Nora G. Hertel

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

WAUSAU - Wausau School Board President Lance Trollop Googles the word "transgender" every day and tracks several court cases across the country involving transgender students and their school districts.

Trollop never imagined he'd be searching regularly for updates on transgender issues, he told his fellow School Board members and dozens from the community at a meeting Monday night.

"This is an issue that is impacting our students right now," he said.

The district is wrestling with new administrative rules that say transgender students can use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their chosen gender, rather than their sex assigned at birth. One point of debate is whether students can request that special consideration without involving their parents.

School Board members voted Monday to revisit and likely edit the rules in detail at a special meeting next week. Three members — Jane Rusch, Beth Martin and Mary Thao — voted to keep the new rules as is for now. Those guidelines encourage transgender students to approach school officials who will develop a student support plan, which includes discussing the child's preferred pronouns and bathroom and locker room use.

Those rules allow transgender students to take these steps without their parents' involvement, as recommended by the federal Education and Justice departments in a May 2016 letter to schools. District staff then brought those rules to the School Board to review last month, expecting that they would stir controversy. And they have.

One possible change to the district's rules would be to fold in the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association's rules requiring a transgender student and his or her parents to request permission from the school to play on the team that corresponds to the student's chosen gender. School board members may offer large and small changes to the rules when they go line-by-line through the guidelines.

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The School Board has heard from community members on both sides of the issue. People opposed to the new rules worry that the rules would allow a transgender woman, who was born a man, into a locker room with girls. Those who support the change say letting transgender students use their bathroom of choice is important for their safety because they're vulnerable to bullying and might stand out in a bathroom of their biological sex.

Community members turned out in force at the last School Board meeting, and the majority of speakers argued against rules that allow transgender kids to chose the bathrooms or locker rooms they'll use.

"There’s a lot of fear in those comments, and fear of transgender students and in particular what that would mean to girls," Martin said. "We’re not throwing out our code of conduct and we’re not unlocking the doors to let adult men in the bathrooms."

But some high school students are legal adults, Trollop pointed out. It's one thing to refer to a student by their chosen pronoun, he or she, and even let them use their bathroom of choice, considering the privacy provided by stalls, Trollop said.. "I don't think locker rooms are the same as pronouns."

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Shared showers and changing areas in locker rooms could make non-transgender students uncomfortable.

Rusch questioned whether it was appropriate to discriminate against a transgender minority because their sexuality makes some people uncomfortable. And School Board member Pat McKee countered, "But how do you allow the minority to discriminate against the majority?"

District officials didn't report the number of transgender students in the district. A June report from the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California Los Angeles, determined that on average one adult in every 165 is transgender in the U.S.

Earlier this year parents sued the school district in Palatine, Illinois, for allowing a transgender student to use the girls bathroom. And in Kenosha, a transgender student and his mother filed a federal lawsuit against a school district this summer, alleging discrimination.

The judge in that Kenosha lawsuit recently ordered the district to allow that transgender student to use the bathroom of the student's choice, Trollop updated Wausau school officials on Monday.

The board will reassemble next week to work out the district's rules on transgender students. As many court cases play out in the state and nationally, those rules will remain in flux.

"None of our policies are final. … We go through policies on a regular basis," Trollop said. "We need to have some direction for administrators."

Nora G. Hertel: nora.hertel@gannettwisconsin.com or 715-845-0665; on Twitter @nghertel.