistent experience in the world you all can feel free to toss out some words if you feel so comfortable confused uncertain alone yeah unsafe anxious frightened what might some examples of places in the story where an ally could have intervened to provide support lots of places including i'm thinking about when they were little and the teacher right the teacher could have done something quite different there if they've been an ally good evening my name
016is aaron f church and my pronoun dr shiher i'm a social worker and the executive director of kaleidoscope youth center um and so lane you're asking where allies could have been supportive and you said the teacher what what kind of things do you think the teacher could have done well um a few things one is if i'm remembering correctly having having kids line up by boys and girls like in the first place right why to really think about why is that happening is that really a necessary thing in the first place but also just that reaction of you know stop causing trouble right get in the right line that's not something an ally would say yeah not hearing what the child needs absolutely and it's hard because we know i can only imagine what third
017graders and whatever age really but like getting kids together to do something and like don't cause trouble like that it really means don't cause trouble but the young person doesn't attach it to anything other than they're talking about me um and then i love with the the line that's one of the most simple things i think any adult can do with young people is find a different way to put us in categories there are so many ways to have a young person or even adults choose something we don't have to throw gender out there i think it's probably it's the easy one of the easiest things that a teacher or adult could do with kids anyone else any more ideas where an ally could be helpful in the course of that day maybe the parents
018well i'm thinking about parents in lots of ways but even as simple as like what's what's in the closet right and letting someone choose the clothes that they feel comfortable in to populate their closet before you go on can um can i ask a question absolutely okay thank you um so [Music] you mentioned that there are a number of different ways that we can group people and i'm sitting here thinking honestly racking my brain and i'm thinking to myself what are some of the other ways that are inclusive that are non-discriminatory that we can group people because as i'm thinking to myself i'm like you just took away if you take away gender that's most of my experience especially as it relates to kids um so we're going to do it by age or by
019gender so can you share with us with me what are what are some of the other ways that we could group people birthdays alphabetical favorite color favorite sport yeah eye color shirts color of shirts they have on that day right-handed left-handed okay even just counting off right good question how many activities do not require the use of gender people in the groups regardless of age actually it's very rare that that's even necessary good question thank you so this is our gender triangle it's gonna help us understand the difference between gender identity gender expression and gender attribution so we'll start at the bottom left hand corner which is body i think we all understand that the day you're born the doctor picks you up and says that's either usually it's either a boy or a girl
020so you get that marked on your birth certificate and as you grow your body changes due to genetics hormones chromosomes and then whatever you know reproductive organs you have when you're born attribution is how society sees you in our society we're trained to categorize people based on stereotypes that we're all familiar with so we think you know somebody has facial hair so that must be a man maybe that person has a deep voice so they're a man maybe they have breasts so they're women and so we use these kind of stereotypes to think what box does that person go into and then expression is how you choose to manipulate everything about how others perceive you so maybe you wear high heels and makeup or slacks maybe you try to naturally lower lower your voice or
021maybe you take hormones or get gender affirming surgery but gender affirming surgery and hormones are not always accessible and not always wanted by all trans people so we need to remove the idea that to be trans you have to transition because that's not the case all you need in order to be trans is to have that gender identity that doesn't align with the sex you were assigned at birth and gender identity in the center here is not connected to this triangle because regardless of what is going on outside of you gender identity is something that is yours and yours alone it's something you know to be intrinsically true about yourself so you might think if you're a man or a woman now at what point did you realize you were a man or a woman
022maybe it's something that has just always been and you never questioned it and that's amazing that's so wonderful but for a lot of trans and non-binary folks it's a long process of questioning and doubting and doing google searches late at night when you're alone to try and figure out why it is that you feel different until you eventually come to a place of understanding and acceptance any questions about all of those topics before we move on yes i love it i don't know if you have the answer to this or not um do we know in terms of um our sexual maturity and development where typically in that process does gender identification take hold is it so yeah i'm looking at so do is it usually around age 10 or 11 that's usually when it's
023set and people know or or do we just not know the answer to that question does that make sense i think i understand the question so in terms of when do you figure out what you are kind of yes typically when do we figure out yes i go in this box it's different for every person okay so you might from a child development perspective our gender identity is pretty much within us between the ages of three to five we just don't think about it unless there's a variance okay and that's just based on how we see ourselves so if you think of like a i don't know if you've been in the store and like a four-year-old will walk up like i'm a girl what are you and they're because they're just learning around gender
