A year ago, Randy Bertrand wasn’t an LGBTQ rights activist. He didn’t march in Pride parades throughout the state or launch PFLAG chapters up and down Florida’s east coast. What he was a year ago was a father who loved his son. A son who he had known since the day he was born, but was just about to meet for the first time.
Elliott Bertrand is a 15-year-old high school student from Palm Coast, Florida and he came out as transgender to his parents, Randy and Jennifer Bertrand, in March 2019.
“I first came out to friends but I wanted to come out [to my parents] because part of me felt like I owed it to them,” Elliott says. “I don’t like hiding stuff from my parents, and also I hated having part of me that was integral to who I am hidden. I also hated that they called me by female pronouns and my dead name, so I finally decided to tell them.”
Elliott sat down with his parents and told them that while they have always known him as female, he hasn’t ever felt like one.
“I cried a lot,” Elliott recalls. “It wasn’t that I was scared of them not accepting me, it’s just a big thing to tell someone.”
Randy Bertrand admits that he didn’t really have an understanding of what it meant to be transgender when Elliott came out.
“I look back on it, reflect on it and there’s a lot of things I could have done better,” Bertrand says. “But I would say that thankfully I have a very understanding son and one that’s not afraid to answer my questions.”
COMING OUT AT SCHOOL
After Elliott opened up and revealed his authentic self to his family, it was time to come out to a larger number of people at school. At the time, Elliott was a ninth grader at Matanzas High School in Palm Coast.
“I’m very much a theater person and I was in a show at the time playing a female character,” Elliott says. “I told one of my closest friends on the cast and she asked if I want other people to know and I was like, ‘yes spread it around.’ They were all supportive and cool with it. They said we’ll call you whatever you want, we love you and we accept you.”
The next step in Elliott’s coming out involved telling two of his closest teachers — his theater teacher and chorus teacher. Things went well with Elliott’s theater teacher but when he came out to Jens Oliva, his chorus teacher at Matanzas, “he was definitely more uncomfortable with it,” Elliott says.
Elliott says coming out to his chorus teacher began a series of events in where Oliva started bullying him.
“When I first told him that I wanted to be called Elliott, he explained to me either his father or his grandfather, who had passed away, was named Elliott so he was uncomfortable calling me that,” Elliott says.
Along with continuing to dead name him, Oliva also refused to use his correct pronouns, would single Elliott out in front of the class making him uncomfortable and caused Elliott to have anxiety attacks. The bullying became too much for Elliott to handle leading the Bertrands to file a complaint with the school.
“They conducted an investigation into the teacher and nothing came of it,” Bertrand says. “After all of this one of the things that Elliott decided he wanted to do is give up chorus. Chorus and performing arts means everything to my son. It’s been part of his life for easily the last six, seven years and it’s a big part of his life.”
The family decided the best thing to do was for Elliott to change schools. He transferred to Flagler Palm Coast High School to start his 10th grade year and Oliva continued to teach at Matanzas, but Bertrand wouldn’t let it end there.
GET ON BOARD
“As my wife and I learned more, we learned that supporting our son is the absolute paramount thing we can do,” Bertrand says, “but it was also about the other kids that could be subjected to this.”
Bertrand wanted a policy change from the Flagler County School Board. In the fall of 2019, the family attended a school board meeting and Bertrand petitioned for the school board to add gender identity to the School Board Policy Manual’s section 217, the district’s nondiscrimination policy.
“Sexual orientation is in it but gender identity is absent and the school board said, ‘Okay, we’re going to take a look at it,’” Bertrand says. “We didn’t really get any follow up from the school board on pretty much anything, so then I went back in December and addressed the school board again.”
At the December 2019 school board meeting, the Bertrands came to petition once again to have gender identity added to the district’s nondiscrimination policy. The meeting was also attended by a local pastor, Charlene Cothran.
“She got up there and attacked my son,” Bertrand recalls. “She called him ‘mentally ill’ and ‘a confused girl’ and of course during public comment you can’t really say anything, so Elliott is sitting there, stewing in his seat as he is attacked.”
