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— The bill — H.R. 734 (118), the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023 — was introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) several times, but was taken up by the House Education and Workforce Committee for the first time last week in a 16-hour markup. It would amend Title IX, the federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, to define sex as based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.

— The measure was recommended by the committee in a vote on party lines and is now primed for a vote on the House floor. While H.R. 5 (118), the Parents Bill of Rights Act, cleared the committee the same day and is slated for a vote in two weeks, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office said they haven’t made any announcements on when they will take up the sports bill for a vote. House Republicans are expected to pass the bill with their slim majority, but it’s not likely that the Democrat-controlled Senate will allow the bill to move.

— The legislation will be a way for the GOP to force Democrats to go on record with their support for transgender students to play sports, a key part of the GOP’s 2022 midterm policy agenda. It is also a direct rebuke of the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rule, which seeks to codify protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Education Department is expected to unveil its final rule in May, though it said it would make a separate rule for sports.

— Meanwhile, West Virginia has decided to appeal a stay on its transgender sports law to the Supreme Court, marking the first opportunity for the high court to weigh in on the issue. “West Virginians and the American people are animated,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said at a Thursday press conference. “They know this is a matter of basic, common sense and basic fairness. We believe we’re absolutely correct on the merits. And I know that there’s always a debate as to when you go up to the high court, but … we think it’s justified to make sure that the law that was put in place by the legislature, reflecting the will of the voters, gets back in place very, very quickly.”

IT’S MONDAY, MARCH. 13. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. Let’s grab coffee (even virtually!). Reach me at [email protected]. Send tips to my colleagues Mackenzie Wilkes at [email protected], Juan Perez Jr. at [email protected] and Michael Stratford at [email protected]. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

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BONAMICI’S BILL OF RIGHTS — Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) introduced her Bill of Rights for Students and Parents, a Democratic response to the GOP’s Parents Bill of Rights, which is headed to the House floor for a vote in two weeks. “Parental involvement is critical to developing and sustaining high-quality public schools, and we must do all we can to involve parents and break down barriers that prevent or discourage participation,” Bonamici said in a statement.

— The bill, which is supported by dozens of education groups including the National PTA, outlines that a student “should be able to receive a well-rounded education,” and parents and families “should be able to collaborate effectively” with their children’s teachers. Additionally, it dictates that public schools should be “responsive and inclusive,” students should be able to learn in environments “free from all forms of discrimination,” and all students should “receive an education that is historically accurate, reflects the diversity of our nation, and prepares students to think critically and participate actively in a representative democracy.”

— House Republicans unveiled their “Parents Bill of Rights” earlier this month. It would require mandates for school districts to offer teacher-parent meetings, publicly disclose budget materials and allow parents to address the school board — things that are already present in many schools across the country.

— “The previously introduced ‘Parent Bill of Rights’, HB5, completely misses the mark and has discriminatory undertones that distract us from the seriousness of this moment,” the National Parents Union said in a statement. “Pitting parents against parents, parents against teachers, and adults against students does nothing to move us forward.”

BIDEN BUDGET FALLS FLAT WITH CHARTERS — President Joe Biden has proposed a $440 million budget for federal charter school grants, irking advocates after consecutive years of flat funding, Juan reports. The flat funding is a problem for charter boosters concerned about rising inflation that cuts the buying power of nearly half a billion dollars and higher interest rates that swell borrowing costs to pay for facilities.

— The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is asking Congress to approve $500 million for the programs. “We are disappointed that President Biden is proposing flat funding [for] the vital Charter Schools Program, which has been level funded by Congress since FY2019,” said Nina Rees, the alliance’s president and CEO, in a statement on Friday.

— But charter supporters are also praising a renewed department proposal to bring “greater flexibility” to how the program’s funds are spent. The department’s budget pitch notes a request for flexibility to “adjust” federal charter spending “in response to demand across the program components.” Similar language has also appeared in prior year charter program budget proposals.