024and parts and who people are in the world and so it's like three to five when it's just an intrinsic sense um and then when you get into early adolescence when there's secondary sex characteristics and then it kind of becomes either affirmed or there becomes maybe an onset of discomfort based on what was they were experiencing when they were younger and growing up okay thank you so now we're going to get into what do all the letters mean right here we have queer which is an umbrella term for every identity that is not straight and not cisgender so it is a fraught word and i have a slide dedicated entirely to the word here okay so on the left we have sexualities and sexuality is you can think of it as who you go on
025a date with and then on the right we have gender which is who you go on a date as gender identity is yours and yours alone and sexuality is often influenced by factors about the people that you would like to date or go out with have a relationship what have you so under sexualities we have l for lesbian lesbian is typically a self-identified woman who is attracted to other self-identified women we have bisexual which is or excuse me we have g which is typically used for men so a male a self-identified man who is attracted to other self-identified men gay is also an umbrella term of sorts and bisexual which is someone who is capable of attraction to two or more genders typically we think of bisexual as someone who's attracted to men and women
026but it's not necessarily split like that you could be attracted to women and non-binary people there's more than two genders so it just means capable of attraction to two or more genders and then on the right we have t for transgender which again means your gender identity does not match the sex you were assigned at birth okay questions about terms what questions are there we have a couple more on the next slide okay yes [Laughter] i know you're gonna be real sick of me by the time you get through your presentation um so you said there are more than two genders can you unpack that a little bit or is that does that is that coming up it is coming up but we can take a second right now and go through it okay so
027typically we hear the argument that there are only two sexes right male and female but that's biologically untrue there are intersex people who are known to have characteristics that make it hard to categorize them at birth so chromosomes hormones and external and internal genitalia so scientifically there are more than three genders and therefore the argument that there are only two genders does not follow so we'll get into the more more of the gender so we have male female transgender and what direction and then non-binary which is kind of a catch-all category and that's really when this presentation starts to get confusing does that help yes yep what is the proportion the percentage of people who are born with both male and female genitalia i believe it's one to two percent and it really is around
028like a mixture of uh reproductive parts and so it's not just genitalia it's also the reproductive internal organs um it also can be like chromosomal and hormone so it's it gets it can be a little deeper than just what the genitalia is so it's one to two percent so pansexual another sexuality the prefix pan means all so someone who is pansexual is capable of attraction to all genders but that does not mean they are attracted to all people just like not all women are attracted to all men it's not how it works so someone who is pansexual is just capable of that attraction in other terms gender is not important in their decision to date or be in a relationship with someone asexual the prefix a means none or lack of so someone who is
029asexual does not experience sexual attraction to anyone regardless of their gender but asexual is a spectrum within itself so some asexual folks experience no sexual attraction ever to anyone regardless of their circumstances what's going on and other asexual folks experience some sexual attraction sometimes and then we have the suffix romantic because we can split up sexual and romantic attraction because maybe you are not sexually attracted to the same people that you enjoy emotional intimacy with and this is based on the split attractions model so it's not only sexual and romantic attraction it's aesthetic platonic it goes on but all of our prefixes that apply to sexuality can also apply to romantic identities so you could be asexual and biromantic pansexual and aromantic and you can mix and match and make fun combinations but if the
030romantic attraction is still confusing think about it as who would you want to go through life with do the hard parts with be emotionally intimate with and then sexual attraction i think we all usually have a basic understanding of question [Laughter] you got a question nope okay so um [Music] try to figure out the good wording to make this clear you included platonic so as i'm looking at that if we're including platonic is the assumption that all relationships are in some way sexual good i think we need to make that kind of clear because friendship and friends you want to spend the rest of your life with there doesn't have to be a sexual component correct okay you don't have to have you know a sexual romantic platonic component to all relationships you know just
031a way to differentiate the way we interact with other people so we're getting a deep a bit deeper into gender as i've said cisgender someone who's sex assigned at birth aligns with their gender identity so you're born a man and today you identify as a man so you're cisgender you're born a woman and today you would identify as a woman so you're cisgender and then transgender means somebody's sex assigned at birth does not align with their gender identity so perhaps someone is born a female and today that person identifies as a man or they identify as non-binary so when we see transgender in popular media we typically see binary transitions from one gender to another typically based on that male female binary so a trans woman is someone is a woman who is assigned male
