Akron Public Schools will continue to allow a transgender second-grader to use the girls’ restroom in the wake of complaints from other students’ parents.
Superintendent David James said refusing the Ritzman Community Learning Center student — who was born a boy — access to the girls’ restroom would put the district’s federal funding at risk. A directive issued by President Barack Obama in May says it is discrimination when public schools ban students from using bathrooms for the gender with which they identify.
“We can’t require a transgender student to use facilities consistent with their biology,” James said. “Our federal funds could be at risk.”
Federal dollars fund many of the district’s special education programs, technology grants and programs targeting children in poverty, James said.
Prior to Obama’s directive, James said, the district worked with families of transgender children to accommodate their restroom choices. Some used staff restrooms.
“But we’re increasingly seeing families asking why their kids should have to use a separate bathroom,” he said.
In Akron, only a handful of parents have complained about allowing the transgender second-grader to use the girls’ restroom, according to the superintendent.
Obama’s directive has been challenged in pending lawsuits across the country. In the meantime, public schools must continue to follow the order.
The issue is part of a nationwide legal and cultural fight over transgender civil rights. Law experts predict the issue will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future.
According to a Rasmussen Reports study from May, only a third of American adults support Obama’s directive. More than half of respondents said transgender students should not be permitted to use the restroom of their choice. The most popular opinion, with about 40 percent support, is that bathroom rules should be set by local governments, not the federal government.
The issue reached the national spotlight earlier this year when North Carolina passed a law requiring transgender people to use restrooms in government buildings according to the sex they were born.
Proponents described the law as “common sense” and said it protected women from sexual predators.
Opponents argued it legalized discrimination and criticized it because there had been no documented incidents of transgender people sexually assaulting anyone in North Carolina bathrooms.
Gender identity
Akron-area parents on social media Thursday expressed concern that children aren’t mature enough to pick a gender label.
But Toni Bisconti, a University of Akron professor with a doctoral degree in developmental psychology, said Thursday that children know their gender identity by the time they’re 3 years old.
“Gender is our first identity that we form — before race, before age,” she said. “By our third birthday, we tend to understand what our gender is and that it’s permanent.”
She said children probably wouldn’t describe themselves as transgender — that’s a word adults use — but they do understand that they’re different.
“They might not know they’re transgender from a young age, but they feel like something’s not right,” she said. “For kids, one might say they’re a boy even though they’re physically a girl. They won’t use the word ‘transgender,’ but they will know they don’t feel right.”
The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates acceptance for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, teaches that the basic guideline for determining if children are transgender is whether they are “consistent, insistent and persistent” that their gender is different from their biology.
“In other words, if your 4-year-old son wants to wear a dress or says he wants to be a girl once or twice, he probably is not transgender,” the advocacy group explained, “but if your child who was assigned male at birth repeatedly insists over the course of several months that she is a girl, then she is probably transgender.”
Students’ comfort
At the national level, those who oppose transgender people using the bathroom of their choice say trans students’ comfort shouldn’t overshadow other students’ comfort. Writing for The Federalist, writer Nicole Russell argued the bathroom issue isn’t about equality.
“If equality is truly the goal,” Russell wrote, “then allowing a transgender to use the bathroom with members of the opposite sex cannot be the answer, because it doesn’t treat both parties equally.”
The 2015 U.S. Trans Survey’s findings indicate that three-fifths of transgender people have avoided restrooms out of fear of confrontations. Almost a third reported they’ve avoided eating and drinking so they would not need to use a public restroom.
Advocates for the transgender community, such as the National Center for Transgender Equality, argue that acceptance is important in part because three-quarters of transgender youth feel unsafe in schools.
Suicide prevention organizations also urge the acceptance of transgender people because they’re at greater risk of suicide. A 2014 study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention found that 41 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide, compared to 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population.
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGluntABJ and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ngfalcon.