— “As in past years, this year’s budget will again include a request of Congress to provide greater flexibility to the Department in its allocation of funds under the multiple authorities provided in ESSA’s Charter School Program,” a department spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement. “The Department is interested in utilizing this flexibility to ensure it can efficiently respond to demand for federal funds from the charter school community.”

PROMISE IN DUAL ENROLLMENT — More high schoolers are taking dual enrollment courses, which allow them to take their classes and simultaneously apply the credits toward a diploma and an associate degree. And while Biden’s college affordability agenda has stalled on Capitol Hill, the two-for-one special could cut the cost of college for many teens as the programs grow in popularity.

— It’s also helping community colleges shore up their enrollment. The two-year institutions saw a 12 percent spike this academic year in these programs. The resulting uptick in dual enrollment students has spurred a small increase in overall community college attendees from the last academic year — a much needed boost after those institutions faced the worst enrollment plunges due to the pandemic.

— Governors in Arizona and Florida, and elsewhere, have been pushing to expand dual enrollment options as a way to streamline the path from high school to the workforce or quicken the path to a bachelor’s degree. Nearly all states have dual enrollment policies.

— Dual enrollment also provides access to courses in welding and other hands-on technical education to help high schoolers build skills that they can apply to a job or a certificate, a path Republicans in Congress have long touted as an alternative to a traditional college.

— Last week, Biden urged Congress to fund what his administration called the Career-Connected High Schools initiative, which would dole out $200 million for programs that align high school and college by expanding access to dual enrollment, work-based learning and college and career advising for students in high school.

CAL’S NOISE COMPLAINT — The People’s Park, a park near UC Berkeley that once hosted iconic protests against the Vietnam War, is now at the center of another public furor: loud parties, POLITICO’s Blake Jones and Matthew Brown report. The university, a state appellate court found, failed to account for “excessive noise” when it considered the environmental effects of building housing for 1,100 students in a park abutting a residential neighborhood.

— The neighborhood group that filed the lawsuit pointed to hundreds of complaints to the city about student parties and even hired a “noise expert” to describe the role of college partying in undergraduate life.

— UC Berkeley might still get the project at People’s Park built, but the legal challenge has set construction back months, if not years. The court ruling — based on a 1970 state environmental law meant to serve as a check on rampant development — has injected new uncertainty into housing plans at California’s public university campuses, many of which are in dire need of housing amid a yearslong expansion.

— Justice Teri L. Jackson worried aloud during oral arguments about a “great deal of social implications” that could stem from a broad reading of environmental rules on noise. But, she said, she was constrained by the law. “Noise is noise,” she said.

— School district sued over handling of student’s pledge of allegiance protest: The New York Times

— Arizona launches hotline for public to report ‘inappropriate’ school lessons: CNN

— WA college-going rate dropped sharply during pandemic: The Seattle Times

— Republicans race to outdo each other on education: The Hill

— Texas families would get $8,000 in tax dollars to send students to private school in sweeping ‘parental rights’ bill backed by Lt. Gov.: The Texas Tribune

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And this year was worse. Not only was it my oldest son’s first day of middle school, but I wasn’t going to be there. I had back surgery a couple of weeks ago (I’m going to be fine), and I am not yet supposed to do things as exciting as leaving the house for major emotional events. This was the first year I was going to miss. It sucked. For me. My son was totally cool about it and absolutely blase about my inner turmoil.

All day I waited. And I worried. And scenes of bullies in John Hughes movies kept scrolling through my head, and I just knew there was some barely pubescent little hellion who would be totally deserving of my wrath before the day was out. It didn’t matter how carefully we had picked his school as somewhere that would embrace and celebrate who my kid is, the awful scenes of bathroom swirlies and kids being bashed against lockers kept rolling. And by 3pm, I was mess.

Instead, that afternoon my kid burst into the house, all smiles and said, “I made a transgender friend today! She has other gay friends!” He was bouncing. My oldest son is gay, and the idea of having other gay kids in his classroom for the first time (there were no other out gay kids in his elementary school) was what made him really look forward to middle school.

