The Mountain Views Supervisory Union (MVSU) School Board plans to vote on its adoption of a policy on “Transgender and Gender Expansive Students” next month.
MVSU Policy Committee chair Eliott Rubin, a retired pediatrician and one of two school board representatives from Plymouth, presented the proposed policy for a second reading at the MVSU governing body’s regular monthly meeting on Monday evening.
“We discussed this [upon first reading] last month. This was the Vermont School Board Association policy, and it basically covered many of the policies that we already had in place,” Rubin told his fellow board members on Monday. “We did have it reviewed by our QSA [Queer-Straight Alliance], and they recommended some revisions — even to the title — and we’ve gotten that okayed by our legal [counsel]. So at this point, I would like to ask for this to be moved to an adoption vote — in other words, a third reading — in May.”
Immediately following Rubin’s presentation, a coterie of three members on the MVSU School Board called for a full public reading of the entire, nearly 1,000-word policy statement in the interests of full transparency and public education.
“I would like to have this policy read out loud for the public that is here so that we can get public input before the final reading in May,” offered Josh Linton, Rubin’s counterpart in representing Plymouth on the MVSU board. Rubin responded, “You want the whole policy read? It’s a three-page [document]. This has been warned and posted [publicly],” to which Linton replied, “What I was asking is to have it read prior to the third reading for adoption, for the public to be able to hear [it], so that we could get accurate feedback from the communities.”
Linton subsequently made a motion for the entire transgender/gender expansive student policy to be read aloud at the Monday evening meeting. The motion was seconded by Lisa Linton of Woodstock, who joined the school board last month after being elected to a three-year term at Town Meeting on March 3. (Lisa Linton is the mother of Josh Linton, the veteran MVSU board member from Plymouth who was reelected by his constituents last month.)
Matt Stout, one of the six MVSU board representatives from Woodstock, spoke up next.“[Superintendent] Sherry [Sousa] has mentioned this before. For everybody’s knowledge, the issue of transgender participation in sports is in front of the [U.S.] Supreme Court right now,” Stout noted. “They’re ruling — and if it changes this policy or the Vermont School Board Association policy, then it will be up to the Supreme Court. This policy could be vacated.”
On a roll call vote, the board then voted 13-3 not to hold a public reading of the proposed policy in full. Both Josh and Lisa Linton, as well as Bridgewater representative Ryan Townsend, dissented from that decision.
The recommended policy on transgender and gender expansive students will be voted upon at the next regular meeting of the MVSU Board on Monday, May 4.
For more on this, and to view the proposed “Transgender and Gender Expansive Students” policy in full, please see our April 9 edition of the Vermont Standard.
