Earlier this month the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District published the final draft of its new policies on transgender students. It was going to be presented officially on March 17, but with the COVID-19 panic the meeting was canceled. It remains to be seen when it will be presented and approved by the board. As I will show below, it reaches a new low for the Fairbanks School District, which says a lot since Alaska’s schools have been rated among the lowest in that nation in student performance.
The first thing they state is that “The District will accept the gender identity a student consistently asserts at school. Gender Identity is fluid for some students.” The district wants no objective standard, no proof of anything. Students can just lie about their sex and then do anything which is allowed for the opposite sex.
In essence, the district is saying parents don’t matter, only student preferences.
Next it is stated that a student’s “preferred names” and pronouns must be used. According to the district, it “does not condone intentional and persistent refusal to respect a student’s preferred name. If parents object to staff using the student’s preferred name, then staff should use the student’s given name when discussing the student with the parent or guardian, but otherwise would use the student’s preferred name.”
In essence, the district is saying parents don’t matter, only student preferences. To drive that point home they say, “Some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not open about their gender identity at home. A school should prioritize student safety when providing or reporting information about the student to parents or guardians.”
The worst policy allows someone claiming to be a member of the opposite sex to use the restroom or locker room of that sex.
As regards transgender competitors, “Students are permitted to participate in physical education and noncompetitive sports based on the gender identity that they consistently assert during school.” That is followed by a statement that students can be in competitive sports of the opposite sex based on medical diagnosis, medical treatment or “an established history of consistently asserting a particular gender during school.” Once that determination is made, it applies for their entire high school career. Around the country this is destroying women’s sports, as men pretending to be women, break previously held women’s records.
The worst policy allows someone claiming to be a member of the opposite sex to use the restrooms or locker rooms designated for that sex. If students feel uncomfortable with someone of the opposite sex in the locker room, they “may” be provided a different locker room and “will” be provided a different restroom. In other words, those who are honest about what sex they are will be chased out of their normal restrooms and locker rooms by those who are lying.
Finally, teachers or staff who are accused of “discrimination,” which could just be using the wrong pronoun, can be fired.
…think long and hard about whether you want your kids attending such an unsafe environment.
This social agenda of Superintendent Karen Gaborik also includes a new social studies class on civil rights which includes fake civil rights issues of the LGBTQ movement, while completely bypassing the largest civil rights issue of our day – the murder of unborn children and infanticide. The curriculum committee scaled back a class dedicated to pornographic LGBTQ literature, but is rumored to have smuggled some of those books into other classes.
I hope everyone, during this time of distance education at home, will think long and hard about whether you want your kids attending such an unsafe environment. There have already been cases of students being assaulted by members of the opposite sex in the restrooms, and there are some girls who don’t go to the bathroom all day for fear of having boys in the restroom. Please tell the Fairbanks School Board that your child’s safety is more important than their radical social-political agenda, which has nothing to do with educating students.
The writer is an engineer, born and raised in Fairbanks. He is a former member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly.
