The debate continued Tuesday night in La Center over the school district’s policy on student identity and pronouns.
Previously, teachers could ask students about their gender identity, name change, or pronoun change and not have to tell the student’s family.
The police change says teachers cannot ask those questions. Plus, if a student reveals a gender change, the district will contact the student’s family.
The district announced the policy earlier this month.
A group of parents, students and educators filed a complaint with the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
They argue it puts students in danger if their families aren’t accepting.
"Our goal is that this policy is changed and it better aligns with other school districts who have a policy preventing staff from outing kids. It's actually a punishable offense if they deliberately out kids," said Erin Smelser, a La Center School District parent and employee. "Our school district seems to make it a punishable offense to not out kids. I would love to see that reversed. I would love to get OSPI to pay attention to this issue and make some sort of ruling."
A lot of people spoke out against the new policy at Tuesday night’s meeting.
They are worried about what could happen if teachers share information about gender or sexual identity with parents before the student is ready.
They point to potential abuse, the possibility of students being kicked out of the home, and the risk of suicide among youth because of stigma.
A few people also spoke in favor of the policy.
"We should not be dealing with such thing as pronouns with education. But here we are. My heart aches for this generation dealing with such confusion, deception and suicide because of it. We do not need to be a scientist or a biologist to know God created male and female," one woman said. "We keep dealing with pronouns, we have to deal with it creates further issues in sports, what bathrooms to use and much more."
The board did not respond to the public testimony.
KATU reached out to the district for comment on the complaint filed with OSPI.
KATU has also reached out to OSPI to see if it’s investigating the complaint and what could come of it.
They said they would get back to us.