The Sarasota County School Board will discuss the future of transgender-inclusive bathroom policies at a board workshop Feb. 16.
This comes after a Feb. 2 school board meeting where more than 150 people attended to voice their opinions on the subject.
Protesters from at least a dozen local churches wore white as a sign of resistance to the recent change to Pine View School’s policy change, adopted Jan. 14, which allows transgender students in grades 6-12 to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with regardless of what gender they were assigned at birth. The bathrooms for elementary grade students will remain the same.
Pine View isa grades 2-12 magnet school in Osprey, Fla. and became the first school in the county to adopt a trans-inclusive bathroom policy.
The change at Pine View came after trans student Nate Quinn made several requests to the administration to allow him to use the men’s bathroom at school.
Jared Gritton, a pastor of First Baptist Church in North Port, spoke at the meeting saying that changing the bathroom policy for trans students is “not only nonsensical but utterly opposed to God.”
“What rational father will let an 18-year-old biological male follow his 14-year-old daughter into the bathroom?” Gritton said.
Several community residents also expressed their displeasure to changing the policy, saying it would impact the safety of the other students.
“I would not suffer any child to any exposure that would put them in harm’s way — that’s physically or emotionally – especially during their formative years when they need our protection and guidance to become productive citizens in the community,” Nancy Hamlin, a North Port resident, said to the school board.
Quinn also took the opportunity to speak to the school board.
“Do you know what it means to be transgender? I wasn’t born female and decided to be a male,” Quinn said.“I was born a male; my life just requires more effort for me to be the man I am.”
ANSWER Suncoast, a coalition of anti-war and civil rights organizations, have gotten behind Quinn and attended the meeting along with many in support of the policy changes.
“At the meeting, Nate Quinn, trans students and their advocates pushed history forward despite the threatening presence of over 100 evangelical bigots,” ANSWER Suncoast’s Bryan Ellis said in a statement.“We weren’t expecting the levels of bigotry and hatred that trans-inclusive policy proposals would ignite in Sarasota. It shows just how important it is for the community to come together as we fight for human rights for trans students.”
The Sarasota County School Board workshop is open to the public and representatives from ANSWER Suncoast plan on attending.