032at birth and a trans man is a man who is assigned female at birth when we refer to transgender people we always use the identity that they currently use so a trans man is a woman who is assigned female at birth uh popular representations of transgender characters would be liver and cox or elliott page um you're looking at me like you don't recognize them that's okay i have no connection with those either of those names that's all right um and then we have our non-binary category which you can think of as a catch-all so it's outside of the binary stated in the name and within non-binary the non-binary umbrella we have different categories like gender queer gender fluid bigender and agender now based on all the looks you're making right now i want to encourage
033you all to not feel discouraged you don't have to understand any of this because it's really confusing all you have to know is that these identities exist and you have to respect them so we'll go through a brief little vocab of the non-binary identities genderqueer is someone who just does not uh who is kind of queering gender you know playing with it playing with those stereotypes stereotypes we have of men and women genderfluid is somebody whose identity changes regularly and that regular change is their identity and that's okay it's okay to not always know bigender is someone who identifies as both man and woman or more than two genders at once and then agender is someone who does not have a gender identity so that is confusing what questions do you have i don't think
034we have the time um let me just pick one because this is profoundly interesting um gender queer you described it as someone who they're experimenting with different identities is that right so kind of okay genderqueer is somebody who kind of plays off of the male female binary that we have in society okay so maybe they're between male and female or maybe they're somewhere off the spectrum entirely and that is their identity for anybody who's androgynous and you have no idea what the urgent identity is just by looking at them and that could be an intentional way of showing up in the world or perhaps it's somebody who mix and matches clothing with hairstyle and pronouns and their name that could also be an example it's really this person's experience of gender either it's binary or
035none at all and so that's that's kind of the whole point of it though if they don't folks who are genderqueer gender fluid don't ascribe to the email if you move to that binary it can be a mixture of experiences okay now how is that different from bigender or agender it's really when we get to the point around non-binary general self-identification okay i would say bi-gender and agender are becoming a little more popular with young people in general um but somebody who's bigender might feel like they experience both traditional masculine and feminine identity and characteristics so they may say like i'm both or i'm all of it and same thing with agender they may say i have no gender at all there's a lot of especially younger folks like let's get rid of gender all
036together um and it's it doesn't exist to them they're just a person a human their name and they go forth in that way so as promised our slide on the word queer where has historically been used violently against the lgbtq community right now it functions functions as an umbrella term for both gender identities and sexualities it basically means anything other than cisgender or straight the word queer comes from a meaning of bucking the norm or to turn the norm upside down so it takes about 20 to 25 years for a term to be reclaimed by a community and this process started for the word queer in the 1990s when the organization act up started advocating for better treatment and funding for aids research and they claimed the word queer that had been thrown against them
037as their identity label so it can cause discomfort it typically does for folks who are older than me and then folks who are younger than me are starting to use it really frequently as their identity label because it provides a lot of breadth for them to experiment and change and move within their identity and that's okay both of those can co-exist so i encourage everyone to use the word queer with caution know your audience if you are not in the lgbtq community you don't ever need to say it if you know someone who is comfortable with that identity label and they're comfortable with you using it then that's fine but always defer to that person before you use the word queer words not to use so slurs that we should not use under any circumstances
038anywhere are the f slur for gay men the d slur for gay women and the teacher for transgender folks some people will make an argument that there is an appropriate time and place for this and if there is it is specifically in group usage and not everybody in the lgbtq community can use these words for example the epsler is still reserved for gay men if they believe that there is a time and place to use these words that time is never at work at school or around children because when you say them you give other people permission to say them as well grammar issues we constantly see transgenders uh no it's not a noun it's an adjective think about this you wouldn't say oh there's a group of smarts no it's a group of smart
039people so it's a group of transgender people it's not a verb either so it's not transgendered can't do it in the past if you live it every day so if you're looking for a verb to describe this community you might be looking for transition which just which describes the medical or social transition that a lot of transgender people go through and transsexual is a tricky word as well a lot of our trans elders use it and they absolutely can because they pave the way and so they can do whatever they want right now transsexual among younger folks is being used to gatekeep the transgender community it suggests that only folks who have undergone a medical transition can identify as transgender and that is not how we operate so as a general rule the word transsexual
040is on its way out we talked about the word queer which is sometimes okay and finally we have the word homosexual which is also sometimes okay it's kind of doing the reverse of the word queer it's on its way out because when a lot of people think about the word homosexual they think about protesters at pride's pride parades holding up signs that say all the homosexuals are going to hell so it's starting and has been used violently against this community if you are someone who has regularly used the word homosexual that's okay you didn't know but i encourage you to change out the word homosexual for the acronym lgbtq it's a little bit of a tongue twister but the more you say it the more you'll get used to it so what are pronouns pronouns
041are the words we use when we don't use your name so when i started this training i said hi my name is lane and my pronouns are they them when i leave tonight and you've forgotten my name you'll say their presentation was interesting they had great things to say uh some people use multiple sets of pronouns like she and they or he she and they you can mix and match if they do usually people will have you alternate between them we are starting to get away from the word preferred when it comes to pronouns because it suggests that they're optional if somebody gives you their pronouns you should respect them every time what to do if you misgender someone it happens it's okay like i said we were raised in a society that relies on
042binaries typically to keep us safe the first thing up here is apologize and that has an asterisk because if you feel the need to apologize after misgendering someone the apology should not last longer than it took you to make the mistake when you apologize and get really upset about it you're centering your discomfort over the person who you just insulted thank someone for the correction if they've corrected you after you misgendered them you can move on and do better next time questions do we have about misgendering no solid great and one thing we can all do is normalize pronoun use one of the most exhausting parts about being an lgbtq person is having to constantly advocate for yourself by yourself one thing allies can do is to normalize that conversation you can introduce yourself with
043your pronouns somebody doesn't know what you're talking about you've just given them a learning opportunity and you've taken the weight off of another trans kid who's going to have to explain to them later on what pronouns are you can use them in your email signature on your business cards on your zoom name tag anywhere your name goes your pronouns can also go and then generally within schools lgbtq students feel safer and more supported with comprehensive anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies so this means explicitly stating gender identity gender expression and sexual orientation within any anti-bullying policies teachers and school staff who are supportive of lgbtq students gender and sexuality alliances which are the clubs schools have where young lgbtq kids can come and form community and an lgbtq inclusive curriculum so providing books that talk about different
044family structures or talking about famous historic queer figures so when we're creating creating inclusive spaces there's a handful of things we need to remember there is diversity within the lgbtq community a lot of folks think that there is no marginalization within marginalized communities but there is still power among some in the lgbtq community that can be weaponized against others and so we need to recognize that people have a bunch of different identities that come together all the time and so it's not just somebody's queer identity it's their racial identity their ability their socioeconomic background all of these things are informing their daily experience don't make assumptions you wouldn't assume someone's name so don't assume someone's pronouns it's super weird if you assume someone's name be like hey henry and he's like i'm george [Laughter] use
045that gender-neutral language so instead of saying boys and girls you can say scientists artists friends i don't know i've completely blanked on this students i love scholars support the coming out process which i believe we have a whole slide dedicated to call out negative behavior when you see it don't let it sit and stand and kind of gain power over the person who's been victimized and then lastly this is not a taboo topic when we're talking about gender and sexuality in schools we're talking about different identities and the respect that we can have for them we are simply providing students the opportunity and the language to understand people who are different than them some organizational best practices to consider the comprehensive district policy that should apply equally to all schools making sure that all teachers
046feel that policies are enforced the same way at every school provide proactive training for all staff that's everybody in the district and it should happen before something bad happens not as a reaction provide accessible resources for teachers so think about what books can you put in the classroom what resources can you give them so that they can better understand this community can you connect them with other teachers who maybe know more or would be more comfortable handling these situations normalize pronoun use which we talked about asking for pronouns giving your own pronouns perhaps teachers could put their pronouns up on the whiteboard next to their name just to indicate that this is a safe space and the teacher has at least a basic understanding of the lgbtq community accountability measures for non-compliant staff just like
