The New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD) shared details of its Gender Support Plan, geared toward ensuring transgender and gender nonconforming students are made to feel welcome and included.
“I work for the whole school district,” said deputy superintendent Linda Oehler-Marx. “We teach all kids…I’ve lived in New Paltz a very long time. I understand the politics of New Paltz.
But when we say we’re inclusive, we have to be more inclusive. And so how do we do that?”
The Gender Support Plan was also directed by psychologist Mary Kay Fiore and social worker Lisa Watkins, both of whom work at New Paltz High School. But the document’s formation involved contributions from many voices, including students, and even as its supports are designed to be rooted in the district’s principles, it’s also likely to evolve over time.
“All students have a right to privacy,” reads the opening paragraph of the plan. “This includes the right to keep private their transgender status or gender nonconforming presentation at school. Students have the right to openly discuss and express their gender-related identity, and expression at school and school activities, and to decide when, with whom, and how to share private information.”
The document also includes guidelines for teachers and other staff in how to ensure a student’s wishes are respected.
Though the plan has been in the works since 2023, its proponents in the district say it’s taken on greater significance since President Donald Trump retook office earlier this year.
“Title IX, the Educational Amendments Act, has long prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, federally funded education programs and activities,” said Fiore. “However, there’s been recent changes to Title IX that no longer require school staff to acknowledge a student’s preferred pronoun if they do not feel comfortable with that, nor do protections apply for transgender non-binary student workers against workplace discrimination in schools.”
Fiore added that trans athletes are no longer protected by Title IX, and gender neutral bathrooms aren’t required at the federal level anymore.
“When we were first doing this presentation, this was not the case,” Watkins said. “This was recently updated, obviously, after January, unfortunately.”
The presentation before the board of education took place just two days after Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger signed an Executive Order on the Protection of Transgender Individuals and Prevention of Discrimination, itself coinciding with International Transgender Day of Visibility.
“We are seeing very concerning actions at the federal level targeting transgender people, and we reaffirm our commitment to protecting everyone in our community from discrimination,” said Metzger in a press release. “At the very core of a free democratic society is the understanding that individuals have rights to express themselves freely and be who they are. Everyone should feel safe, respected and treated with dignity.”
Like the NPCSD’s Gender Support Plan, Metzger’s Executive Order aligns with human rights laws in the county and state. Last year, New York voters approved the Equal Rights Amendment to the New York State Constitution, ensuring equal protection across various classifications, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. This followed the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) five years earlier, which the state legislature approved and governor Kathy Hochul signed into law, banning discrimination based on gender identity or expression. Metzger was serving as a state senator at the time and was a co-sponsor of the law.
In December 2021, Hochul also signed into law the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), a bill designed to update and clarify issues related to name changes and correcting sex designations/gender markers on IDs for transgender and nonbinary residents of New York as well as those born in the state.
Back in the NPCSD, the Gender Support Plan includes a form for students to fill out, including how they want to be addressed not only on campus, but also to their parents. It allows for the student’s gender identity to be shared with some or all staff, and allows them to choose which bathroom and locker room they’d like to be assigned to. And it also helps students navigate not only through their current school, but also future schools within the district.
“We want to make sure that we’re very careful in how we help students to transition from building to building,” said Oehler-Marx. “We have kind of annual check-ins, very specifically on those transition points, right, so that students are very aware of what that means and what their options are as they transition from buildings.”
The district is also pledging to help students figure out how to deal with issues off campus.
“There are certain things that we can’t control,” said Oehler-Marx. “We have field trips to federal properties like West Point. West Point no longer has the possibility for gender neutral bathrooms or for transgender folks to use the bathroom or the gender which they identify .And so we have to be sure that we’re keeping up with all that so that we can counsel students that are in those situations so they know what’s ahead.”
Likewise, while state assessments can be associated with preferred names and gender, some nationally-generated exams like the SAT cannot.
“You want students to be prepared for that when they say they have to take their SATs, so that’s not a moment that becomes disruptive to them actually doing well,” said Oehler-Marx.
Fiore stressed that the intention of the Gender Support Plan is to ensure students feel safe. For some transgender and gender nonconforming students, talking to their parents can feel difficult or even unsafe.
“It’s never our goal to keep information from a family,” she said. “But you do have to assess the situation and work with the student. Our goal is always to get the team on board and working together in a safe way and collaborative ways to support the student and also be respectful of what they need or what they’re asking for from us.”
To see the NPCSD Gender Support Plan, visit: https://go.boarddocs.com/ny/npcsd/Board.nsf/files/DFAQ6V67D49A/$file/GENDER%20SUPPORT%20PLAN.pdf
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