As school board is forced to adopt anti-LGBTQ policy, trustees fear children will suffer
A new state law aimed at giving parents greater access to and control over their children’s school lives could force teachers and counselors to out gay or trans children to unsupportive families.
One of several anti-LGBTQ bills passed during the last legislative session is now taking shape in local communities across the state — including in Albany County School District No. 1.
The policy could have major consequences for school counselors, sex education teachers and students — gay, transgender or gender-nonconforming students in particular.
Senate Enrolled Act 8 — dubbed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill — institutes broad reporting requirements that could force schools to out queer students to unsupportive families.
The new legislation might also make it more difficult to catch child abuse by giving all parents more latitude to shield their children from almost all health screenings. And it requires teachers to secure explicit permission from parents before offering any instruction about “sexual orientation or gender identity.” This last provision has earned similar legislation the moniker “Don’t Say Gay” in both Florida, where it was first tried, and Wyoming, where it was first attempted in 2023.
Members of the Albany County School Board were noticeably distraught about what the legislation could mean for local children even as they advanced a district policy conforming with the new law Wednesday.
“This is a stupid and unfortunate policy that we’re being forced to put on the books and it’s the result of browbeating by the Wyoming Legislature engaging in culture wars,” Trustee Nate Martin said. “It’s broad and doesn’t make sense in many places.”
The district’s adoption of such a policy is required by the “Parental Rights” bill, yet the board’s vote was not unanimous. It passed on first reading with a 7-2 vote, with Trustees Cecilia Aragón and Emily Siegel-Stanton voting against.
Siegel-Stanton said the policy threatens to unravel the safety that many children, especially those who are gay, find outside of the home.
“School — for a lot of kids, for a lot of reasons — is the safest place,” she said. “And we want our kids in our school district to be able to talk to educators and other safe adults in the building, about whatever is going on for them without a fear that that could go home and create more problems.”
The policy does exempt school administrators from notifying families they suspect of abusing children — but making use of that exemption requires taking the step of reporting the suspected abuse to law enforcement and the Department of Family Services. However, as some trustees noted, young queer people in particular face challenges beyond the traditional abuse that can be reported to authorities.
Young queer people can be punished severely, subjected to conversion therapy, which is legal in Wyoming, or kicked out of the house and made homeless for refusing to renounce their orientation or even just asking their parents to use they/them pronouns.
But the new law passed by the Wyoming Legislature — and the district policy that law is forcing Albany County Schools to adopt — will require school personnel, even school counselors, to out these students to their parents, even if those parents are known to be unsupportive, even if that means betraying a counselor’s professional code of ethics.
“Does it make us a mandatory reporter of those things? The way that I read the law, yes, it does,” Chief Human Resources Officer Nathan Cowper told the board. “There are conflicts between ethics and law, and I spent a significant portion of my weekend going through how those two things interface with one another because it is a complicated relationship. The law is pretty clear on this point. The law governs over ethics.”
This consequence of Senate Enrolled Act 8 mirrors similar consequences implied by other anti-LGBTQ legislation passed during the most recent legislative session. Another bill, a ban on the provision of gender-affirming care to trans youth, commands doctors to ignore the consensus of their profession and deny children what is frequently life-saving medicine.
The Albany County policy passed on first reading Wednesday. It will have to pass two more readings before it can become an official part of the district’s policies.
“We have to have this in place by July 1,” Cowper said, outlining the timeline required by the new legislation.
Policy specifics: Reporting requirements
The new law has several provisions, so ACSD No. 1’s proposed new policy does as well.
Perhaps chief among these — and of greatest concern, seemingly, to the trustees — are the new reporting requirements.
The district policy draft notes that school personnel should first encourage children to reach out to their parents.
“When issues of a student’s educational, physical, mental or emotional health or well-being arise, school personnel shall encourage the student to discuss the issues with their parent,” the draft states. “As appropriate, school personnel may facilitate discussions of such issues with parents.”
But the policy draft, in accordance with the new state law, quickly moves on to declare, in no uncertain terms, that parents have a right to any and all information about their children.
“... ACSD1 shall not adopt nor implement any formal or informal rule, policies, practices or procedures that direct, encourage, or have the effect of encouraging, a student to withhold from a parent information about the student’s educational, physical, mental or emotional health or well-being,” the draft states. “Any employee who has actual knowledge of a change in a student’s educational, physical, mental or emotional health or well-being shall report the change to the School Administrator or their designee. The School Administrator or designee shall determine who will notify the parent of the student, and shall notify a student’s parent as soon as practicable.”
Neither the law nor the subsequent local policy define the various forms of “well-being” they reference.
“I don’t know exactly what the term “educational well-being” means,” Cowper said. “It’s not defined for us in the statute, but certainly regular educators are going to be on the hook for this to a certain extent.”
Trustee Martin said he’s heard from teachers who are concerned about those definitions and how the law will be enforced.
“It’s just a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Martin said. “How do we make sure that the staff know that the district has their back, that they are not going to be held personally liable in the event of a lawsuit, and that we will not roll over and let frivolous litigation deter people from doing their jobs?”
Cowper said the district will craft administrative regulations before this policy goes into effect.
“I think the detail will actually help staff feel like: ‘I know what I’m doing. I know what I have to report. I know what I need to do,’” Cowper said, adding: “I will do everything I can to support staff members to understand this policy. And if we do have to cross that complaint process and ultimately a review by the [Albany County] District Court — which is what the statute itself contemplates — we will be with them every step of the way.”
Beyond the broad definitions and legal ramifications, there is also the matter of student safety.
Opponents of the legislation have raised concerns that “changes” in a student’s “well-being” would likely include information about a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation should that student “come out” at school. Supporters of the legislation have not dispelled this fear; in defending the legislation, they explicitly cited instances in which schools did not tell families their children had asked to go by other pronouns.