My son went on to tell me that his new friend’s parents want her to be a boy and not a girl. “So I told her my parent’s will like her a lot.”

I leaned over and kissed his forehead and both of his cheeks. “I am sure we will, baby.”

“Mom!” he swatted my hands away. “Just stop.”

(I am going to stop here and take a moment. I don’t have a trans kid. My gay kid is about as gender conforming as you can get. I have no experience having a transgender or gender nonconforming child. But if you are a parent with transgender or genderqueer kid, it’s time to get with the program. Your kid needs you to love who they are, and not who you think they should be.)

I really wish I had been a fly on the wall at the school that day, but instead I just tried to get the story out of my son of how this conversation had transpired. I just couldn’t imagine some 11-year-old transgender girl announcing her gender identity to my kid out of the blue.

So from the details I can piece together from my 11-year-old (who thinks his mother is ridiculous) here’s what happened:

My son was lost and couldn’t find his next class, so he found someone who looked like they were lost too.

He walked up to this other student and said, “Hey guy, what’s up?”

The other student said, “I’m not a guy. I’m a girl.”

“Oh,” said my kid. “Hey girl, what’s up? Are you transgender?” The girl looked at him for a minute and then nodded. “That’s cool,” he continued. “I’m not transgender, but I’m gay.”

“That’s cool,” she said back. “I have some gay friends who go here too.” My son was very excited to hear this. It turns out they were both lost and looking for the same classroom.

Then they walked past the bathrooms, and the girl explained she needed to go, but wanted to go into the girls’ room because that was her real bathroom. My son said he would stand outside the door while she was inside and wait until she was done, and then they could find their class together.

After that was completed, they continued through the halls and she asked him how his parents felt about him being gay. He just shrugged. “It’s fine. We know a lot of gay people. A lot.” She told him about her parents, and things went from there.

They found their classroom, and afterwards promised they would find each other the next day.

And now I feel like my kid really is in some 80s movie, but the 2016 version. Because come on!? For real? I am 40 years old, and the idea of two lgbt kids just happening to randomly find each other both looking for the same class just seems too perfect a set up, too unreal. If I watched a movie or a TV show where a conversation like that happened, I would probably roll my eyes at the too-perfectness, the fakeness, of it all.

But it did happen, and it made my kid’s first day of middle school awesome.

So, maybe it is time to put emo-mom away for awhile, and just let his life happen. Because we are in a new age, a new world, a new reality. Will there be assholes and homophobes? Yes, always. But there will also be two LGBTQ kids who find each other randomly walking down the hall. And that is pretty fantastic.

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Kimberly Shappley is as conservative and Christian as they come.

It was her child who, at just three years of age, would challenge her faith and rock her to the core.
For Shappley and her family, it all began with a hair bow.

“I want a bow like Daisy,” her then-three-year-old son Joseph Paul begged of her. Shappley knew the big red bow, ponytails and princess dresses were things almost every little girl wished for. However, these weren’t for a daughter — Shappley reminded herself these were the requests of her son.

“Please mommy,” Joseph Paul would plead with her.

His desire to dress in little girl’s clothes is a secret Shappley has kept from the outside world since Joseph was just a toddler. As an infant, she put him in blue clothes. As a toddler, she made him do what shes says is ‘typical boy stuff,’ like fishing, playing football with his siblings and throwing little boy’s birthday parties.

“We tried to make this kid be a boy,” said Shappley. Still, Joseph kept seeking out what the girls had and, by the age of three, he was telling everyone he was a girl.

A devout Christian, Shappley prayed while Joseph made shirts into skirts and begged to wear girls underwear — and asked his family to call him by the name of “Kai.”

“This hasn’t happened overnight for us. I am a Christian and I love the Lord,” Shappley said as she struggled with her son’s requests.

The gravity of her son’s pleas became almost too much to bear when she heard Kai praying to die.

