With bathrooms and pronouns, Gardner Edgerton schools should try a little kindness

When it comes to policies around pronouns and bathrooms, board members in Gardner Edgerton and other area school districts should try a little kindness.

When in doubt over policies involving young people, that’s always a good place to start.

In its first draft earlier this summer, Gardner Edgerton’s policy would have forbidden teachers from referring to students by any pronoun that didn’t match the gender assigned that student at birth.

That’s an approach both cruel and uninformed. One father, for instance, told The Star that transgender students or those claiming to be are playing games with the English language.

“Teach the language as it is,” he said. “We simply are trying to accept an older version of dress-up and playing house, which are merely games.”

But we’re talking about health care, not grammar. And the medical world is clear about this much: People whose identity doesn’t match the gender assigned them at birth — usually based on observable anatomy — have been around forever. What’s changed in recent years is that more people are willing to acknowledge that, and fortunately more people are willing to support them when they do.

Inevitably, that’s also put the issue on the plate of a lot of people who never imagined they’d have to think about gender, given that it seems so fixed and easy to define for them.

There are currently no U.S. or Kansas statutes obligating schools to require students to use restrooms or locker rooms that correspond with their gender assigned at birth, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Nevertheless, the debate over gender identity issues in this Johnson County school district comes as conservative Republicans across the country attack transgender rights in schools. Legislation proposed by Republicans in Congress, where Democrats hold a narrow majority, would block federal funding at colleges where transgender women are allowed to participate in sports. The Biden administration has been strongly supportive of transgender rights in schools, and the GOP hopes the issue will connect with voters in the midterm elections in November.

All of this is a potent recipe for conflict. But the guiding principle should be kindness, understanding and safety. Children who express strong gender dysphoria need counseling, support, and room to understand themselves — free of harsh rules and stigmatizing language.

They need love, like every other child in our schools. For parents, teachers, and administrators, that love and space should be so easy to give. Isn’t adolescence already hard enough for everyone?

The good news is that when the school board takes up the policy Monday as expected, the proposal will not include that blanket ban on referring to children by the pronoun of their choice. Kindness, and no doubt good legal advice, prevailed.

Still, the proposal could be improved in other ways, too. For instance, a rule that requires instant parental notification of any student’s request to be called a new pronoun should be reconsidered.

Many warn that some children ready to experiment at school with a gender identity may not be ready to come out to their parents. Everyone’s life at home is unique, and for some, space outside the home is a powerful opportunity to express oneself in ways not yet comfortable at home.

A wiser course might be to impose the notification requirement on elementary and middle school students, and to give high schoolers room to navigate those discussions on their own.

And the policy would still bar transgender students from using the bathrooms associated with their gender. The ACLU told The Star that that’s likely illegal, and we suspect it is right. Why would the district knowingly invite a lawsuit when avoiding one would be so much easier?

It would also be a lot kinder. Young people just trying to get from one class period to another don’t need the hassle or the stigma such rules impose. Students, transgender or otherwise, just want to get in and out of their PE kits and on to the rest of the day.

School officials should look for ways to make that easier to do, not harder.