Last July, the Massachusetts state legislature amended General Laws,
Part 1, Title XII – Education; Chapter 76 – School Attendance; Section 5 – Place of attendance; violations; discrimination. The amendment reads:
“Every person shall have a right to attend the public schools of the town where he actually resides, subject to the following section. No school committee is required to enroll a person who does not actually reside in the town unless said enrollment is authorized by law or by the school committee. Any person who violates or assists in the violation of this provision may be required to remit full restitution to the town of the improperly-attended public schools. No person shall be excluded from or discriminated against in admission to a public school of any town, or in obtaining the advantages, privileges and courses of study of such public school on account of race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin or sexual orientation.”
Mitchell Chester, Massachusetts Commissioner of Education has recently released an interpretation of the new amendment. The document, titled ‘An Act Relative to Gender Identity,’ gives instructions to all public school administrators for the state of Massachusetts.
Contained within that document are instructions telling schools that they must allow any student, girl or boy, that claims to be transgender, to have access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their proclaimed sex. The student does not need a doctor’s or parent’s note or anything else other than their own statement that they are the opposite sex that they appear to be.
The document reads:
“The responsibility for determining a student’s gender identity rests with the student. A school should accept a student’s assertion of his or her gender identity when there is … ‘evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity.’”
Therefore, any boy from kindergarten to high school senior has the right to say that he is now a girl and he will be given access to the girl’s bathrooms and locker rooms. Furthermore, the document warns that anyone referring to a transgender student by their birth name or birth sex will not be allowed and may result in disciplinary action.
