Examining policy protections for transgender and gender nonconforming students in Delaware schools

Fina Grimes graduated from Indian River in 2017.

“I saw a lot of people come out after leaving because it wasn't a space that was easy to be trans in,” Grimes says.

Grimes identifies as transmasculine nonbinary and says they always presented that way, but were never in an environment where they could explore what their gender identity was, let alone come out as trans.

“I feel like it was probably the first year I went to college that I actually started actively using different pronouns,” Grimes says. “And I feel like that was a thing for a lot of people who went to Indian River.”

Grimes endured constant bullying - verbal and physical. They regularly heard slurs, and once they had a facial piercing ripped out by a classmate on the bus, leaving them feeling unwelcome in any space at school, but especially in the locker room.

“I remember having my shirt off and girls making like, very weird ‘Are you going to like, do something to me?’ kind of comment,” Grimes says. “And it’s like, are you going to do something to me? I’m literally half naked.”

Cape Henlopen parent Diane Scarantino says her child is currently experiencing similar events. She says after a bullying incident that turned physical, her transgender son was returned to the same gym class it happened in, where verbal harassment ensued.

“My child has become extremely good at hiding things and making it appear that he is okay when he is not,” Scarantino says. “I’m definitely not going to say the schools failed [my son], but I can definitely say they need some improvement in the culture in the schools for the kids, and maybe the staff too.”

Stories like these have prompted efforts to create policies to address how schools protect LGBTQ+ students’ rights and the bullying they often face - specifically trans students.

Licensed clinical social worker Rev. Karla Fleshman runs Transitions Delaware, a counseling consultation and training service for LGBTQ youth, young adults, and their families. In 2019, she wrote an article for the Delaware Journal of Public Health, outlining four pillars to create safer and more inclusive schools for LGBTQ youth – the first of which is implementing policies that protect all youth across the spectrum of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression, or SOGIE.

She argues creating clear school policies using this model is about more than just handling bullying in the moment.

“Unaddressed bullying impacts us, it changes our brains,” Fleshman says. “When you are in trauma on a regular basis, the research shows the connection between trauma, autoimmune disease, and the research shows the connection between LGBTQ youth experiencing trauma and how that impacts them, in school and after school. This is a health crisis, not taking care of all of our kids.”

Fleshman notes anti-bullying policies that are explicitly inclusive of SOGIE, and are enforced, show a significant reduction in the risk of suicide attempts in LGBTQ+ youth in both middle and high school.

And they also give teachers more tools to help their students.

“Then they actually are hung out to dry when a parent who is not safe, who is not affirming, and who actually can be downright dangerous to the kiddo, comes in,” Fleshman says. “That’s how we end up with, and statistical research shows, most of our homeless youth are LGBTQ. And most of our homeless youth who are LGBTQ ended up being homeless because of emotional, physical, sexual abuse in the home.”

In Delaware, the Christina School District was the first to pass a policy with protections for transgender and gender non-conforming students in early 2021.

Board member Claire O’Neal says the effort started with a previous school board member Elizabeth Paige, who resigned in March 2020. O’Neal took over, reaching out to transgender advocates to help fine-tune Paige’s draft and get it across the finish line.

Kathy Atkinson

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University of Delaware

The policy follows the SOGIE model - asserting students have the right to be addressed by the name and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity. Students can also use the bathroom or locker room that corresponds with their gender identity, but may also request a single-stall or private restroom or changing area.

“Once you provide the safety and security for people to just be who they want to be, they realize that they’ve been there all along, and that they’ve been hiding, and that they’ve been scared, and sad, and things can be different if you just support them for being who they are,” O’Neal says.

To the surprise of many, the district didn’t face much backlash at all.

“Zero people, zero, showed up for public comment or emailed us at all about this policy except in the positive, like ‘Yay! Finally! Someone is doing something!’” O’Neal says.

And O’Neal says it wasn’t a heavy lift – she says across the board, students and administrators said these practices were already happening.

“ I was overwhelmed and totally heartened that all of these things were already in place in our school district, that our teachers and our administrators are acting in the best interest of our students,” O’Neal says. “I know that is not happening everywhere in the United States.”

O’Neal adds one of the only major discussion points involved sports, and whether trans athletes who play on the team that aligns with their preferred gender would run afoul of DIAA rules.

“So I had emailed back and forth with DIAA, and it turned out that there were emerging federal policies including emerging federal court decisions that provided additional protections for transgender students,” O’Neal says. “And so DIAA then was going to change their state bylaws to instead kind of kick the ball to each district.”

The Red Clay School District also created a formal policy in 2021, similar to Christina’s in that students have a right to choose how they are addressed and which gendered facilities they use - but Red Clay’s experience passing it was much different.

“And that was really sad and hard to experience,” says Red Clay School Board President Jose Matthews. “Certainly a challenge for our district and the greater community. It was a meeting that was violent and it was very contentious.”

Matthews says he spent his first several years on the school board drumming up enough political will to pass the policy.

“Even though the issue had been brought up prior to me being on the board, it takes sometimes years of advocacy until you can get to a point where you have the ability to see the change that we needed to see,” Matthews says.

Matthews says they relied on other examples of successful policies across the country, plus local expert voices, to shape their own. They also sought legal advice to explore all possible outcomes.

“If you don’t pass a policy like this, making sure that we have a process and protections in place for gender non-conforming students and trans students, case law time and time again when challenged, has proven that they do have rights,” Matthews says. “They are American citizens, and if we violate their rights, we will be sued, and for a lot of money.”