Trustee Siegel-Stanton posed a hypothetical, explaining how this policy would likely stop a student in a “scary dating situation” from seeking or receiving help at school if they come from a family that doesn’t want them dating a certain sex or gender or doesn’t want them dating at all.
“How do they get help in the school building about that situation without fear of being punished at home in a way that could be unsafe?” she asked. “I have a lot of fear that this could silence kids from getting the help that they need.”
As a mental health professional herself, Siegel-Stanton said the conflict between a school counselors’ ethical obligations and their new legal obligations will only exacerbate an ongoing mental health crisis among LGBTQ youth — a crisis which is deadlier in places where children and teens are not accepted for who they are.
“Sometimes when people are sharing things at school where they’re in danger — something like out of control substance use, unsafe dating, relationships, gender identity — sometimes they’re sharing things at school because home isn’t safe,” Siegel-Stanton said. “And we are then putting some of our professionals at odds with their professional codes of ethics to ‘do no harm.’”
Policy specifics: Health screenings
The law and its subsequent local policy will also require parents in the district to “opt-in” to any health screenings or questionnaires administered by the school.
The district policy draft states:
“... prior to administering any well-being questionnaire or health screening tool to students, ACSD1 will make available a copy of the questionnaire or information on the health screening tool and obtain written, electronic or verbal consent from the parent or guardian.”
This provision might seem innocuous, but as the bill enabling and requiring this language moved through the legislature, the Wyoming Education Association warned that it could have a severe — and presumably unintended — consequence.
Specifically, the new law will likely make it easier for physically abusive parents to avoid detection.
Like other key terms found throughout the new legislation, “health screening” is a broad concept and the law exempts only a few specific tests from needing prior parent approval, such as vision tests or body mass index assessments required by federal law.
At-school health screenings serve as the state’s “frontline defense” against child abuse, providing for an outside check on a child’s wellbeing, according to Tate Mullen of the Wyoming Education Association. Mullen warned lawmakers on multiple occasions that this new law will effectively allow abusive parents to avoid the very health screenings that might alert others to the abuse they’re inflicting on their child.
“Our schools are the frontline defense for catching cases of abuse and neglect, and these are mostly done through those health screenings,” Mullen told the Joint Education Committee in 2023. “If we provide an option for an opt-out, we do run the risk of missing a lot of these cases of abuse and neglect for first detection.”
Mullen added there’s data from the pandemic to support this fear.
“We have seen this evidence in testimony from (the Department of Family Services) about their caseload from 2019 to 2020, when we weren't providing these screenings” Mullen told the committee. “And their caseload plummeted because of the lack of screening.”
Most lawmakers were undeterred by this warning.
The committee endorsed the bill with a 10-4 vote. When the session rolled around a few months later, the bill ultimately passed in the Senate with a 28-2 vote and in the House with a 55-7 vote. Gov. Mark Gordon allowed the bill to pass into law without his signature.
The new law requires parents to “opt-in” to these health screenings rather than making parents “opt-out” of screenings that would otherwise be proffered. That means if the district does not receive a parent’s explicit permission, for whatever reason, it cannot administer the health screening.
The policy will not stop the district from rendering first aid or calling emergency responders “in case of sudden need.”
Policy specifics: “Don’t Say Gay”
Finally, the district policy will require teachers “notify parents at least two days prior to any planned instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity” and to “obtain written or electronic consent at least one day prior to any training, course, or class that address sexual orientation or gender identity.”
As with the health screening, the policy requires parents to “opt-in” to any such curricula.
The policy defines “instruction” as “the action, practice, or profession of teaching and includes planned teaching addressing gender identity or sexual orientation,” but notes that “instruction” does not include the following:
Responding to a question from a student during class regarding sexual orientation or gender identity as it relates to any topic of instruction;
Referring to the sexual orientation or gender identity of any historic person, group, public figure, or fictional character where the reference provides necessary context in relation to a topic of instruction;
Student generated schoolwork;
Student-to-student speech;
Classroom references to a person's family;
Library books;
Extra-curricular, co-curricular, or student clubs;
Dual Enrollment courses taken at a college.
The state law itself does not outline these exceptions but they are included in Albany County School District No. 1’s proposed policy.
The exact same exceptions are listed in Laramie County School District No. 1’s current policy draft and in Natrona County School District No. 1’s current policy draft as well, and are in keeping with a recent lawsuit settlement regarding the original “Don’t Say Gay” bill from Florida.
For those instances in which the exceptions do not apply — such as when sexual orientation or gender identity are talked about in health class — Trustee Carrie Murthy suggested teachers seek permission from parents long before the topic is covered.
Cowper said this is what the district will endeavor to do, hopefully sparing teachers from having to wait by their phones or emails up to the moment of instruction delivery.
This is a difficult topic because there are so many reasons the school shouldn’t be making decisions for parents and then there are exceptions for vulnerable populations like the young mentioned in the previous comment. Isn’t this rule going statewide - at least that was my understanding as to why the board “saw the writing on the wall.”
I graduated from LHS in 2002. A kid I was in classes with came out to his parents and his mom, a law enforcement officer, promptly dislocated his shoulder about it. He was not removed from his home until much later, and ended up living in the teen crisis center for an extended period of time. He was such a fun person to be around, but was so sad and afraid for so long. He died just a few years later, and I put that down to all the horrific shit he went through because he was gay and his family hated him for it. Teachers at the junior high outing him to his parents would have accelerated this crisis and these policies would have kept him in physical danger for a longer period of time.
The legislature has decided that queer kids don’t deserve identities outside of what their parents demand. This is horrifying and will have a body count. I’m so heartbroken that only two members of the school board voted against implementing these policies to comply with an unjust law.