VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Virginia Beach school board called a special meeting Monday to discuss policies impacting LGBTQ students.
The Virginia Beach school board has not passed the Department of Education’s model polices.
On Monday, the board discussed their version of policies impacting LGBTQ students. Some of the polices discussed are already existing district polices, and some that are being proposed, are similar to the the state's model policies.
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Model policies impacting LGBTQ students fails to pass at VB School Board meeting
Virginia Beach School District is proposing a policy identical to a piece of the Department of Education’s model policy regarding student counseling services for gender identity.
Both the district's proposed policy and the state's model policies say parents must be informed before a student receives counseling services pertaining to gender identity.
The district is proposing if a student wishes to identify as a different name or nickname, the parent must give consent or it must be outlined in student’s official record. This is similarly worded to the state’s model policy.
The school board's proposal on staff referring to students nicknames is a bit different from the state's model policy. The district is proposing staff use pronouns that are associated with a student’s sex or gender identity on their official record.
The state's model policy mandates that staff refer to students associated with pronouns of the sex that they were born and appears in their student record.
"What gets to define gender identity, a parent gets to define that," David Culpepper, a school board member said.
Some parents have brought up boys and girls sports in previous board meetings. Matt Delaney, the chief of schools for VBCPS spoke about VHSL's transgender policies.
"If a school maintains separate teams in the same sport for girls and boys, girls may not compete on boys teams. Boys may not compete on girls teams," Delaney said. "If a school maintains only a boys team in a sport, girls may compete on the boys team. Boys may not participate in girls sports other than cheerleading."
If a parent of a transgender student wishes to appeal VHSL’S policy, they will have to go through an extensive appeals process.
"What is the goal for Tuesday’s school board meeting?" News 3's Leondra Head asked the acting Superintendent.
"The goal is that we present a full plan of actions we plan to take to implement the model policies," Donald Robertson Jr, Virginia Beach acting superintendent said. "I think the board has been kicking this around and thinking about it deeply for two months."
The school board says they plan to vote on the model polices Tuesday's regular scheduled school board meeting.