State Rep. Deshanna Neal played a hand in creating Red Clay’s policy, noting their own struggles to find a supportive school for their transgender child, who they homeschooled until high school.

“When sending my now 13-year-old into school where they are seen and heard and can use whatever bathroom they are comfortable with, I don’t mind sending them to school,” Neal says. “I don’t question what is going to happen.”

But Neal understands the difficulties of delivering a policy that works.

Both policies say that when contacting the parent or guardian of a transgender or gender diverse student, school personnel should use the student's legal name and the pronoun corresponding to the student's gender assigned at birth unless the student, parent, or guardian has specified otherwise – which Neal explains is a way to prevent the school from “outing” a student that isn’t ready to tell their family.

A draft of Red Clay’s plan included requiring parental approval to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns, but Neal says that could put a child in danger.

“If they don’t give you specific permission to tell their parent, don’t tell their parent,” Neal says. “What they’re doing in school, unless it is harmful to them or others, or bullying, they’re not doing well, where you do have to interact with the parents, you still don’t have to tell the parents their name,” Neal says. “We don’t question when a cisgender child comes to you and tells you that they want to go by a different name, we immediately do it.”

And it’s issues like that one that makes creating a statewide policy rather than going district by district a tough hill to climb.

Neal was instrumental in putting together a statewide policy proposal in 2018 – Regulation 225 – which was ultimately shelved due to controversy over the parental consent clause.

Neal isn’t sure when another statewide policy may be proposed.

“We know for a fact that there are trans kids throughout the state, why aren’t we protecting them too?” Neal says. “Protecting them doesn’t mean we don’t care about their parents, protecting them means we are trying to set up a new generation of living, happy, thriving Delaware residents. What is so difficult about that?”

For now, the work remains at the district level and is taking different forms.

Transitions Delaware

Neal notes that some - such as Brandywine - are effectively already following policies like Christina and Red Clay, but have concerns about the potential pushback while dealing with other immediate concerns.

“But I don’t think right now they want to deal with the vitriol that comes from it while also dealing with, ‘we don’t have enough money, our buildings are falling apart,’” Neal says.

Back in Cape Henlopen, parent Diane Scarantino took matters into her own hands, advocating for her child and requesting numerous meetings with teachers and administrators.

“If there was some kind of mandated discipline in the policy for teachers that kind of turn their heads, that would probably prompt teachers to get moving when somebody says something,” Scarantino says.

Scarantino says the district suggested a “gender support plan” several years ago when her son was in elementary school. Her son’s plan was revised following the recent incidents to include his preferred name and pronouns, along with access to the nurse's office and administrative bathrooms when he feels unsafe using the common ones.

“So it’s kind of in place of policy, which it would be nice if it was added in,” Scarantino says.

Another Cape Henlopen parent and local minister, Rev. Cathy Rion Starr, has two kids in the district – their youngest is genderfluid. Rion Starr also identifies as genderqueer and is advocating for a concrete policy to hold all district students and staff accountable.

“Right now, our teachers are going with their best guts, which is sometimes really great, which is sometimes not so great, and which sometimes really leaves them in limbo of kids saying one thing, admin saying another, parents are saying another, and that puts teachers in a very difficult place and students in a very difficult place for how they can all respect each other,” Rion Starr says. “And policy clarifies that.”

Rion Starr adds kids will discover these topics one way or another.

“Gender and sexuality are in school whether we like it or not,” Rion Starr says. “My first grader’s teachers were like, yes, we need to be able to teach our kids about basic body parts and body function because they’re talking about it anyways. And that is true at any grade from pre-school through 12th grade.”

But Red Clay board president Jose Matthews warns that just having a policy is not enough. While he believes Red Clay’s policy lifted weight off students’ shoulders, there’s still work to be done surrounding the culture.

“Despite having protections and despite having policies and laws put into place, racism did not go away, and same with the bigotry with gender non-conforming and trans folks, the bigotry that they face has not gone away either,” Matthews says. “But at the very least, now we have safety measures and protections that they did not have before.”

Another social worker at Transitions Delaware Finn Ward adds even kids who attend schools with policies or procedures still suffer from a culture of bullying.

“It doesn’t matter that the policy is more inclusive,” Ward says. “It’s the environment for these kids that is the same. And that is the dilemma. There has been no change in the environment.”

Ward says without more buy-in to create that environment, pushback against policies that provide gender-affirming protections tells kids with those identities they are not welcome in school.

“To be so real with you, I don’t think I have one kid on my roster that enjoys being at school, not one kid, all the way down to my five-year-old I see,” Ward says. “It just fosters a space of shame for the kids who do have those identities, or the kids who may not be out and have those identities and now for sure will not come out. And they hear the narratives, and they hear the politics, they go to school, they hate being trans. They hate being trans.”

Fina Grimes says they often felt that way while in Indian River, but - like most LGBTQ students - knew which teachers were “safe” to confide in about preferred names and pronouns, and who they could rely on when they felt threatened. They say the goal is to make that universal.

“Ones that had better relationships with students would honor things like that,” Grimes says. “I do think a policy obviously would make it so there is something to kind of reference and kind of like, make them respect it in a way.”

Or as Transitions Delaware’s Rev. Karla Fleshman suggests - put the focus where it belongs.

“It’s not the kids that need to change,” Fleshman says. “It’s the policies and procedures that need to change and recognize that we have a very diverse community that should be celebrated, honored, and supported."