[Date]
Attention:
[John A. Sample, Department Head
Anytown ISD/Anytown School
Address
City, State Zip]
Dear Mr./Ms./Coach/Professor/Dean Sample,
I am a [parent of a student in our school district/concerned member of our Anytown ISD community/Community Leader]. I’m writing to you regarding the recent publicity coverage about Title IX guidance for public schools. It is my understanding that the US Departments of Education and Justice have rescinded “…guidance documents [provided in May 2016 by the same departments which] take the position that the prohibitions on discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq., and its implementing regulations, see, e.g., 34 C.F.R. § 106.33, require access to sex-segregated facilities based on gender identity.”
It is also my understanding that the guidance imparted in May 2016, in general, asked that you as an [administrator/educator] in [Anytown ISD] consider the experience of transgender students by recognizing their gender identity (inclusive of gender expression) when providing access to public bathroom facilities.
Though the May 2016 guidance from our Federal Government has been rescinded, I urge you to employ policies that respect transgender students in your care by offering your support to these students and making access to bathroom facilities appropriate to their gender identity available to them. Given the difficulty experienced by students who express and identify in gender independent of their biology, it seems unreasonable to presume that males identifying as boys, or females identifying as girls, would take advantage of the provisions made for their colleagues. There is no known case of abuses committed by a transgender person against someone in the restroom of their biology and gender identity. However, the opposite scenario, in which a person of biological and gender identity congruence abuses/harms a transgender person is known.
Our society needs to stop making it acceptable to hurt people who experience the world differently than the “majority.” In order to do so, an opportunity for young students to learn both the decorum expected in public bathrooms and to respect the physical space of others regardless of our own presumptions, is incredibly important. What our students learn as children, they take into the world as adults. With this in mind, please consider and adopt a policy of inclusion for the acceptance and protection of transgender students, whether you believe there are transgender students in your school(s) now or not.
I look forward to hearing from your office that such a policy is in the works!
Sincerely,
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