Back in April, Issak Wolfe, a student at Red Lion Area High School near York, Pa. wanted to add his name to the running for prom king. But because he is transgender, he was instead placed on the prom queen list with his legal name, Sierra Stambaugh. Shortly after this story ran, the Pennsylvania Student Equality Coalition (PSEC) decided to do an in-depth analysis of school districts’ policies.
According to PSEC executive director Jason Landau Goodman, “If it’s not clearly spelled out in print, there is too much at stake for students to be discriminated against. Policy can certainly be a jumpstart for a community to meaningfully address the needs of transgender students.”
After reviewing 400 of the 500 school districts in Pennsylvania, the organization found just four that include gender identity: Pittsburgh, State College Area, Abington and Allentown. Discrimination based on gender identity has been prohibited in Pittsburgh since 1997 and in Allegheny County since 2008, so after a review last year, Pittsburgh Public Schools added it to the nondiscrimination policy, says assistant solicitor Jocelyn Kramer. She says the model policy recommended to school districts by the Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA) does not, however, include gender identity along with sex, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, so it is often left out.
“If PSBA added it, a lot of (districts) probably wouldn’t think twice about it,” Kramer says. “A lot of school districts might not want to do something above and beyond what is required by law.”
Pennsylvania does not include gender identity in its statewide nondiscrimination policies.
Lisa Brush, associate professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, says legislation varies widely from state-to-state as well as school district to school district. “Public institutions are having to deal a lot more consistently with issues of gender nonconforming students than they have in the past,” she says. Many things, especially in the public school system, are organized by gender even though separating boys from girls isn’t really necessary, Brush says.
For example, Wolfe was permitted to wear a black robe at graduation, generally worn by boys, while the girls wear yellow robes. “(Challenging gender norms) tends to challenge the conventional notion of what gender is and what masculinity and femininity is,” she says. “The thing that’s really radical is saying, ‘Let’s not organize the world around these dichotomies.’” Emphasizing the need to conform to such things as hairstyles, makeup and dress in a polarizing way reproduces differences and the inequality between genders, Brush says. And when people are so sharply divided, it is more difficult to relate one to the other.
Kramer says those divisions between boys and girls can cause an unsafe environment in schools for those that don’t fit either mold, and distract from the district’s mission of education for everyone. Her firm represents a number of different school districts in southwestern Pennsylvania and she would recommend being proactive about these policies rather than reactive.
“Having a policy in place and being able to respond to questions is always a good thing,” Kramer says. “There’s so many schools (in Pittsburgh) and each individual administrator would’ve reacted differently” to something like Wolfe’s situation.
In addition, schools are mandated to have a Student Assistance Program where all Pittsburgh public schools are licensed as outpatient facilities for different mental health providers as well as prevention service providers like Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network or Persad Center.
The district also does annual in-service training addressing bullying and harassment of LGBT students, Kramer says.
Wolfe fought to have his new name rather than his legal name read at graduation and involved the American Civil Liberties Union, but was unsuccessful.
But Landau Goodman says residents of southwestern Pennsylvania can keep that discrimination from happening to their children by contacting their school districts and supporting the federal Student NonDiscrimination Act, which forbids schools from discriminating based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and the Safe Schools improvement Act, introduced by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) in February to prevent bullying and harassment of students.
