Virginia Regulatory Town Hall View Comments

Department of Education

State Board of Education

Guidance Document Change: Every day, throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, educators and school leaders work to ensure that all students have an opportunity to receive a high-quality education. As a part of that work, educators strive to meet the individual needs of all students entrusted to their care, and teachers work to create educational environments where all students thrive. The Virginia Department of Education (the “Department”) recognizes that each child is a unique individual with distinctive abilities and characteristics that should be valued and respected. All students have the right to attend school in an environment free from discrimination, harassment, or bullying. The Department supports efforts to protect and encourage respect for all students. Thus, we have a collective responsibility to address topics such as the treatment of transgender students with necessary compassion and respect for all students. The Department also fully acknowledges the rights of parents to exercise their fundamental rights granted by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children. The Code of Virginia reaffirms the rights of parents to determine how their children will be raised and educated. Empowering parents is not only a fundamental right, but it is essential to improving outcomes for all children in Virginia. The Department is mindful of constitutional protections that prohibit governmental entities from requiring individuals to adhere to or adopt a particular ideological belief. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees religious freedom and prohibits the government from compelling speech that is contrary to an individual’s personal or religious beliefs. The Department embarked on a thorough review of the Model Policies Guidance adopted on March 4, 2021 (the “2021 Model Policies”). The 2021 Model Policies promoted a specific viewpoint aimed at achieving cultural and social transformation in schools. The 2021 Model Policies also disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate students, including transgender students. With the publication of these 2022 Model Policies (the “2022 Model Policies”), the Department hereby withdraws the 2021 Model Policies, which shall have no further force and effect. The Department issues the 2022 Model Policies to provide clear, accurate, and useful guidance to Virginia school boards that align with statutory provisions governing the Model Policies. See Code of Virginia, § 22.1-23.3 (the “Act”). Significantly, the 2022 Model Policies also consider over 9,000 comments submitted to the Department during the public comment period for the 2021 Model Policies.

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10/26/22 4:43 pm

Commenter: Lisa Boyd

STRONGLY OPPOSE

My name is Lisa Boyd, PhD, and I am a sociologist (Penn State, 2016) and current graduate student in Counselor Education at Virginia Tech. I am writing to strongly oppose the 2022 Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools as they are currently written.

The newly proposed Model Policies are, at their core, an attempt to disempower transgender people. Research clearly shows that misgendering, deadnaming, and outing transgender children and teens negatively impacts their mental and physical wellbeing. By requiring schools to out students to their parents, the 2022 Model Policies may expose transgender students to abuse, neglect, or rejection. Familial rejection is a significant predictor of suicidal ideation and poor mental health among transgender youth (e.g. Pariseau et al., 2019; Ryan et al., 2010), and only 27% of transgender youth report having very supportive families (Gender Spectrum and Human Rights Campaign, 2014). The Model Policies can therefore be expected to negatively impact a sizable proportion of transgender students in the Commonwealth.

In addition, by requiring students to use their legal name and sex assigned at birth, as well as forcing them to use bathrooms and join sports teams associated with their sex assigned at birth, this policy creates a hostile and degrading environment for transgender students. In a large-scale review of 44 peer-reviewed studies, several factors were found to be associated with better health outcomes among transgender children and adolescents: social support, school safety and belonging, and the ability to use one’s chosen name (Tankersley et al., 2021). Let me say that again: Being called by your chosen name as a transgender person directly impacts your health and wellbeing. Feeling safe and like you belong at school as a transgender person directly impacts your health and well-being. Policies like the proposed 2022 Model Policies contribute to school environments that result in 75% of transgender students feeling unsafe at school (GLSEN, 2016).

Although the stated aim of this policy is to center parental rights, it only does so for parents who are unsupportive of trans rights. For families who are supportive and affirming of their transgender children—those who recognize the fundamental importance of honoring their child’s gender identity—the impact of these policies will be overwhelmingly negative. Beliefs aside, families will see their children degraded and disrespected in school and their children’s mental health compromised. All families of transgender students will be at risk of feeling the fallout from increased rates of depression, social isolation, and suicidal ideation resulting from this policy.

As a future counselor, I also need to voice my concern about the ethical issues this policy presents for counselors working in public schools. A counselor’s priority is and has to be the well-being of their client—the student, in this case—and counselors are bound to act in accordance with the ethics of the counseling profession. The proposed policy would require school counselors to act against their Code of Ethics (ASCA, 2014), as well as mental health counselors more broadly to behave against their ethical code (ACA, 2014), by forcing them to breach confidentiality to discuss students’ counseling discussions with their parents. For the reasons presented above, this could have serious negative consequences for the student’s wellbeing. I also have concerns for teachers under the proposed policy, which have already been eloquently expressed by many teachers in this forum.

As an alternative to the proposed 2022 Model Policies, I would like to see state policies align more closely with the 2021 Model Policies, which centered student safety. Disenfranchising transgender students will not benefit anyone and will hurt many. Virginia’s focus should instead be on educating people and amplifying transgender voices so that all students receive the support they need in school and have the opportunity to learn in an environment where they feel safe and valued.

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