Demand Frederick County School Board Protect Privacy and Safety of Students
| Target Name | Target Organization |
| All Board Members | (Frederick County Board of Education) |
| Brad W. Young | (Board President) |
| Liz Barrett | (Board Vice President) |
| Michael Bunitsky | (Board Member) |
| Colleen Cusimano | (Board Member) |
| Ken Kerr | (Board Member) |
| April Fleming Miller | (Board Member) |
| Joy Schaefer | (Board Member) |
| Debbie Wachter-Harne | (Executive Assistant to the Board) |
The Board of Education of Frederick County, Maryland is considering a policy that endangers the privacy and safety of the county’s students by allowing “access to facilities, including rest rooms, locker rooms, or changing facilities, that correspond to their gender identity […] without question” [emphasis added]. The policy - “Policy 443: Creating Welcoming and Affirming Schools for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students” - has already cleared the Board’s Policy Committee and been referred to the full board for review and approval. You can read the full policy here.
This ominous policy is far-reaching in its implications. If adopted, it would mandate that:
- “All students [would] have access to facilities, including rest rooms, locker rooms, or changing facilities, that correspond to their gender identity. Access [would be] provided without question or additional complicating procedure. Students, including non-binary students, [would] determine which facilities are consistent with their gender identity.”
- “Under no circumstance [would] any student [be] required or directed to use a private use facility.”
- “Students [would be permitted to participate in sports and phys. ed. Classes] in a manner consistent with their gender identity” and “[t]he gender identity of student-athletes [would not be required] to be disclosed to coaches, teammates, opponent’s coaches, or anyone else….”
- On “overnight field trips,” any student would have “the opportunity to room with others according to their gender identity,” and while efforts would be made to “accommodate any student who desires greater privacy… no student should be isolated.”
- Students and all staff who work with students would be required to refer to students by their chosen name and pronouns, and be provided “a current and complete list of preferred names and pronouns for all students” to be used “in every interaction.” There would also be no dress code for events based on gender.
- Finally, and most dangerously of all, the policy states: “Depending on privacy needs or a transgender student’s own personal transition, school staff are authorized to work with students (and their families, if students explicitly wish) to provide options that may support a student’s needs” [emphasis added] - which implies that schools might work independently of parents in implementing policies having to do directly with children’s health, safety, privacy, and general welfare!
This policy is not only absurd, it is dangerous. With this policy, the Board of Education adopts the view of LGBT activists that “gender nonconforming” or “non-binary” students are the only ones with “rights,” and ignores the basic rights of privacy and safety of all other students. It puts the agenda of gender redefinition, a political tool being used by radical activists throughout society, ahead of the privacy and safety of students in intimate spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms. To satisfy the whims of activists and powerful lobbyists from Hollywood and Washington, DC, the Frederick County Board of Education would - without regard to parents’ wishes - force students to use the restroom, to shower, and even to cohabitate overnight with members of the opposite sex! All this in the name of “creating [a] welcoming and affirming]” environment for students who suffer from gender confusion!
Sign this petition to the Frederick County Board of Education demanding that they reject this dangerous policy, and instead work on creating a policy that respects the privacy and safety of all students instead of a policy that caters to the whim of a radical agenda imposed by a bullying elite.
The Petition
Protect ALL Frederick County Students: Reject Dangerous Gender Policy
As a concerned citizen, I write today asking you to reject the proposed item, “Policy 443: Creating Welcoming and Affirming Schools for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students.” This policy, in the name of inclusivity and tolerance, would violate the freedom of speech and freedom of religion of teachers, parents and students, as well as the basic privacy and safety rights of our children at school. Allowing students “without question” to determine their own gender and then use gender-segregated facilities with members of the opposite biological sex is an unscientific, ideological, and dangerous notion. Facilities like rest rooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities - to say nothing of sleeping quarters on overnight field trips - are very intimate spaces and spaces of extraordinary vulnerability. Asking young girls in school to willingly share such facilities with a biological male - and potentially a significantly older male - or else be labelled “intolerant” or “bigoted” is an absurd policy that prizes ideology above safety and privacy.
This policy, aimed at protecting a small group, would in fact have great deleterious effects on the remainder of the community with regards to their rights, freedom, and well-being. The policy is also based on very flawed and unscientific reasoning, as it accepts the debunked notion that gender is not sexually based. Sex is binary, and determined by DNA. There is no basis in science for treating sex-segregated facilities as a matter of “choice” or “expression.”
In any case, that some students suffer from confusion about their gender identity should not mean that they be allowed to dictate how others think, reason, and act with respect to gender and sexuality. If these students are to be accommodated, it must be done in a way that respects and accommodates the needs and security of other students, not a way that privileges them over their peers. All those who disagree with this policy - students, parents and teachers, including some within the LGBTQ community itself - must be treated with dignity and respect and given a fair hearing.
Please reject this policy and work instead to protect the privacy, safety, and dignity of all our children.
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