“I overheard Kai praying and asking the Lord to please take Joseph home to be with Jesus and I realized Kai’s begging the Lord to let her die,” Shappley said through tears.

As a first step down the path to understanding Kai’s situation, Shappley bought girls underwear for Kai, though it took her three trips to the store to finally purchase them.

“When Kai came home that day and opened the drawer and saw princess panties, she fell down on the floor with the panties, crying and thanking me that this was the best day ever,” Shappley said.

Shappley sought out more help, turning to pastors and her faith. Her hope was that her young boy would act like one.

“So Christians are not gay, OK, that’s the mindset that I had.”

Shappley said faith leaders reassured her God doesn’t make mistakes.

“Christians are not going to have a transgender child, because as a Christian, that goes against everything that we read in scripture,” she said.

Finding Support for Parents of a Transgender Child

Feeling alone and isolated, Shappley dug into social media for help, finding a secret underground Facebook network of more than 2,000 other Christian mothers with transgender children. Shappley says she found support in the stories of other mothers who had faced criticism, some who had even been threatened by those who had vowed to take their children away or kidnap them.

“We knew that, at some point, if someone found out that our child was transgender, that you could put our safety at risk,” Shappley said.

Despite all the risks, acceptance has helped Shappley and Kai. She says her daughter is now thriving.

As for Shappley herself, the Facebook group for Christian parents of transgender youth was just the beginning of her journey to understanding and accepting Kai. Now five years old, Kai will soon enter the public school system in Pearland at the same time schools throughout the country work to meet the demands of an Obama administration directive that says transgender students are to be treated no differently than any other students.

In part two of this report, find out how Kimberly Shappley found herself in the middle of the controversial bathroom debate. Stay tuned to Eyewitness News and abc13.com for the rest of the story.

(Copyright ©2016 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.)

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She’s also transgender.

The girl, as well as her parents and school administrators, agreed to share her story to show how they are grappling with a situation that more and more schools are facing.

The U.S. Department of Education released guidelines Friday to help schools understand how federal law protects the treatment of transgender students on matters such as bathroom use.

The experience of the girl, identified using her first initial, “T,” to protect her privacy, provides a number of lessons, among them: how to train staffers and designate “safe” people on whom a student can depend. Teachers and principals will want to know how to deal with notes like the one that slipped out of T’s homework folder one day: “You’re a boy not a girl get it throu (sic) your head.”

California law reinforces the rights of transgender students to be treated as the gender they identify with, whether in bathrooms or on sports teams. A few other states, including North Carolina, are battling the federal government in an effort to restrict both transgender students’ and adults’ access to these spaces.

There is no official count of the number of transgender children in the Los Angeles Unified School District. But there is a clear sense among those who study gender issues that, nationwide, people are coming out as transgender earlier than in the past.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles saw about 40 transgender and “gender nonconforming” youths a decade ago, says Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development. Now, she says, the center sees about 600 transgender patients between the ages of 3 and 25, T included.

T is normally a confident and chatty third-grader. But discussion of “the note” turns her pensive as she sits in the middle of her bed in a sleeveless orange dress, fiddling with “Liony,” a bright green polka-dot stuffed animal.

“I felt really mad and sad,” she says. Her voice softens. Her head drops. “I feel like a girl, not a boy.”

After T found the note, her mom told her that the student who wrote it is probably insecure, that the note was a reflection on them and not T. They laughed about the misspelling.

That night, the parents called T’s teacher.

T is the first openly transgender student in the school, and her parents and the school’s principal had already met to prepare for such problems.

The school investigated but couldn’t identify the student behind the note. So the teacher held a class discussion about bullying, cowardice and acceptance.

‘I wanted to be a girl one’

The note is one of the very few incidents that have made the girl feel singled out. Both in and out of school, T is self-assured.

She flies around the volleyball court so quickly that one team member’s father calls her “Kite.” Off the court, she’s affectionate and talkative.

But sometimes it’s hard to know what she’s thinking, her parents say, because she’s so eager to convince them she’s safe.

