Dear representatives of Evanston Pride, PFLAG Evanston and Gender Affirming Evanston. Thank you for the invitation to participate in the asynchronous forum on supporting LGBTQ+ students and families. I consider myself to be an educated supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. In the course of this campaign for school board, however, I am discovering just how much I still need to educate myself on this topic, especially as it concerns LGBTQ+ students’ lives within the school system. In light of the work I still need to do, I will do my best to address the questions and concerns raised in the forum questionnaire generally, rather than attempt to answer them all specifically.

I want to reassure parents of LGBT, non-binary or genderfluid students in District 65 that while my knowledge of specific district policies concerning their children may be incomplete, my journey to better inform myself is guided by my fundamental belief that a safe, inclusive, high-quality education is the right of every child, regardless of sex, status, gender expression or orientation. I would also like to assure parents that I am not coming into this race for school board completely uninformed either. I have been lucky enough to count among my friends, acquaintances, classmates and neighbors people from all different genders and orientations. I also had the opportunity to explore some gender theory through college coursework, which included completing author and playwright Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook. This work formed the basis for my understanding of gender as a social construct, expressed by an individual in their own way, and influenced by biological, psychological, social and cultural factors. I also understand gender expression to be subject to change over the course of a person’s entire life.

A rudimentary understanding of gender theory is all well and good, but I am running for school board and it will take more than the basics to succeed at the mission of creating a safe, welcoming learning environment where LGBTQ+ students can reach their academic potentials. I consider myself lucky to have organizations like the ones who have organized this forum to call upon for advice in the case of situations that are not clearly covered by either the Evanston/Skokie School District Manual section 7:10 Equal Education Opportunities, which guarantees equal access to programs, activities, services, or benefits to all students regardless of sex or gender status, or the district’s Gender Support Administrative Practices which goes into greater detail about potential gender support plans for students. At this point I am unfamiliar with how often a gender support plan has been put into place in the district, or if they have been successful. If anyone reading this would like to share their experiences or concerns with me, I hope they will email me at the address above.

I wish that I had straightforward answers to the rest of the questions on the list but upon reading them I have to conclude that many of them will have to be taken up on a case by case basis. School bathrooms, for instance, depend on many factors including age of the building and cost of upgrading or expanding existing facilities. I would want the student, teacher and principal to work together to find the most inclusive option for each instance in each building. With the reduction in force happening at the district’s central office, I anticipate this case by case basis approach to be the norm going forward, with principals having more control over what goes on in their buildings and relying less on central administration oversight. To this end it will be of the utmost importance that leadership in each individual school receives adequate inclusivity training so that they can make the best-informed decisions for their faculty, staff and student populations. Oversight of this training would come from the administration and ultimately, the board. I think that focusing out training efforts on principals would be the most cost-effective way of disseminating information about best-practices about gender inclusivity to the district. I would love to hear other opinions or be shown examples of effective inclusivity training practices so I encourage anyone to reach out and contact me if they have anything to offer.

Thank you again, to the parents of Evanston Pride, PFLAG Evanston and Gender Affirming Evanston, for inviting me to participate in this forum. I hope my answers have given some insight into how I would operate as a member of the school board and I hope you will keep me in mind when you make your voting decisions on April first. I’ll close by addressing the final question and share the beginnings of my hypothetical reply to a parent expressing concern over LGBTQ+ topics being addressed in school:

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To [parent’s name]

Thank you for sharing your concerns with me. I understand that gender and related topics can be sensitive subjects. I want to reassure you that any curriculum materials we present to our students are both evidence-based and age-appropriate. Regarding the subject matter, I appreciate that some parents might be concerned but part of our job as educators is to prepare our students for lives outside of school and in the world. As our students go through their lives they will meet people from different backgrounds and just as they deserve to learn about people from different language and cultural groups, they deserve to learn about the different ways people express gender. LGBTQ+ people exist. Gender nonconforming people exist. They exist in the world and in our community. They may exist in your child’s classroom. It would do our students a disservice to withhold accurate, inclusive information that helps to prepare them to meet all different kinds of people. I see the inclusion of LGBTQ+ classroom materials as part of the district’s mission to prepare our children for the road of life.

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