3 North Jersey school districts reverse bids to jettison transgender student safeguards

Facing community backlash, fresh votes from newly elected board members and the possibility of a state legal challenge, three North Jersey school districts on Monday walked back efforts to abolish policies intended to protect transgender K-12 students.

The Westwood Regional School District's newly elected school board majority reversed a December decision that had abolished policy 5756, a state guideline that treats LGBTQ+ students' status as confidential information between school and student.

And after three board meetings over 13 days in Fort Lee, the board tabled — then abandoned — an effort to rewrite a similar policy by striking it from the agenda. The board voted to rescind a resolution to abolish policy 5756 and removed a replacement policy from the agenda, Fort Lee Schools Superintendent Robert Kravitz said.

Story continues below photo gallery.

The Wyckoff school board, whose K-8 district feeds the Ramapo Indian Hills Regional High School District, also unanimously voted Monday to table a resolution that would have abolished policy 5756.

According to the state's guidance, schools are "encouraged to communicate openly, albeit confidentially, with students regarding their transgender status or gender identity. Proper communication with the student will ensure that appropriate steps are taken to determine a student’s preferences and address potential privacy concerns and associated risks to the student’s well-being."

The policy also says that "a school district shall accept a student’s asserted gender identity; parental consent is not required." And the district is to keep the student's preference confidential.

Nearly all New Jersey school districts have had this policy on their books since it was crafted based on a law passed in 2017 under Gov. Chris Christie.

But as the so-called parents' rights movement engulfed school board politics nationally and in several New Jersey districts after the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-LGBTQ policies — including book and curriculum bans — became more prevalent.

The Division on Civil Rights under state Attorney General Matt Platkin sued four school boards last year after they abolished policy 5756. Those boards argued that the policy breaches a parent's right to be informed when a child communicates gender identity and sexual orientation information to school staff.

State law, according to the attorney general's legal complaint, protects this information as confidential; teachers are not required to inform parents about a child's gender expression in school. The lawsuits are still working their way through the courts.

Westwood transgender policy restored

The state guidance on transgender policy was restored in the Westwood Regional School District by a 6-3 vote Monday, with parental rights board members Kristen Pedersen, Laura Cooper and Douglas Cusato voting against it.

Board President Jason Garcia and members Heather Perin, Loni Azzolina, Jorge Pertuz, Andrea Peck and Nicole Martin supported the move. Last year's board voted to drop the transgender guidelines in December, despite the November election results, in which local voters rejected four parental rights candidates.

The Transgender Guidance for School Districts put forth by the state Education Department supports having districts implement policies consistent with both federal and state anti-bias laws, including the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

Altering or removing such policies does not absolve any school in New Jersey from protecting students from discrimination, the Education Department said in a statement to NorthJersey.com.

It is important for schools to communicate acceptance and affirmation to all their students, it said.

Reversal in Fort Lee

"The power of each individual community is really important in speaking up against efforts to remove these policies," said Laurie Albrecht of Garden State Equality, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, welcoming the Fort Lee decision in particular as a result of pressure from students, the teachers' union and district residents.

They protested efforts by a five-member board majority to replace policy 5756. The board voted in the majority on Monday to abandon that effort. "The Fort Lee community really came together on this one, organizing on the ground, staking themselves on one issue," Albrecht told NorthJersey.com.

Many board members who advocate for parents' rights argue that they are not homophobic and say they oppose policy 5756 only because it limits parents from learning about their children's gender expression.

Fort Lee board member Kacy Knight was one of them. He said he did not want to abolish the policy for teenagers but also wanted parents to be aware of their child's decisions. "I have a hard time wrapping my head around it," Knight said.

Two other board members said the policy was controversial because it applied even to the youngest children in elementary school, who are “very easily confused," and that it was not necessary as long as New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination was in place.

Board President Kristen Richter disagreed, saying that as a teacher in another public school district, she could count on one hand the number of students she knows who have transitioned, and that she and counselors are trained to respond to students who approach them.

“The comments that people are keeping this secret and convincing students to do things behind their parents' backs is not what teachers do,” she said.

Board Vice President Holly Morell said her own son came out to someone in high school before he could bring himself to tell her he was gay. "I will always vote for this," she said in support of restoring the state's transgender guidelines.

Policy 5756 was not "mandatory," Superior Court Judge Stuart Minkowitz in Morris County wrote in response to a lawsuit brought by the state against the Hanover Township school district. The Law Against Discrimination applies and schools are expected to comply, he wrote, whether or not they retain the old transgender policy.

Protecting students' civil rights

But opposition to these policies should be viewed from the lens of transphobia, Albrecht said. "What you're talking about in the situation of these policies is not anti-gay sentiment but anti-trans sentiment. This is made very apparent by a very small but very aggressive group called Gays Against Groomers who do not believe that trans people belong in the queer, L, G and B, community," Albrecht said.

Gays Against Groomers is a far-right group that protests policy 5756 and the state's 2020 sex education standards, alongside such parents' rights organizations as Moms for Liberty and the New Jersey Project.

Some Fort Lee residents were surprised by efforts to remove transgender protections in the schools. The town is split nearly equally between 43% white and 43% Asian residents and has a high foreign-born population, according to demographic aggregation website Data USA, and a Democratic-majority Borough Council.

But the district also rejected the state's 2020 Health and Physical Education standards in August 2022.

"The town is Democratic and has been for many years, and is incredibly diverse," said Michele Perez, a resident who has two children in the district. "Within the schools themselves we don't have problems with diversity and inclusion, which is why I think there is such a high level of interest and attention among parents. The way the board voted against 5756 was out of alignment."

Moving against transgender protections after rejecting the sex education standards made some parents say "we're not doing this again," Perez said.

For others this was about "protecting students' civil rights with a policy that has already been in place for a few years, not like the health standards, which were new," she said.

Most New Jerseyans also appear to support state guidance on transgender students. They believe teachers shouldn’t share a student’s transgender identity with their parents if the student doesn’t feel safe coming out, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released Tuesday.

Fifty-four percent of New Jerseyans say a teacher shouldn’t be required by law to inform a student’s parents about their transgender identity, and 55% say teachers shouldn’t feel a personal need to inform a student’s parents. About three in 10 say the teacher should tell the parents, and roughly 15% are unsure what should be done.

Staff Writer Marsha Stoltz contributed to this article

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: 3 North Jersey school districts restore transgender shields