When T says that “everything’s great,” her mother knows to gently nudge her to continue. On occasion, the mother has found, T is actually thinking about how much she dislikes her penis because it reminds her of why people think she’s a boy.

When she was born, the box for “male” was checked because she emerged from the womb with biologically male body parts. She won’t decide whether to change her body until she’s older. She does, however, assert her femininity in other ways.

As a toddler shopping for costumes, T wanted to be a fairy or cheerleader or witch. On play dates, she hung out with girls in play kitchens. T’s mom remembers when she realized it wasn’t just a phase.

T was 4 years old, cradled in her lap. The mother had always enjoyed having her nephews around. She explained to T how excited she had been to learn she was pregnant with a boy baby.

“I wanted to be a girl one, Mama,” T said through quivering lips.

The most common question T’s parents get is why they are letting her transition so early — why not wait until she’s older?

In response, T’s mom cites statistics showing that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children without family support face a higher risk for depression and suicide attempts.

With that in mind, T’s parents started saying “Yes.”

Yes to the sparkly cupcake shirts from the girls section at Target. Yes to the Barbie Dreamhouse.

Still, it was a fine line. Initially, T’s girls’ wardrobe stayed home. Her parents allowed her to wear sparkly tops to kindergarten, but only paired with pants or tights — a rule they used to introduce the subject of bullies.

After T went to bed, her parents would spend hours online, researching what it means to be transgender. They were afraid that she would feel isolated because she didn’t see anyone else like herself.

When T was 6, her dad showed her a 2007 video of Barbara Walters interviewing Jazz Jennings, a transgender YouTube star.

“I have a girl brain and a boy body,” Jennings, then a child, tells Walters.

Jennings shows Walters a picture she drew of herself, crying because she can’t wear a dress to school.

T, her parents saw, clearly identified with Jazz.

In her journal (which T labeled with strict instructions not to read), T’s mom found a picture that T had drawn of herself wearing a purple dress, with long hair.

Her parents knew what they needed to do — which is not to say it was easy.

“You definitely go through a mourning period for the boy you thought you had,” T’s mom says. “At the same time you’re mourning, you’re excited because your kid is so happy to be themselves.”

‘I want to be a she and a her and a sister’

As the number of children who identify as transgender increases, so do the number of places where the changes occur.

Adults may begin to dress differently, act differently, present a different version of themselves at work. For children, school is usually where they show who they are to kids their own age — who, by definition, are just beginning to wrestle with ideas about what’s socially acceptable, what’s “normal.”

T’s transition at school was gradual.

As a second-grader, she came home on the night before a disco-themed after-school dance and said that she wanted to wear a dress to the party.

T often changed into skirts and dresses when she came home, and her parents had been waiting for the day she’d ask to wear one to school.

Before the dance, T changed into the outfit she’d longed to wear: A black-and-blue, almost floor-length dress, framed by bright pink spaghetti straps. Her father shot a photo. She’s beaming.

That evening, she gripped her dad’s hand tighter and tighter as they walked down the hallway to the auditorium. When she finally joined her friends, her dad backed away and stood with the other parents, proud but nervous, he recalls.

T and her friends danced under the disco ball, joyfully tossed and kicked a swarm of multicolored balloons and gathered in small groups to giggle as 8-year-olds do.

“She just wore what she wanted to wear and everyone accepted that,” T’s mom says. “That was sort of her green light.”

T started wearing dresses and skirts to school and using the nurse’s bathroom.

But she was still “he” to the school.

That May, T made a decision. “My mom asked, ‘Do you feel like a girl or a boy?'” T recalls. “And I said, ‘girl.’ ”

T’s mom recalls the child whose birth certificate read “male” telling her: “Next year in school, I want to be a she and a her and a sister.”

‘Google it’

These days, teachers and students refer to T as “she.”

