A parent and two School Board Members are asking for changes to the district's new gender guidelines with different results.

New Sarasota County School District guidelines for transgender students are off to a turbulent start, after a critical email from a Sarasota resident to Superintendent Todd Bowden led to his being questioned by two school police officers at his home, and the School Board chairwoman's request to change a provision that does not require schools to notify parents if a child has decided to come out as trans.

The district last week released new rules that allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. The new guidelines, including a provision that doesn't mandate parental involvement, have prompted praise from some parts of the community and criticism from others.

That same line attracted the attention of 31-year-old Sarasota resident Drew Peters, a Sarasota schools alumnus and a parent of a young child not yet in the school system. Last week, Peters sent Bowden an email indicating his opposition to the district's new gender guidelines.

"If Sarasota County schools will not keep my daughter safe from mentally ill male students who want to use the same bathroom as my daughter then I will," Peters wrote last Wednesday morning. "Listen very clearly, if/when something happens to little girls at school by transgender males exposing themselves in bathrooms/locker rooms or worse, you will be held liable. See you around."

Peters thought nothing more of it, but on Thursday afternoon, his wife told him that there were two Sarasota schools police officers at his door. They said that they were there to discuss the email, he said.

Once Peters read them the email, he said the police officers indicated that they did not think there was a threat and that they were sent because they had been asked to question him.

"It's not like they asked me 100 questions about it," Peters said. "I showed them the email and I gathered their reaction was that they agreed that it was not threatening. They apologized for being there, and I said it was no problem."

Shortly after they left, Peters received a message from his father indicating that Sarasota schools police had also tried to question his parents, whose home has a private gate, so they questioned his parents' neighbors instead. Peters said this experience, combined with other factors, has made him reluctant to put his young daughter in the public school system.

"I do not feel comfortable with the current leadership of the Sarasota County School Board and our superintendent to have my daughter in a public school in Sarasota County," he said.

After receiving the email Wednesday, Bowden forwarded the message to the district's head of security, Michael Andreas, as well as School Board members. He later talked with Andreas and Sarasota schools police chief Paul Grohowski as to how to handle the email that a district spokesperson called a "potential threat."

"I asked them if it constituted a threat, and their response was that they did not know the individual or their intent, but at that point, Grohowski said the best course of action was for us to make contact with him and make that determination," Bowden said.

Bowden also asked schools police department officials whether the agency had jurisdiction to question someone off school grounds who was not directly affiliated with school business. The employees told him yes. A spokesperson for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office and Andreas did not respond in time for publication to a question about jurisdiction.

"Questions of jurisdiction are best answered by those in law enforcement that deal with it," Bowden said. "But I asked them, 'Do you have jurisdiction?' And I was told without hesitation that they did."

Share your thoughts by joining the Herald-Tribune’s Sarasota and Manatee Schools Facebook group.

School Board Chairwoman Bridget Ziegler said she was "alarmed" once she was notified about these events last week.

"I don't want people to feel that they can't share their concerns or opinions or else we'll expect an armed police officer to show up at their door," Ziegler said. "I also don't want members of our police department to feel as though they're being put in that position either."

She noted that members of staff should report any safety concern they feel, but she said the police department needs to have some sort of "litmus test" for when a threat requires further investigation and what constitutes a threat.

"It's really critical for us to read through this trail and understand exactly what happened and make sure that everything was followed from a compliance standpoint. My question would be to the head of security: What's our litmus test for when there's a true threat? And who makes that call?" Ziegler said. "... The last thing you want in any circumstance is for anyone to abuse their position of power."

The issue of transgender rights at school has been a hot-button topic since Pine View alumnus Nate Quinn, a trans man, asked to use the men's bathroom. Nearly three years after that time, Bowden effectively settled the case of transgender students in the classroom with the guidelines released last week. But that has not set well with everyone in the Sarasota community, who feel that his solution may not be the right one and that the public was not given a chance to add their input.

Ziegler wants to give the public a chance to speak on the issue at the board's Nov. 6 meeting. At that meeting, she will attempt to add language to the guidelines that would mandate parental or legal guardian consent if a child asks the school to change their preferred gender pronoun or use a bathroom that does not correspond to the gender assigned them at birth, according to an email sent Friday to Bowden.

“I move that we direct Board Counsel to draft and bring forward policies for board consideration that would address the following: require parental/legal guardian consent on matters relating to a student’s request to change their gender pronoun and/or facility use and requires dual party parental/legal guardian consent on any school sponsored/board sanctioned overnight field trips with students who are biologically of the opposite sex yet identify as the same gender,” Ziegler wrote to Bowden and board attorney Art Hardy.

While Ziegler asked Bowden to add a formal motion to the board agenda, which would be noticed to the public once the agenda is available online, Bowden asked that she make the motion under the announcements portion of the board meeting, which would give the public less notification time.

Ziegler and School Board Member Eric Robinson have been vocal about their opposition to certain elements of the gender guidelines. In an earlier interview, Ziegler said not requiring parents to be part of the conversation was “completely stripping” their “rights.”

Page 8 ofSarasota County Schools Gender Diverse Guidelines Contributed toDocumentCloud byElizabeth Djinis ofSarasota Herald-Tribune •View document orread text