MILLINOCKET, Maine — The school system’s first attempt at a transgender student policy is among a raft of new and revised regulations the school board will consider when it meets on Tuesday, officials said.
The 14 tentatively revised or created school policies represent a heavy load of work accomplished by board members Warren Steward and Jeffrey Gordon and Superintendent Frank Boynton. Residents will have a chance to weigh the policies before board members vote on them, Chairman Michael Jewers said.
Policy rewrites generally occur to help the Millinocket School Department improve efficiency, avoid legal liability, address changes in law or changing circumstances that can be very minute. For example, the school’s no-smoking policy is being updated to include electronic cigarettes and vaporizers, Boynton said.
“When we don’t touch a policy for quite some time, it usually needs to change,” Jewers said Friday. “Sometimes it is just a wording change and sometimes it is a complete new policy because the other doesn’t work. More or less you are updating for the changing times.”
The four-page transgender policy is being introduced in recognition of transgender student-rights as established by a Penobscot County Superior Court order, dated Nov. 25, enjoining the Orono School Department from discriminating against other students as it did against 17-year-old Nicole Maines in 2007.
Maines’ civil lawsuit was the first in the country to challenge a transgender student’s access to the bathroom of the gender with which the child identified, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders of Boston said. The court ordered a $75,000 settlement that participants said will be split among GLAD, Maines’ attorneys and the Maines family.
Millinocket’s proposed policy allows transgender students the use of the locker and restrooms of their choice. It outlines how school officials should address their needs and provides guidance on specific issues, such as student privacy and official records. Jewers said there was a transgender student in Millinocket who graduated a few years ago.
“We want them to have the best education that we can put together and part of that is making them comfortable in their school building,” Boynton said. “We want it to be safe and respectful and we have to have the policies in place to create that.”
Areas of policy created or revised include school board member ethics, school staff private vehicle use, lunch charging, drug-free workplace, booster and outside organization relations, student wellness, immunization, communicable and infectious diseases, and the use of vocational shops in the school system.
Some of the changing policies haven’t been addressed since 1992. The revision process has, however, been tended to regularly by school officials, Boynton and Jewers said.
“Very honestly, it is the beginning,” Boynton said. “In another three or four months we will have another one [policy review] we will be doing and probably another one after that.”
The meeting is set for 4 p.m. at Granite Street School.