When another student’s parents had a problem with her using the girls’ bathroom, the principal was able to point to district policy and California law to affirm that students have the right to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

Gender aside, T is a fashionista who rocks her cheetah-print vest and leggings one day, and a sparkly T-shirt covered by a growling, glittery tiger the next.

Some transgender children choose to switch schools when they transition, to avoid the comparisons people, especially 8- and 9-year-olds, might make between their past and future selves. By staying in her school, in the same classroom and with the same teacher, T retained her support system and her friends.

But she also has to address the inevitable confusion.

One friend asked T if she was a boy or a girl.

T said she was a girl.

“But you were a boy last year,” the friend said.

“I’m a transgender girl,” T replied.

The friend asked what that meant.

T’s response? “Google it.”

The next day, the friend came back and said that she and her grandmother had done just that. Now they both know what transgender means, she said.

A third-grader in transition

It’s 6:10 p.m., and T sits at the dining room table doing homework. Her blond hair is tied into a ponytail to show off the reindeer earrings she recently bought. She grips a pencil with one hand and drums her fingers — nails painted dark blue — with the other.

Volleyball practice starts at 7, and she’s in a hurry.

There’s a poster above T’s bed of the college where she wants to play, and she can recite volleyball rankings by heart. Her mother played in college, and her sister plays competitively in high school. Now it’s a part of T’s identity too.

T’s favorite color used to be pink: the color she associated with being a girl, the easiest way to assert her femininity.

As soon as the world stopped overtly challenging her sense of being a “she,” T embraced the complexities of girlhood.

T’s favorite color now is blue. She often ditches the skirts for tights or basketball shorts so she can run around at school more easily, or wrestle her brother.

Her mom calls her a tomboy.

Her dad calls her a warrior princess.

She calls herself a normal girl.

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Proponents of HB2, which asserts that people must choose which public restroom to use based on their gender assigned at birth, paint a vicious campaign of transgender individuals as scheming, voyeuristic pedophiles that endanger the safety and well-being of women and children.

Alabama is already working to follow North Carolina’s example and just last week, conservative Christian activist group American Family Association received upwards of 744,800 signatures pledging to boycott Target stores over its decision to protect transgender rights in their bathrooms.

With tension rising and information being hurled into the conversation from all angles, there is one critical element being overlooked: the safety and well-being of transgender children.

What Are Transgender Children?

To understand gender nonconformity, it is important to understand the difference between sex and gender.

“The difference between sex and gender is this: Sex is a biological fact, gender is a social construction,” says Kevin Jennings, educational specialist and Executive Director of social justice and conservation foundation Arcus. Transgender identification is the realization by an individual-even as young as two years old — that their gender, or the identity they want to present themselves as, does not match their anatomy.

“Transgender is kind of an umbrella term that really describes a person who has an internal gender identity that is different than the one they were assigned at birth,” explains Johanna Olson, MD., a pediatrician in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Another category under this umbrella term is gender nonconforming, which Olson says can be used to describe children who are “not necessarily transgender” but who are “behaving or expressing their gender in a way that would be unexpected based on their genital anatomy.” In other words, this could be a boy-bodied person who prefers toys and activities often associated with girl-bodied children, such as dolls and playing with makeup, but who may not identify as a girl. Instead, the child may just have interests that don’t align with the current cultural expectations.

Transphobia

Since the media coverage of HB2, few outlets have reported on how this push for discrimination might affect children or teens who identify as transgender.

Developmental and clinical psychologist Diane Ehrensaft, PhD., notes that transgender youth often struggle during the onset of puberty, where unwelcome physical changes can provoke feelings of entrapment in a gender that just doesn’t feel right. Now imagine feeling bullied by the government, on top of mother nature.

Ehrensaft, the Director of Mental Health of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center in San Francisco, cites transphobia as one of the biggest issues facing adolescents that don’t identify with their assigned gender.

“It is not an easy world for transgender youth once they hit middle school and high school. The level of bullying and harassment goes up remarkably,” says Ehrensaft. “In its most unfortunate circumstances we read about children taking their own lives or [becoming victims of violent crimes] purely because of their gender presentation.”