047we wouldn't let bullying go on in young students we shouldn't let it go on among our professionals everybody should be held to the same standards and lgbtq pride inclusivity in the district calendar so you could think about instead of donuts with dad you could do coffee with parents or some other catchy thing then that i believe is all i have for you today what questions do you all have um so can you share with us we went through lgbtq can you share with us i a plus so i is intersex which we talked about is those folks who are not easily classified as male or female a is asexual which we talked about so not experiencing sexual attraction and then plus we've got p it goes lgbtqiap pansexual we talked about them and actually i'm
048pretty sure it's it now just goes on indefinitely are yes several but the whole point of the plus is it's acknowledging that gender and sexuality are fluid and expansive and so we just want to acknowledge that and recognize it and sometimes there are no words or definition and that's okay too share your thoughts with me a little bit about different kind of intersection intersections that occur every day in our schools amongst people from different cultures and different backgrounds and different belief systems and how do you see like for instance non-compliant staff how do you see that playing out this is more philosophical than anything else but how do you see that playing out for instance when you work with individuals who come from very different backgrounds very different places and who have very different beliefs
049what do you say to them what do you mean by accountability when someone chooses to be non-compliant it's a biggie i know it's gray and multi-layered can i hand it to you [Laughter] do your best that's scary isn't it so i have realized that in doing these trainings i'm never going to change anybody's mind if they don't want to learn but i can at least give them the tools to be basically respectful and to basically understand these identities and so all right i did my best it's been doing great all day um my question back is well how do you handle it when someone is not complying around race and ethnicity or religion in terms of being inclusive how is that accountability offered and handled and it should be when we're talking about affirming students
050and and families and cultures it should be across the board and it should be a non-negotiable approach to how schools and districts are being ran so that's that's the question as well how does it happen with other differences if you will good answer thank you so if we took the gender out of a lot of the issues wouldn't that kind of take care of it as far as discrimination so if you just treat everyone equal i mean you should be president of the world the world no i mean and not to be flip but yeah you know when we add gender it's tricky right because you it's like let's take it out let's get rid of it and for some folks that is a very real part of their identity and i always like to
051say we can just create room for people we don't have to take things out or add things necessarily it's not about that it's just i get to be who i am i can exist here my pronouns are she her i'm woman identified i'm cisgender woman and then i can be next to somebody else who has the complete opposite experience and we can still be doing the same thing or be in the same place or have shared community and so i don't know if it's about taking gender out it's about expanding our experience of gender and how we allow other people to experience it as well it's beautiful and i think one thing that makes me think about is um the difference between equal and equitable and we all you know there are lots of conversations
052in society about race and you know what's equal what's equitable and what does that mean in that context but we can also bring that language to this context too right and it's a similar sort of activity so it may be um you know something that maybe doesn't seem equal because you're providing some additional support but that's equitable yes absolutely and if you think about an educational perspective there it is the light wasn't on uh if you think about from an educational perspective we talk about differentiated learning it's no different and you want those experiences and um you know one tool that has been used and i don't love that this happens is um sometimes for youth who are gender expansive are non-binary they've been put on 504 plans because the schools or the teachers were
053unwilling to be affirming and inclusive i do not endorse that practice at all because it's a slippery slope but it's an example of equity and utilizing tools so that people can get their needs met but i just want to repeat i don't endorse that at all and you're not doing anything extra it's not special rights it's not doing anything extra to make sure that you're utilizing someone's pronouns or affirmed name or choosing a different way to categorize your group folks it's not doing anything extra nobody is actually getting away with anything it's actually again back to that space of expansion you're creating more room for students to experience belonging and affirmation right i would think that would be traumatizing on top of not being like being recognized or seen but being put on a 504
054would be extra traumatizing yes and this was probably about 10 years ago that this happened and it was the tool the best tool for this student actually was at dublin city schools it was the best tool for them to be able to be able to participate in activities that align with their gender identity to be in classes with their peers like the you know sex ed and health education it was a tool um and that student had already been singled out and traumatized from other things that were happening and so it's it's bad it's a really bad practice can you share with us um what are some of the things that you share with parents as they have a child a young person that's going through this process what are some of the because we
