Editor's Note: At the end of the meeting on July 16th, the two policies were tabled rather than moving on to a second reading. Multiple board members expressed concerns that they hadn’t seen legal feedback on the policies from the district’s attorney. The attorney had been only communicating with chairman Jared Kail.
The board made a decision to make suggestions to the policies and then bring the revised policies back for another first reading. That first reading will happen either in August or later, depending on the state of the edits.
The Fremont County School Board is considering two policies about topics like names and pronouns for transgender students and staff this week. The new policies, “Student Transgender Considerations” and “Staff Transgender Considerations,” will go before the board for a first reading at a meeting on the evening of July 16.
The student-focused policy would require teachers to use students' recorded names and can only use pronouns different from a student's biological sex with written parental permission. However, students could refer to other students using “whatever pronoun the speaker prefers, regardless of what the person being referred to prefers or requests,” meaning they wouldn’t have to abide by their fellow student’s preferred pronouns.
The same goes for students using other students’ preferred names.
The fact that student’s preferences don’t have to be honored worries Sarah Reilley. She’s the founder of the group Advocates for Lander Students, which was created in 2019 to “provide information to Lander families regarding FCSD #1 policies, procedures, and other important details that directly affect students,” according to its website.
“We're seeing huge increases across the country in violence and bullying and harassment of transgender people,” Reilley said. “Unless the board is going to propose a policy that will genuinely protect transgender staff and students, they need to not write any policy at all.”
Other community members are also concerned. Jenny Young previously taught at Lander Middle School and has two children who are in the Fremont County School District system. She said her biggest concern is the way in which she said the policies “okay” misgendering.
“[They say] it's okay to misgender teachers. It's okay to misgender students. It's basically saying it's okay to not respect another person's identity. It would be similar to if you had a teacher and they wanted you to call them Mr. or Mrs. and you called them the opposite,” she said.
Young expressed concerns about how the policies might impact her own kids and any kids who “don’t do the popular things and fit in with the crowds.” She said she hopes the school board goes in a different direction.
“I would actually really like the school district to come forward with a proclamation saying that they acknowledge that there are populations of students in our schools that are marginalized and that they are going to make it a priority to make sure that they're protected,” she said.
Sara Burlingame is with Wyoming Equality, which works to “achieve equity for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, and queer Wyomingites,” according to its website. She said the proposed policies could create “an environment of fear and intimidation” and aren’t in line with the Wyoming Constitution’s guarantee that students have “the right…to opportunities for education.”
“I'm not familiar with any other school district [in Wyoming] who has taken the sort of extraordinary steps to use summer vacation to actively discriminate against the segment of the school. I think this is the first,” she said.
Danica Hecht is the Safe and Healthy Communities Coordinator for Wyoming Equality. She said she is concerned about the ripple effects that these potential policies could have across the state and across the country if approved.
“I think it’s important to come out strongly and say ‘This is not a real issue. This is not going to help our students, it’s going to potentially endanger them. It's not promoting their access to equal education and not promoting their constitutional rights,’” she said.
In June, the Fremont County School Board also passed their own version of the Parental Rights in Education Act, which was passed this legislative session. Although board member Aileen Brew tried to add an amendment to the policy that specified that a student’s sexual or gender identity is not in and of itself a reason to disclose to parents, it failed on a split vote.
In 2022, the board also removed sexual orientation and gender as protected classes from district discrimination policy for students and staff in 2022, with veteran status, marital status, and pregnancy.
Those in opposition to the policies are hosting a silent protest outside the school board board meeting in Lander on July 16. The meeting for the first reading of the policies starts at 6 p.m. and is held at the King Administration Office at 863 Sweetwater Street. It will also be streamed online via Zoom.
If the policies move forward after the first reading, they will go on to a second reading and then could be adopted. At this time, a date for a second reading has not been scheduled.
