The full CMS board will meet Oct. 22 to hold a vote on policy to protect staff and students against gender identity and expression discrimination.
In a recent Charlotte-Mecklenburg School board meeting, members of a policy committee voted to add new protections within the already standing harassment protection guidelines that would protect both staff and students from discrimination based on gender identity or expression.
As of the previous policy, updated last back in 2016 to read that the “Board of Education forbids harassment of any student by employees based on race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, or disability,” CMS’s policy committee voted unanimously to add the extra protected identifications, as well as highlighting “discrimination” alongside harassment in the board’s trek to safeguarding its schools.
Speaking to the Charlotte Observer about the update, Gregory Rankin, vice chair of the CMS Board of Education, said “We have these kinds of policies to make sure all our students and staff feel protected. [The new policy characterizes harassment as] conduct that has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with a student’s educational opportunity or employee’s employment; creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive school environment; or otherwise affects a student’s educational opportunities or employee’s employment.”
While there had been other previous policies, such as the Notice Of Non-Discrimination, this update would add the additional language in all others, as Rankin points out. “It was brought to our attention that we had it in some policies but that it wasn’t in this one, so we wanted to make sure that it was covered,” he says. “We wanted to make sure we had consistent language across our policies.”
The examples of prohibited actions range from “insults, jokes, and slur[s],” to “threatening, intimidating or hostile acts.”
While Rankin and all board members push forward with the update to CMS’s policies there is a growing concern as to how it will work with Senate Bill 49, dubbed The Parents’ Bill of Rights, which was put into place by the North Carolina General Assembly in August 2023. That state bill requires school employees to inform a student’s parents if the student asks to use different pronouns or a different name in school.
For the CMS the policy committee and other board members, the issue lies with students’ safety concerns. While the creators and supporters of SB49 have argued that parents have the right to know if their children are questioning their gender identity, opponents of the bill have pointed out that SB 49 has the potential to place those student’s privacy and safety at risk, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ students.
When asked about the upcoming update to the policy and how it may conflict with SB 49, Rankin said, “Even if SB 49 hadn’t passed, we would still need to make this change to make sure all of our students and staff feel protected.”
The board will hold a public hearing about the changes to the policy on Oct. 8, and the full board will take a vote on Oct. 22.