The attacks became too much for Elliott and he walked out.
Cothran — a former member of the Human Rights Campaign and numerous other LGBTQ activist groups — identifies as an “ex-lesbian.” She was the publisher of an LGBTQ magazine in Atlanta called “VENUS” until becoming a Christian in 2006 and renouncing her same-sex attractions. She moved to Palm Coast and formed The Evidence Ministry in 2008 which promotes an anti-LGBTQ agenda and claims people can change their sexual orientation or gender identity through the power of Jesus Christ.
“Since the day of my transformation, I have worked to lovingly share with anyone deceived by same-sex attraction or so-called transgenderism and their advocates that CHANGE is not only possible but EVIDENCED in myself and countless others who are experiencing complete freedom from our former same-sex or gender confused desires,” Cothran wrote in a letter submitted to the school board members Dec. 11.
In the letter, Cothran states individuals are not born LGBTQ, that identifying as such is a mental illness and statistics on LGBTQ youth suicide are erroneous, amongst other false claims.
During the December school board meeting, Cothran read in part the letter she wrote, as well as cited “stats” assembled by The Heritage Foundation, the American College of Pediatrics and other groups flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center as promoting an anti-LGBTQ agenda.
“We’re sitting there in the school board chamber and the board just kind of sat there and watched it happen,” Bertrand says.
Pierre Tristam of FlaglerLive.com wrote of the meeting that Cothran had “been no less abusive than anyone getting in a student’s face and demeaning the student’s identity, whatever it may be.”
No changes were made to the district’s policy at the December meeting.
BEHIND THE CURVE
Flagler County is among the 46 Florida school districts whose nondiscrimination policy does not include gender identity, according to Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group. Of the state’s 67 districts, 21 include protections based on gender identity and 44 based on sexual orientation.
Ian Siljestrom, the organization’s Safe and Healthy Schools Associate Director, says the best thing any school district can do is create school environments that are supportive and inclusive of all students and their identities.
“We know that putting protections in place that encourage using a student’s affirmed name and pronouns, or allowing students to form a Gay-Straight Alliance, helps to support an entire school culture that is more inclusive, and suicidal ideation and attempts decrease amongst all students — LGBTQ students and their heterosexual peers,” Siljestrom says.
The need for these kinds of protections are made even more evident by the fact that, according to the CDC, 35% of transgender students attempt suicide and 27% do not feel safe at school.
“We did get a little bit of follow up from one of the board members after that meeting,” Bertrand says.
Colleen Conklin — who along with Janet McDonald, Andy Dance, Trevor Tucker and Maria Barbosa make up the five-person school board in Flagler County — met with Bertrand and advised that she didn’t think the board would pass a policy change but that they could work on procedures and guidelines.
“To me that was just okay. It’s the policy that protects all the procedures and guidelines,” Bertrand says. “It started to become less about this is what happened to my son and I want justice for my son, to we have got to make a change here to make sure that this never happens again.”
Bertrand took the fight back to the school board in January and again in February, each time building more and more support within the community.
“The pastor was also back each time and she was very vocal against my son, against my family, but we eventually had a group of about 60 people that showed up to support Elliott,” Bertrand says.
As both of Elliott’s parents and other members of the community stood and shared stories of why this change is needed the board listened but still did not budge on its position.
“Our board believes that our policy protects all students,” said Jason Wheeler, Community Information Specialist for Flagler County Schools, to Spectrum News 13 in February. “It doesn’t matter what their race, what their religion, what their sexual orientation is. It protects all students, we don’t just single out LGBTQ students. We don’t just single out African American students. It’s for all students.”
However, the school board’s policy does single out individual groups who are more likely to experience discrimination.
“No person shall, on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, disability, political or religious beliefs, national or ethnic origin, or genetic information, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity, or in any employment conditions or practices conducted by this School District, except as provided by law,” the policy reads.
FORCING A VOTE
While the board would not vote on adding gender identity to the policy, Bertrand had a way to force a vote from them. The district’s nondiscrimination policy came up for a change due to the need to include clarification on sexual harassment language.
“The thing is, when a policy goes up for a change, it needs to be published for a period of time and, during that publishing time, any citizen can make a recommended edit to the policy anywhere that they want,” he says. “So I thought okay, I’ll go ahead and make the recommended change right there and I will continue to communicate with the board and we’ll get this done and they don’t have to be the ones making the recommendation. They just need to vote on the change.”
With the change submitted, it came up for a vote during the board’s virtual April meeting.
On April 21, the Flagler County School Board met to discuss and vote on whether they would add gender identity to the nondiscrimination policy. Kristy Gavin, general counsel for the school district, read seven public comments which were in support of the addition. No public comment opposed it.
“I know in the past few months I’ve been very vocal about opposing any changes to Policy 217, and felt that the current language in the policy covered all students … I’ve come to realize that our policy may not cover all students,” Conklin said to the rest of the board during the meeting. “My focus as I said remains the same. Protecting students and ensuring their safety and well being. This really isn’t about politics or religion, as a matter of fact I think politically I have been told that this will be my last term on the board if I support a change in this policy.
“This is really about protecting students,” Conklin continued. “We’ve listened to student after student, parent after parent share their personal, very personal stories. Their challenges, their heartbreaks, often from those who just don’t understand and/or who are intolerant of what they are going through and how they identify. No parent should be fearful of sending their child to school. No student should be fearful of how they should be treated by their peers or by the adults entrusted to educate them or to support them.”
The board voted 4-1 to keep the district’s nondiscrimination policy as is without the addition of gender identity.
“While the school board doesn’t want to put it in black and white, this young man has the right to go to school and not be discriminated against,” says Palm Coast City Commissioner Jack Howell.
Howell is a retired Marine Colonel, former high school teacher and was elected to Palm Coast’s District 2 in 2018. He has lived in Palm Coast since 1991.
“The schools have the responsibility to protect students from bullying and I don’t want to see that nonsense from teachers. There should be total acceptance,” Howell says. “If your student’s preference is to be addressed by the proper name and pronouns, that should be okay. Put your grown-up pants on and call them by their preferred name. It isn’t going to kill you.”
NEXT STEP
While the April vote didn’t go the way the entire Bertrand family had planned, they are hoping for a better outcome in November.
“We’ve got three [school board] seats that are currently up for reelection,” Bertrand says. “We’ve decided that we definitely want to vote against Barbosa.”
Barbosa is being challenged for her District 5 seat by Cheryl Massaro, a 40-year educator who recently retired from Flagler Schools.
Dance, who is the second-longest serving member of the board, is resigning his seat to run for Flagler County’s District 1 Commission seat. Currently Jill Woolbright, who is running for Dance’s school board seat, is doing so unopposed. The third position up for reelection is Conklin’s seat.
“Conklin we definitely would like to get reelected,” Bertrand says. “She really did change a lot from when we first met with her last year, she came around and supported the policy change. To me that was a victory in and of itself to take someone in a couple of months and to finally get her to admit that this change needed to be done, that was tremendous.”
Along with the chance to get some new faces on the school board, Bertrand is also looking forward to working with the district’s new superintendent.
“I definitely want to try to get some time in front of the superintendent to talk about how as a school district we can make sure change happens and we are supporting these kids even though the school board has decided that they’re not going to change their policy,” he says.
It has been a long road from first coming out to his parents to seeing the policy voted on and it isn’t over yet, but Elliott knows that this is fight worth fighting.
“I don’t think anyone would disagree that all humans deserve to be treated equally and with respect,” he says. “This isn’t a religious issue, it’s not a political issue, it’s a human issue.”
Bertrand knows that even though the policy change is important, this is actually bigger than just the school board.
“My kid has become a lighthouse for a lot of other kids,” he says. “That’s really what I want to let others know, look there’s people out there fighting for you. You don’t have to stay in the closet, I know it’s scary sometimes to open up about how you feel and how you identify. And sometimes it feels like the whole world’s against you. But trust in yourself because there’s other people out there who can also be a lighthouse.”