055spend a lot of we spend a lot of time talking about the students and the student experience from the parental side what are some of the things you share with parents to help them love their kid and support their child so are you asking as kaleidoscope youth center or some things or like within a school district and system those because those may be very different than both great um well you know at kyc you know we do offer parent groups and we've got education available and and information um for parents who are like feeling like they don't know how to support their young person and that can be as simple as you know loving them the same way you would any other child um and you know the questions of what if it's just a
056phase that you know for me it's always well can we love our kids through a phase we love them through so many phases that's what that's what childhood is it's multiple phases but definitely providing information is a really key tool i'm a parent my youngest just graduated high school earlier this year she's 18 and i have a son who's 20 and what parents need to know is what parents would need to know anyway right and so somebody a young person who is questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation is not an emergency an emergency is if they get harmed or hurt or maybe failing their class but not their identity and so if there's a family coming in and they are like i don't know what to do that would be referring them to places
057like kyc or other organizations there's a whole list of resources where they can get that information but in terms of being the adults there's nothing to communicate to parents if a young person wants to use different pronouns or a different name than what might be on their school records and i think that gets confusing for some folks that answer your question though yes okay one more thing i'll add i think you know as leaders in the district and even with teachers and school personnel is being that unapologetic non-negotiable kind of stand for inclusion affirmation and belonging for all students it covers all students and so it's really setting the stage and the standard for how we're going to operate here for our young people for our students that they can thrive and be on those
058journeys in the most positive way thank you i'm just i have a question about just about your organization so you said that um you're the drop-in is for ages 12 and up do you work with kids younger than age 12 we do um so our drop-in center is ages 12 to 20 tuesday through friday we do have a group monthly for ages um 12 and under i believe we kept it at eight for the youngest we were doing just 12 and under and we were getting three and four-year-olds which there's nothing wrong with that but it's quite the disparity between a four-year-old and an eleven-year-old and so um it was just different so the best practice you know eight to twelve-year-old so we do um have groups for them monthly and for parents and families
059and i think this past saturday we had a couple of families that were there with younger kids that can come and then we do have and that's just our drop-in center but we have special events so we do a pride celebration in our parking lot that's for all ages and families we do a back-to-school event um this year was for ages 12 to 20 and cove had really messed up a lot of things in terms of who can be where and how many but a lot of our public events are for all families in all ages and then our case management as lane said is 16-24 our therapy is ages 12 to 24 and then our housing is 18 to 24. what aren't we asking that we should ask i did have another oh sorry
060all right um can you talk a little bit about the statistics around um kids that aren't supported in this realm i can do do you have i don't want to steal your okay okay thanks um and so what we know so for example when we look at lgbtqia plus population those young folks are 120 more likely to be homeless than their peers and represent about 40 of the entire homeless population so in central ohio um actually it's franklin county there's probably about a little over 30 000 youth who are identified as homeless about two to three years ago and their point in time count so if you do the math there forty percent you know we're over you know a little over um twelve hundred youth who are lgbtq identified and the main reason that
061those young people are typically homeless is lack of safety at home or in their family of origins that they're kicked out we also know when you get kicked out of their homes they're more likely to go to school so then you've got those who are not who are undereducated not graduating from high school and it starts to snowball effect and so if you can't get a job that pays in a way that's safe then we've got youth who engage in survival crimes and so we know that young people are more likely to be in contact with the justice system then we look at from a mental health perspective about i think it's 63 percent of young people have attempted or thought about suicidal behavior this is the trevor project is a really great place for
062all those numbers on those statistics and the research also shows that with just one supportive adult it decreases the risk of self-harm uncontrolled or unmanaged mental health symptoms and suicide ideation significantly just have one supportive adult and then if you know we get into like gender affirming care and that also decreases those risk factors and the one thing i think i'll just add here is if we're looking at like 40 percent of if we look at homeless young people we know that 83 percent sorry bisexual black men or young adults are 83 more likely to be homeless than their peers so you take that 40 out of the entire population and then you add that part of the community it's 83 more likely and then again when you look at homelessness how that impacts young
063folks so it's just this really this growing snowball effect yeah what do you got yeah so it's 78 percent of transgender adults have made at least one suicide attempt the national average is between one and two and 92 of those transgender adults attempt suicide before the age of 25 and so people get mixed up thinking that the mental health statistics are because it's a mental illness but it's because of all the discrimination risk factors that aaron just talked about i used to be in private practice as a therapist and i would say probably 95 of the folks young people came to me who were transgendered transgender non-binary didn't actually meet criteria for what's considered gender dysphoria because it didn't impact their functioning like they were fine with who they were they were fine with their
