Front of the D.C. Everest School District administration building. Image courtesy: WAOW TV
WESTON, WI (WSAU) – As students and parents continue to get settled into the new school year at the D.C. Everest school district, new changes to the district’s Title IX policy have caused some to express concerns regarding their child’s safety in not just the sports programs they’ve come to love but the effects it may have on what restrooms students and staff are allowed to use.
Back on August 19th, the D.C. Everest School Board voted 5-1 to adopt the Biden Administration’s newly proposed Title IX guidelines that added the term “gender identity” to the 1972 federal statute, which bars sex discrimination in federally funded schools and colleges, leading the U.S. Supreme Court to block the administration’s changes in some states in an August 16th, 5-4 decision that stated that “the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule.”
According to Fox News, the case was brought before the nation’s highest court after it was challenged by more than two dozen Republican attorneys general and over 100 female athletes, who said the Biden Administration’s proposed Title IX changes would violate state laws that prohibit biological males from playing women’s sports as well as allow some athletes to have an unfair advantage over others, saying, “A growing number of women and girls have been facing the humiliating and damaging experience of being forced to compete against males who identify as transgender in the women’s sports category.”
“It is hard to express the pain, humiliation, frustration, and shame women experience when they are forced to compete against males in sport. It is public shaming and suffering, an exclusion from women’s own category,” the athletes’ filing continued.
During a Tuesday interview with WSAU, D.C. Everest Superintendent Dr. Casey Nye stated while a lot of conversations have been had regarding their decision, the district’s position on student safety hasn’t changed, saying, “You’re (parents and students) not going to see the bathroom, locker room, or any of that kind of stuff. Pronouns aren’t mentioned there (the policy), which are things I’ve had people ask me about. It’s really about how we investigate, respond, remedy, and take care of issues that we hear about when there are allegations of mistreatment in our schools.”
When asked if the change would give the district the ability to punish a student who refused to call someone by a preferred pronoun, Nye said, “I don’t believe we have the word the pronoun written into any policy anywhere, but the idea of kids being punished for the term I hear as being compelled to speak in a way that’s contrary to their personal or religious convictions is definitely something I’ve heard from people. I think a misunderstanding or an unintended act is really different from an intentional, ongoing, or kind of targeted behavior, but absolutely we are not going to go out and assess consequences for that first group of kids. I think for someone who is going out of their way to harass, bully, or discriminate, we have to protect all kids.” “If there is this pattern of and this intentionality of trying to create this environment that’s not comfortable, in that case, we’d have to take a different approach.”
Dr. Nye did not clarify if a student, due to personal reasons, calmly refused to call someone who requested to be called a specific pronoun would qualify as a form of bullying or harassment under the new policy, but when asked to expand on the issue, he continued by saying, “With the very small transgender population that we have, someone would need to go out of their way to try and be in an interaction that causes a scenario, so I think just treating people respectfully and kindly is what we’re talking about here.”
Around the state, the issue of transgenderism in schools has made several headlines in recent months, including a former English teacher by the name of Jordan Cernek in the Argyle School District located less than an hour east of Madison who announced a lawsuit against the district claiming that they chose not to renew his contract after he refused to comply with a district policy that required staff to use preferred names and pronouns due to religious reasons. The School Board voted not to renew his contract after he received verbal and written warnings for refusing to comply, despite Cernek stating in the lawsuit that District Administrator Mike Beranek gave Cernek permission due to religious reasons to avoid having to abide by the policy.
Another instance came from two recent court cases out of Eau Claire, where the school district established a policy known as “administrative guidance for gender identity support,” which urged transgender students to contact staff members with any concerns and advised staff members to exercise caution when discussing a student’s gender identity with others, including parents. When it comes to those types of conversations, Dr. Nye stated that the district believes parents should be “in the center” of those conversations and that there is “no space for us to step into that and think that we should be acting as the parent.”
Dr. Nye thanked parents who directly reached out to ask questions about what they were hearing from others online about the policy change and stated that despite the challenging conversations, the school year has gotten off to a great start and believes that the policy will help keep D.C. Everest in a good position to be a safe place for students.
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