The passage of Assembly Bill 1266 on Aug. 26, 2013 prohibits public schools from discriminating against transgender students. Due to years of work on the issue, Aragon did not need to make any changes in direct response.
The bill mandates options for sex-segregated school activities and facilities, such as gender-neutral bathrooms, and requires that no rule be applied to a specific gender or orientation.
English teacher Vince Bravo adds, “I think one of the important things to realize is that it’s not separate [facilities]. The idea is that private [facilities] will be made available to use if they desire. However, it is illegal for us to mandate anything for a specific population.”
Assistant Principal Joe Mahood is confident in how the school has handled this bill. Mahood comments, “We started the process [of adding extra accommodations] with Mr. Bravo and Jason Galisatus about three years ago. And so, they have progressively brought us forward where we should be. And so we’re actually where we should be.”
Aragon’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) has been integral in helping Aragon maintain its progressiveness. Junior and club president Shannon Thielen says, “We’ve had [gender neutral bathrooms] for a while now, so AB 1266 didn’t really bring that around for us, but it did for a lot of other schools with less cooperative administrations.”
Aragon is also working to improve LGBT rights beyond the scope of the law. The GSA has started a project to help other schools in the district to change policies on graduation gowns.
Thielen says, “Other schools in the district have a policy where one gender wears one school color and the other gender wears the other. There have been student led initiatives by another school to get that policy repealed. At Aragon, you can now choose which color you want to wear, and that’s effective this year.”
Although Aragon may be ahead of its peers, Mahood believes there can always be more development, and more ways to move forward. Mahood says, “We need to do a couple things. I’d like to add some lockers into the bathrooms down by the girls’ locker room area, the brand new bathrooms, just in case someone needs to use them. Just as an alternative. I mean, I want to give everybody as much flexibility to be supported and to do what they need to do wherever.”
Bravo agrees with Mahood, saying, “While we are doing lots, there is always more work to be done. My hope was that, district-wide, there would be a larger push so that a student’s experience would be similar throughout the district.”
While the bill’s name is the Transgender Students School Success and Opportunity Act, it covers more than just transgender issues. Mahood says, “The transgender issue is a small part. I mean, it’s the whole thing involving the LGBT environment, people who are gender neutral, people who have body [image issues], people who have biological issues that they don’t want to be in a bathroom with someone else. We’ve got to be sensitive to all that stuff.”
Bravo comments, “Oftentimes when we think about gender expression, there is a lot of things on a high school campus that reinforce gender binary, and if you don’t fall into the traditional feminine or masculine, there is a likelihood of being bullied or not feeling connected.”
Even though Mahood has gotten mixed reactions from individual students and parents, he doesn’t think there will be much anger on campus. “I think you as a group, you students, are very tolerant. I think you will be very protective and very supportive of our students,” he says.