064peer group it was the therapy was to deal with the way they were being treated from their family or people in the community and so to that point it's not a mental illness being lgbtq in any capacity is not a mental illness is typically the symptoms are either organic and they were going to be there regardless of one's identity and or the trauma from being rejected ostracized all the other negative things that are happening in the in their communities thanks for those numbers i guess the only question that the other question i would have is if people wanted to get involved with you guys or like how would they go about doing that i'm assuming just reach out to you well we have our website listed here i also brought some brochures with me if
065you all would like some we also have volunteer opportunities if people want to volunteer in the drop-in center that's uh they keep changing the time on me but i think it says three six okay yeah 3 30 to 6. i do know that um but that's an opportunity to be in that mentorship positive adult um volunteering for special events when we do pride we do other prom every year which is this really fantastic experience where's prom and these come and they just have this amazing time again pre-coveted we had ss2019 we had um close to 400 youth from across the state that attended representing over i think there's 70 schools across the state and so it's very much just come as you are age of 12. do we do kept that at 20 but there's
066volunteers for those kind of special events we do volunteer days of service for groups of people so that could be you know your workplace it could be your friends your family if people do that for their birthdays and then you know on our website as lane said there's and all that can be found on our website but there's also ways to if you want to contribute financially or you know buy things from our wish list we have an event coming up on october 14th it's our unity soiree our annual fundraiser at no cost so you could certainly come to that so yeah there's a lot of ways and then i also like to add being involved in the community in a way that affirms young people and so doing those things that signal being a
067safe person or a safe place you know smiling at a young person using their affirmative pronouns and their name um really just showing them love like it's a really great way to do the work you know as lanes at the beginning taking what we do and making sure it's available that's something everyone can do you don't have to work at kyc to do that so my question earlier is there anything that we should have asked or that you would like to share i would be curious to know what challenges if any you all are having as a district or things that situations that may have come up how that's going what you see out there in this community and interaction with schools is something that we certainly have evidence of as well i would say
068that we have a pretty good history with working with this community and growing understanding working with families working with students you know as our tagline says westville city school is where you belong and this board and leadership team take that to heart that's one of the reasons we're engaging this conversation we've done training with all of our administrators with you all we did training with our teachers with you all we're just going to continue growing understanding appreciation there was something you said earlier that really caught my attention and it was we're really trying to expand um and creating more room for people to be who they are so they can feel like they belong and that that that kind of generic description overlays on all of these other places we talked about in identity in
069terms of race religion all those pieces as part of a really diverse um some borrow that one i'll credit you whenever i use it but that one really hit me as what we're going for here so yes we have a diverse community of students we also continue to talk about whereas this and most of the conversation focuses on students but the fact of the matter is it's also the families that support students who this may be part of the adult world in that at that table that we interact with and it's also part of the employee group that we're bringing on board and the conversations and who we're seeing that want to be part of our school community so our messaging about who we are and how we're going to work with a variety of
070people becomes really really critical for us and so we're gonna we're just gonna continue to grow our understanding and um and keep our arms as wide open as we can to as many people as we can i love that so one of the topics that we have been discussing is pronouns and trying to find a safe way to let children share that feels safe to them is that happening already or that's what you're trying to i feel like it's happening already i think we started the school year in a way where we try to be respectful to kids that wanted to share and kids that weren't ready to share yet but just finding you know you had mentioned some things before put the name on the board in your pronouns and or put it in
071your signature line or something like that but just letting kids know that there are safe adults to go to where you know they can have that one person and it's amazing what i've seen over time is the more that people practice using pronouns like the more normalized it becomes and while i don't enjoy that word necessarily it's just the truth and it's just like we okay like that's just a part of our conversation and our culture to say pronouns and to ask and even today we were with an all-staff meeting and we're going around the circle checking in and people are still saying their pronouns and some folks we've worked with for four or five years right but it's just part of the natural conversation um you know one of the reasons elaine talked great
