STUDENTS WALK OUT AGAINST POLICY
New transgender model policy protested by community
Philip rotondo Managing editor
S everal hundred McLean High School
students walked out of their classes on
Sept. 27 to protest the Virginia Department
of Education’s (VDOE) approval of a
new model policy concerning transgender
students. Across the state, over 90 schools
held similar walkouts. McLean’s walkout
was spearheaded by the school’s Gender
Sexuality Alliance (GSA), while the wider
movement was organized by the Virginia-
based Pride Liberation Project (PLP), a
student-led LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
“These [walkouts] are part of a larger
campaign to try to persuade Governor
Youngkin...to stop these model transgender
policies [from being implemented] as well
as to stop specific school boards from
implementing them,” senior GSA officer
Ranger Balleisen said.
FCPS and the Virginia state government
are currently at odds with each other over
policies regarding transgender students.
Over the summer, the FCPS Student Rights
and Responsibilities (SR&R) was expanded
to allow students to use their preferred
pronouns or name in school without parental
approval. The SR&R was updated to align its
policies with the guidelines in the previous
VDOE transgender model policy created
Loud and Proud — Students chant and hold up pro-trans rights signs at the
walkout on Sept. 27. A diverse group of about 400 students, including
members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies, attended.
6 | NEWS | OCTOBER 2022
in 2020. That policy was replaced by the
current model policy on Sept. 16.
The new model policy limits trans
students’ abilities to act on their identities.
The policy states that only “a public school
student whose parent has requested in
writing, due to their child’s persistent and
sincere belief that his or her gender differs
with his or her sex, [can] be so identified
while at school.”
THEY FEEL THEY’RE
PROTECTING PARENTS AND
STUDENTS, BUT WHAT IT
ULTIMATELY IS DOING IS
FURTHER DEHUMANIZING
PEOPLE.”
- SETH LEBLANC
GSA SPONSOR
“This is treating trans kids like they’re
property of their parents,” said senior Casey
Calabia, the president of McLean’s GSA.
“It’s setting a really negative precedent.”
The new model policy has been met
with criticism from Virginia’s queer and ally
populations.
“[We held the] walkout so that we
could unify ourselves against this policy,”
sophomore GSA officer Gavin Grant said.
“As students we don’t approve, as trans
people we don’t approve and as FCPS
[community members] we don’t approve.”
Members of the GSA hope the walkout
will help spread awareness about the new
policies and humanize the issue, which can
be hard to digest on paper.
“We have to get the word around,
because no one wants to read all the legal
policies,” Grant said. “We have to get people
to understand [the issue], because if they
don’t…[the policy] is just going to go into
effect.”
On Sept. 26, the VDOE website opened
a comment section where residents could
respond to the policy, which has not yet been
implemented. The comment section will be
accessible until Oct. 26. As of Sept. 27, over
51,000 comments had been left on the page.
The new policy contains guidelines that
some consider discriminatory.
“[The new policy] makes you legally
obligated to out your student, so if you tell
your counselor they are legally required to
tell your family that you’re trans,” Grant said.
Many worry about students whose
parents do not support their identity.
“[These policies are] going to out students
to homophobic and transphobic parents,
and that’s going to have incredibly negative
effects,” Balleisen said.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been critical of
the lack of parental involvement in the 2020
model policy, citing parents’ rights as a key
concern.
“The [2020 model policies] are first going
to exclude parents, and then second of all are
going to rely on folks that may not share the
family’s values in those decisions, I just think
this is just fundamentally wrong,” Youngkin
said in an interview with 7News.
Some, including Calabia, argue that
Youngkin’s motivation for opposing the 2020
model policy is to appeal to voters. Whatever
the reasoning, community members are
concerned about the ways its consequences
could negatively affect transgender students.
“I think [the VDOE] wrote this policy
because they feel they’re protecting parents
and students, but what it ultimately is doing
is further dehumanizing people,” GSA
sponsor Seth LeBlanc said. “If you look at
rates of suicide with trans kids and gender
non-conforming kids, just allowing them to
feel affirmed at school by their teachers and
their peers is the very smallest thing we can
do to prevent suicide and to make people
feel accepted.”
