SuppliedEdmonton Public School Board president Michael Janz’s bleak expression said what supporters were all thinking: Nov. 16 was indeed a failure.
After only 62 per cent of boards voted in favour of discussing gender and sexual minority policy when 66 per cent was needed, the Alberta School Board Association ultimately didn’t discuss the topic.
It was a failure to queer students across the province and it was a failure to the merciless fight for queer rights that has been unfolding across the province.
According to the Edmonton Journal, Alberta School Board Association President Helen Clease stated that an association policy already supports all students even without including wording about sexual and gender minority groups.
Vague wording is not enough: sexual and gender minority youth have unique and nuanced needs that need to be specifically addressed. They need support on the structural level, they need GSA/QSAs, they need teachers and administrators that will fight for their rights as students.
The statistics for gender and sexual minority youth are sobering and reinforce how important it is for full school board support. According to the TransPulse Project, LGBTQ youth are at a much higher risk than the general population for bullying, mental illness, suicide ideation and attempt. 25-35% of transgender adolescents attempt suicide; that is not speaking on the amount of transgender youth that seriously contemplate suicide, which is upwards of 45%. Trans students are 5 times more likely than their cisgendered peers to commit suicide. And the saddest part? Many of these suicides are preventable — and that begins with the school system.
Significant support on both an educational and a structural level can directly combat these trends: having safe(r) spaces in school like GSA’s/QSA’s, and having specific policies in place to protect these students from bullying and transphobia are some imperative ways.
It must be noted that queer students are far from being fully and unequivocally supported in the province. A 7-year-old transgender girl within the Edmonton Catholic School Board district is being treated like a predator as she must have 1-2 female escorts with her every time she goes to the washroom. It is humiliating and completely shame-inducing for students to live as their authentic selves in the context of a school that is supposed to protect them. To add insult to injury, the Catholic School Board has repeatedly questioned the girl’s mother on the quality of her parenting skills, given that her child is trans. This is blatant discrimination.
And then there’s Larry Kowalczyk, a school trustee granted official responsibility for the safety of many children within his district, yet stated publicly that he viewed transgender people as having a “mental disorder.”
The result of Monday night is abysmal — as more and more stories of gender and sexual minority youth are coming out, the unacknowledgement of this as an issue is a harrowing defeat for all queer youth and allies. U of A professor Kristopher Wells is right when he says that the 24 boards that voted against the ruling need to be held fully accountable for their down vote, and justify why they don’t believe queer youth in the province deserve the utmost support and respect from all school boards across the province. The need for policies focused on nondiscrimination that includes safety, security, rights, and benefits for sexual and gender minority students cannot be overstated.
