Stand up for Trans Students

22 N Commerce Ave,Front Royal VA 22630

04 August, 2021

Description

Tell Warren County School Board to follow Virginia law and protect trans students from discrimination! Please join Northern Shenandoah Valley Unites supporters at the next Warren County School Board meeting to speak up for transgender students! Last meeting, the school board voted not to adopt mandatory requirements from the state to protect these students against discrimination, following a heated, vitriolic discussion filled with hate speech and intolerance. We need to show the board that those voices do NOT represent our community! The Virginia legislature recently passed model guidelines to protect trans kids in public schools, requiring sensitivity training for faculty, access to gender-appropriate bathrooms, gender-affirming dress codes, and more--and required that local school systems comply with these standards at minimum. Instead of following the law and promoting acceptance, Warren County appears determined to ignore the guidelines. Supervisors caved into blatantly transphobic rhetoric from our community that painted these children as predators. 2020 was the deadliest year on record for transgender people, with many of the murders committed against Black, indigenous, and other people of color. To end this senseless cycle of violence, compassion needs to be fostered from the start, in our schools. The county's failure to act puts it on a similar path to 1958, when it refused to desegregate schools and became one of the few in the entire state to shut down schools rather than allow Black and white students to mingle. Instead of repeating the intolerance of the massive resistance era, let's ensure the school board follows the rest of the state in protecting our LGBTQ community. Please wear light blue, pink, and white if you can in support of the trans community. If you would like to speak, please arrive a half hour early to get signed up. A Zoom meeting to organize prepare our remarks will be announced -- stay tuned! **NOTE: Because of the sensitive nature of this issue, please do not post publicly about our plans so as not to attract negative attention. Please do invite friends and family though! Thank you. A social justice organization working for equal rights for all citizens in Warren County and beyond