Keller ISD school board members are set to vote Wednesday evening on policies pertaining to controversial LGBT issues, such as preferred pronoun use and bathroom rules.
According to the meeting’s agenda, trustees will consider the following policy language:
“The District will maintain restrooms, locker rooms, and similar facilities separated by biological sex. Individuals are expected to use the facility corresponding to their gender assigned at birth unless a reasonable accommodation is granted for students seeking privacy…
“District employees will not promote or require the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with an individual’s biological sex as it appears on the individual’s birth certificate.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Keller ISD’s board of trustees drew the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas last year. It accused the district of “unlawful sex discrimination against transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, and intersex students,” according to a complaint lodged by the left-leaning activist organization with the U.S. Department of Education.
The complaint stemmed from trustees’ adoption of content guidelines in August that regulated students’ exposure to potentially controversial or sexually explicit topics in library books and other instructional resources.
Other school districts in North Texas have also acted in recent years to discourage or prohibit controversial subject matter from being taught or made available to students. Those include Frisco ISD and Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, which proved responsive to calls by some parents to depoliticize curricula and maintain traditional sex-based bathroom separation.
However, some districts have largely chosen not to act on such issues. For instance, Dallas ISD — the biggest in North Texas — has not moved to pull several books from library shelves identified by some parents as inappropriate because of alleged sexually explicit content or the promotion of critical race theory, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Still, at a meeting of Keller ISD’s board of trustees on June 20, some community members turned out to speak against the district’s latest policy proposals.
“Out of my love and kindness of that student, I will honor that for that child. It is my job as a teacher to protect every student and make them feel safe in order to learn,” said district teacher Mark Weaver, Fox 4 reported.
Not everyone was opposed, though. During the meeting, Keller resident Charles Lewis took to the podium and thanked the board members for pursuing such policies.
“I feel confident that you have the wisdom to install these truths. Concerning gender-specific bathrooms, they are good, they’ve been good a long time,” Lewis said.