According to LeBlanc, the fear of
allowing children to make decisions about
their identity is unfounded.
“There is a growing misconception that
there is a risk in affirming students’ gender
identities,” LeBlanc said. “A person generally
knows, especially by middle or high school
age…what they naturally gravitate toward
and how they naturally identify. It’s like
knowing what your favorite color is, or
knowing what subjects you like in school, and
those things are not even as [fundamental] as
knowing what your gender identity is.”
LeBlanc sees the model policy as part of
a troubling nationwide trend.
“Virginia is a unique purple state—we
have this right and left swing every political
regime change. The scary part is that [the
new model policy is part of] a larger issue in
the nation overall, this fear around parents’
rights, this fear around indoctrinating
children,” LeBlanc said. “If we stop and
actually look at it for what it is, it’s really
just an issue of supporting students and
making them feel comfortable so that they
can learn.”
The 2020 model policy passed by the
Virginia legislature under former governor
Ralph Northam allowed individual school
districts to resolve issues relating to
disagreements between parent and students
regarding pronoun use. This year, Fairfax
County decided that a student acting on their
gender identity was their own choice, not
their parents’.
“The former model transgender policies
were actually trans-positive,” Balleisen said.
“A lot of what it did was ensuring gender
neutral bathrooms in school and allowing
certain protections for transgender students
in school.”
The 2020 model policy was important to
the transgender student community.
“[Much] of the policies in the 2020
transgender model policy were life saving,”
Calabia said. “People have come and told me,
‘I would be dead, I would have committed
suicide if these policies hadn’t been enacted,’
so the fact that they’re getting taken away is
Photos & page design by Philip Rotondo
taking a stand — GSA officer Ranger Balleisen delivers a speech to the
crowd at the Sept. 27 walkout. Multiple GSA officers and other students
spoke out against the VDOE’s new model policy.
going to hurt people.”
When FCPS made changes to the SR&R
regarding transgender students, they too
were emphasizing student mental health.
“Data obtained from the Trevor Project
National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental
Health in 2020 indicates that there is a
decrease in attempted suicide by transgender
and non-binary youth when people in their
lives use their chosen name and pronouns,”
said FCPS School Board member Elaine
Tholen, who represents the Dranesville
District. “[A Trevor Project brief also]
shows that using one’s chosen name resulted
in a 29% decrease in suicidal ideation and a
56% decrease in suicidal behavior.”
WE NEED DIRECT
ACTION. WE CAN’T JUST
HAVE THE PLATITUDES
THAT WE’VE BEEN
GETTING.”
- RANGER BALLEISEN
SENIOR GSA OFFICER
For the PLP and FCPS’s queer community,
there is more work to be done to protest
and prevent the implementation of the new
model policy.
“[The PLP] is working to go to school
board meetings,” Balleisen said. “We’re
going to rally at those and make sure that our
voices are heard and that these policies do
not go into place in any county in Virginia.”
FCPS appears to remain supportive of
the SR&R policies they rolled out during
Summer 2022. In a recent email to the
community, Superintendent Michelle Reid
stated her and the county’s commitment
to making FCPS schools a protective
environment for trans youth. Some felt the
statement was not firm enough.
“FCPS has been responding better than
other school systems have, but if you read
between the lines of the email, it seems like
they’re just avoiding saying directly that they
are against the [new] model policy,” Grant
said.
Calabia also felt the county did not
adequately address the gravity of the
situation.
“Kids are in danger,” Calabia said. “How
do they expect us to trust them if all they can
do is just play a political game?”
Ultimately, the county could and still might
do more to resist the implementation of the
new model policy. As tension regarding the
changes builds, opponents emphasize the
importance of action.
“I hope that [the county] will...stop
these policies from going into effect and
possibly even sue the Virginia Department
of Education to stop this from happening,”
Balleisen said. “We need direct action. We
can’t just have the platitudes that we’ve been
getting from Dr. Reid and the rest of Fairfax
County.”
OCTOBER 2022 | NEWS | 7