072about why we use pronouns and then also when people ask or push back like why do we have to do this another reason is so that you can be seen and engaged within your full humanity and i think when we when people push back or feel uncomfortable saying like i also want to see you and your full humanity and i don't want to make assumptions about you it's another great way to to do that and as you said when teachers are grown-ups do it it makes it feel safer for youth who want to do it as well they're watching us always always this is a question that goes back to a little bit of conversation we had but thinking about some of the really simple things that come up all the time right in school
073like dividing boys and girls or you know whatever those practices are and we talked about potential um sort of other ways to to do that are there other things that you know you all are aware of that happen in schools all the time that maybe just are so far under everyone's radar that like but are hurtful or potentially hurtful to members of the lgbtqia plus community that you could like bring awareness to now i have a very specific one that i recently heard from a young person at the center they said they don't like it when teachers allow students to pass out other students papers because it demonstrates what that student's grade was and it can also out them if they're using a different name on their business very specific so specific i love that
074right yeah yeah yeah i never i've that's my first thing and i love it i think other things too around the boys and girls like saying it so if it's like good afternoon boys and girls which is an assembly hello friends you know and it's such a simple switch and the people who it doesn't impact they won't notice it but the ones for whom it gives up more room they notice that um sometimes use the word siblings you know instead of give a brother or sister do you have any siblings or if we're talking you know it's that language of if you're dating somebody i don't know if teacher i don't know how that's been a waste of an elementary school but you know someone special you know or tell me about your family not
075like your mom and dad tell us about your family who lives in your home what pets do you have so it just it's all about that expansion i think if you approach it from that way um and then also i know the donuts with dads you know that's tricky you know because for parents like that is a really uh exciting thing to do with your kids and not everyone not everybody has a dad and that has nothing to do with gender identity sexual orientation and so just having you know pancakes with parents or whatever it is but just finding ways thinking about the ways they create more room whether it's a physical creation of room or just an expansion offered out there in the air for people to have that within themselves and i think
076you know we approach it that way it's a lot easier to do i think you know having books and things available um you know during black history month not you know having lgbtq black folks there too or for you know hispanic heritage month like finding ways to incorporate and do that be inclusive in that way it doesn't just have to be during lgbtq history month it can be because we exist all the time um yeah i don't know there any other things that are like people about bathrooms um i don't know what the bathroom policy is here but if there's a way to have a private or gender-neutral restroom or all-gender restroom those are great locker rooms i was an athlete in school and i remember sometimes it felt horrible to change in front of
077people and i was in an affirmed locker room so it did it wasn't about my gender identity it just is uncomfortable to take your clothes off in front of other people now what else yeah and so many of those things are like you said it's it's not just about um kids or families the lgbtq plus community it's other kids too so even switching to something like parents well you know there are a number of kids in our district who don't live with parents or don't have parents exactly so families you know or whatever it is so it's really sort of a door into a bigger conversation about belonging and growing it so i really appreciate you know the particular points that you're bringing up to help us think through that thank you for that coffee
078with caretakers i know i love alliteration in general so i'm like what else could go carrot cake i like to also compliment young people not in front of others because they'll be embarrassed but if i see a young person really any human who's like expressing themselves in a way that i know people aren't going to celebrate i love to like i love what you're wearing today or i love your hair or whatever it is and like i said i do it privately because they might not want that attention but it's such an easy way to affirm somebody nobody else has to know what's even happening anything else 712. yeah i do want to just appreciate you all for having us here this is actually the first school board that we've been able to do this
079these trainings in front of which is something we wholeheartedly believe in i always believe in going with leadership that's where the change gets to start um and thank you for having us in with your you know the rest of your team and the different schools but as a board i just want to commend you on the invitation and and being present and engaged with us so thank you so much well thank you for coming and for sharing it was it was really good it was really good [Laughter] anybody else i just wanted to say echo thank you very much for your time tonight and for sharing okay moving on to future meetings 6.1 the board will meet in regular session on monday september 12 2022 at 6 pm here at the early learning center and
080with that may have a motion to adjourn so moved second mr bell yes mrs altman yes mrs meyer yes doctor mr breaker yes mrs davidson yes and with that we're adjourned you