CONWAY, Ark — The Conway School Board meeting on Tuesday was moved from their typical room to a packed auditorium in order to accommodate the crowd that came to speak up on transgender rights in schools.
Two new policies suggested this week would limit transgender students' bathroom access and accommodations on school trips to match the sex they were assigned at birth— no matter the gender a student is living as now.
The new policy has left some parents of transgender students, distraught.
"They're kind of picking out us, a small group of students who are kind of picked on already. And they're saying, No, you can't do this," Vicki Crockett, the mother of a transgender student at Conway High School, tearfully said.
Every public comment regarding the issue on Tuesday opposed the policies, as transgender people and allies expressed their frustration.
"No student should have to know what I went through, the weight of being different is so heavy," one transgender woman said to the school board.
Board members who supported the policy said that they're just looking to protect the student body as a whole— proposing practices they say have unofficially been in place for years, and claiming they will offer a separate bathroom for transgender students.
"We have to look at all the kids and the students and that's what we're trying to do here," said the president of the Conway School Board, Andre Acklin.
With only one question asked by the board about the policy on Tuesday, it still left lots of questions from the public about the legality of the issue surrounding Title IX protections against discrimination.
"My question is are these policies students first? Are these making students feel loved and feel safe?" the same transgender woman added.
The policies will now move into a period of public feedback and are expected to be addressed at the school board meeting on October 11th.
Until then, board member Linda Hargis suggested that she and the board, "...intend to reflect on [their] notes and what [the public] had to say tonight in making this decision."