Here are some alarming statistics from the Youth Suicide Prevention Program & National Center of Transgender Equality:

• 82% of transgender youth report that they feel unsafe at school
• 67% are cyberbullied
• 64% have their property stolen or destroyed

• Over 50% transgender children will attempt suicide at least once by age 20.
• Over 30% of LGBTQ children report at least one suicide attempt within the last year

• 44% report physical abuse (ex. Being punched, shoved, etc.)
• 19% experience violence or abuse from a family member

A New Perspective

Adults and children that do not consider themselves transgender are still a major part of the equation. Talking to your child about the facts on transgender and LGBT identities promotes cultural awareness while limiting the likeliness of bullying. Explain that gender identity is something a person is born with, that sometimes does not line up perfectly with a person’s physical appearance.

“It’s an immutable characteristic in part of your core being and your gender identity is not a choice,” Olson explains. Just as you and your child wake up each day and feel a desire to identify and perform a certain gender, you could’ve just as easily and just as genuinely been born feeling like a different gender.

It comes down to acceptance, education and understanding. To know the origin of gender formation is to understand the lack of input the person had in terms of how they identify their gender. Making fun of a child for coming out as transgender, or any of the identities under the LGBT umbrella, is as nonsensical as ridiculing a child for their height or hair color.

“When [transgender children] are allowed to transition and given support to affirm their gender…they match the mental health of the average teen who is also allowed just to be themselves,” says Ehrensaft.

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For more information about Kids in the House, please contact Kids in the House at (310) 899-6026 or office@kidsinthehouse.com.

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One such person is Anna Foster, a transgender student at White Knoll High School in Lexington, South Carolina. Just two days before prom and five weeks before graduation, Anna has been suspended and is facing possible expulsion for using the “wrong” bathroom.

According to the petition currently up at Change.org

Anna was told that she cannot use the boy’s restroom because it would make the boy’s uncomfortable. But using the girl’s restroom would also make the girls uncomfortable, so they told her she could use the one nurse’s restroom. That restroom is located in the East building. Anna’s class when she used the girl’s restroom was in the North building. There are no concessions for Anna should she need to use the restroom between classes. Meaning, they will discipline her for being tardy if she has to make the trip to the East building to relieve herself, then head to class in the North building.

Anna, who turns 18 on June 29th, has faced a very rough situation leading up to this; one that only complicates the current events. Currently, she lives with the Volk family- Mike Volk explains:

One of the factors that makes this issue so challenging is that the student, who is 17 and turns 18 on June 29th, is that she was recently kicked out of her foster home and moved in with us just two weeks ago. She is not supposed to have contact with her birth mother, and because of her age, her DSS case worker is not willing to assist. We want to do all we can to help but we are limited since we are not legal guardians.

What makes this all the more pressing is that Anna has already been accepted into college for the fall semester and these events could have sever repercussions for her academically and professionally. Mike Volk is hoping to find some a solution.

She has been accepted into college starting in the fall. This action by the school is going to have a major impact on her professional and academic career. Again we are hoping that your attention to this matter will cause the district to reconsider the expulsion and allow Anna to finish the last 5 weeks of school with her classmates.

The family has reached out to local news outlets ABC Columbia, WIS TV, WACH FOX, WLTX News19 and The State Newspaper, but have not yet heard back. So we would ask that you please share this important story to boost the signal.

There is a petition currently at Change.org to urge the school district to reverse the suspension and keep Anna from facing expulsion. You can read and sign the petition here.

Here’s a comprehensive list of great books for kids — novels, picture books, workbooks, memoirs and profiles — that deal with transgender and intersex issues, gender non-conformity and sexual orientation as it relates to trans people. (There are so many good ones, especially in the last few years, that we couldn’t narrow it down any further!) All are well reviewed, many are award winners, a few are bestsellers and (surprise, surprise) two made the 2015 list of most challenged books. We’ve put them in order of age appropriateness: