News just broke that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California granted an injunction in favor of two teachers, who said their school districts’ policy forbidding staff to inform parents when students discussed personal gender identity violated their First Amendment rights by “requiring them to lie to parents.” As in New Jersey, the state of California is suing school districts that fail to adopt this sort of policy, turning school board meetings into shouting fests. “Parental involvement is essential to the healthy maturation of schoolchildren,” United States District Judge Roger Benitez said in his order last week. “The Escondido Union School District has adopted a policy without parent input that places a communication barrier between parents and teachers.”

Here on the other coast, following in the steps of Hanover, Middletown, Marlboro, and Manalapan-Englishtown, three more school districts—Colts Neck, Howell, and Holmdel— are taking steps to repeal Policy 5756, taken from guidance proffered by the Department of Education, that requires school personnel to “not reveal a student’s transgender status except as allowed by law….A school district shall keep confidential a current, new, or prospective student’s transgender status.”

Between 2019-2020 school boards throughout the state followed guidelines issued by the DOE and adopted new anti-discrimination policies. One in particular requires staff to not notify parents when a student identifies as transgender unless the student’s health and safety is at risk. In Holmdel, for instance, the policy states that “student dress codes should not be enforced more strictly for transgender and gender nonconforming students than for other students.” It also includes the correct terminology “to be used regarding gender identity and outlines specific ways to guard against harassment, intimidation or bully of transgender students” and allows students to join sports teams based on their gender identity, as well as access to unisex bathrooms and locker rooms.

As the culture wars become more embedded in our national discourse, school boards are in the unhappy position of adjudicating between parents who feel schools are usurping their rights and values and those who support the rights of transgender students to have confidential conversations with adults they trust.

At Holmdel’s school board meeting this week, reports the Asbury Park Press, “members of the public in attendance were split between people who are concerned with two possible scenarios on the extremes. On one side, people were concerned about easily persuadable children and the rights of parents to know what’s going on with their children in their schools. On the other side, people were concerned about transgender students whose families would not accept them if they came out.”

There was no consensus among board members as well, with some worrying about Attorney General Matt Platkin’s lawsuits against Hanover, Middletown, Marlboro, and Manalapan-Englishtown. Superintendent J. Scott Cascone argued that parents supported the policy and often approached the school, while board member Terence Wall called the current policy a “disenfranchising parent’s policy” and “a war on women, a war on young girls, biological girls and their sports.” 

The school board will vote on whether to repeal Policy 5756 at its next meeting.

In Colts Neck, on Wednesday the school board repealed the policy with resolution stating, “Colts Neck Township Board of Education recognizes the burden that the current litigation with New Jersey School districts and the ambiguity surrounding the language in maintaining and/or amending Policy 5756 is causing.”

In a letter to parents, superintendent MaryJane Garibay wrote, “on addition to providing the safest environment for students, we are also accountable to our parents. We have a responsibility and duty to communicate with parents about their children. And again, this is not a choice. It is a duty and a responsibility; and, one that we take very seriously in Colts Neck.”

In Howell Township last Wednesday the Board of Education took a preliminary vote to repeal Policy 5756.

LGBTQ advocates expressed deep concern. “It seems as if it’s spreading like wildfire and honestly, it’s deeply disturbing and, very concerning that we are kind of losing focus of who is at the center of these policies, which are the youth,” said Brielle Winslow-Majette of Garden State Equality.

Some of the momentum behind repeals is not a factor of culture wars but a revelation that the company many districts rely on to craft policy, Strauss Esmay, designated Policy 5756 as “mandatory.” School boards are now questioning whether the wording in the policy, specifically around parent notification, is indeed required by the state.