In Laconia, a family needed legal help to get their transgender daughter access to the girls’ room.
In Candia, parents and activists came out to oppose a new school district policy protecting transgender students from discrimination.
In Concord, the student body was allowed to choose a transgender man to be the Homecoming King.
Oyster River School District passed a comprehensive policy that allows students to be referred to by the name of their choosing.
In the past few years, New Hampshire schools have been reacting to transgender students at a different pace, with varied policies.
Now that pace is picking up.
Since the Obama administration issued new anti-discrimination rules for transgender students in May, more school districts have started to update their policies.
Before those guidelines, New Hampshire schools had little to work with. With no state laws on the books to guide school districts, a few simply expanded their own anti-discrimination policies to take gender identity into account, while a handful developed more comprehensive rules.
The rules made it so students could use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their gender identity and school staff was directed to use the student’s desired name and pronoun.
However, the future transgender policies in schools remain tenuous. On Monday, a federal judge in Texas granted a temporary injunction to that state’s attorney general and other states hoping to be exempt from the new federal rules.
Even before the federal recommendations were handed down, New Hampshire school districts had the option to implement a sample policy put out last year by the New Hampshire School Boards Association.
“We aren’t recommending one way or the other that school districts are adopting these policies,” said Barrett Christina, deputy executive director for the New Hampshire School Boards Association said in April.
New Hampshire has anti-discrimination laws on the books for gay students, but no such laws related to transgender or gender non-conforming students, which is why the association put forth the optional policy.
The conservative group Cornerstone Policy Research objected to the draft policy, saying it infringed on other students’ privacy by allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Earlier this year, the fight focused on Candia and Hooksett. Each school district eventually passed anti-discrimination policies.
In Concord, things were quieter. District officials decided to stick with their existing anti-discrimination policy, which already included protections for transgender students.
When the Obama administration’s recommendations came out in May, Concord Superintendent Terri Forsten said she felt Concord was ahead of the game.
“It was one of those moments where I felt like we were hitting the mark,” Forsten told school board members in May. “We were doing what we were receiving later guidance to do, which is to be aware of the definitions, be aware of our responsibility under Title IX for compliance.”
The policies in Concord direct administrators and teachers to use transgender students’ desired names and pronouns, recognize their chosen identity and make sure the student is included in all activities. Forsten said she is in regular contact with administrators at Concord High School, Rundlett Middle School and the city’s elementary schools to talk about implementing the district’s policy.
Transgender students are allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, but Concord High School also offers gender-neutral bathrooms – single-occupancy bathrooms for boys, girls and gender non-conforming students.
“It’s not meant for any specific group,” Forsten said in May. “It’s for any student.”
Other local school districts have followed suit. Merrimack Valley School District updated its anti-discrimination policy last year to include gender identity, and Franklin School District is examining the issue as well.
At least one district went further.
Oyster River School District was first to implement its own transgender policy in fall 2015. The policy is also one of the most comprehensive in the state, calling for individual plans to be developed for each transgender or gender non-conforming students to accommodate their wishes.
Superintendent Jim Morse said his district’s policy came from student and family input.
“We wanted to build a model so we could be assured every child was being treated well,” he said earlier this year. “Since this was relatively new territory, we depended on the parents to help us.”