Tim Mains, out-going superintendent, gave the first of three presentations on transgender students during last week’s meeting of the Jamestown Public Schools District Board of Education.

Mains said the district currently has no policy regarding transgender students, despite the fact that there are students who identify as transgender in the district.

“Once we’ve covered all of that territory, then and only then do I think it’s appropriate for us to be thinking about, ‘Ok, what kind of policy do we want to adopt?'” Mains said.

Mains said Mike MacElrath, principal of Jamestown High School, has been utilizing the guidance from New York State, BOCES and the federal government to react and respond to situations in appropriate manners.

“Our ultimate goal is to be able to bring the public and the board to the point where we can look at, consider and adopt policy in this arena,” he said.

Mains then gave definitions of several pertinent terms.

“Gender identity could mean ‘cis-gender’ which means, ‘I’m a boy, I was born a boy and I identify as a boy,'” Mains said. “Transgender, which means ‘I was born as one sex, but I identify as another.'”

He said sometimes the terms “affirmed male or transboy; female or trangirl” are used, but those terms are outdated or are used in medical reports. Also, it is important to understand that gender identity and gender expression are two different terms, Mains said.

“So gender identity is what I think about myself, and gender expression is how I am dressed and how I look,” he said. “I kind of think of gender identity as up here in my head, and gender expression is what I’m wearing – it’s the things I put on.”

Mains said both of those terms are different from sexual orientation, which has nothing to do with gender identity. He then asked them to contemplate what a boy or a girl actually is, and how does someone know what makes them a boy or a girl.

“How do you identify yourself, and how would you know?” Mains asked. “Can you in your head come up with four, five or six reasons? I identify as a boy – in your mind, how you identify yourself, can you think of why you identify yourself that way?”

Most people are born either male or female, and sex is easy to identify, Mains said.

“It’s biological and it’s visible,” he said. “But, your gender identity is not visible, and yet, there is a lot of research that suggests to us that internal sense of self is developed very early in life and last throughout your life.”

The adult world perceives a sex or a gender, and treats a child in a certain way, Mains said. Despite these interactions and clues from the environment and people in the environment, that doesn’t necessarily effect or change how someone thinks of themselves.

Mains said the school district wants to be sensitive to transgender students and respond to the needs of the students. Mains said gender and sex are protected classes.

“So, we’ve got to figure out in this kind of new world where we have young people who think of themselves as a particular gender, even though their body may not agree with that self-image, how we help them and how we react to them,” he said. “I don’t know the exact number – Deb Piotrowski tells me that we have more than half a dozen and less than a dozen of these students right now at JHS. The ultimate goal is that we can … become a bit more sensitive.”

Other presentations on the topic will provide insight into what the daily lives of transgender students look like, challenges they have to face and more.

IMPROVEMENT AND EDUCATION PLANS

Mains and several Jamestown Public School administration members, also gave an indepth presentation on the District Comprehensive Improvement Plan and the School Comprehensive Education Plan.

The school improvement and district comprehensive plans are required of schools which are designated as focus or priority schools, said Mains. Every year, the plans are completed, and formal school reviews are also completed on an annual basis. The state visits one or two schools and the other schools are reviewed by school officials with the help of an outside consultant.

For these plans, the district uses the Diagnostic Tool for School and District Effectiveness, which is the “organizational backbone” for school and district improvement plans, Mains said. The tool is divided into six tenets: district leadership, school leadership, curriculum development/support, teacher practices and decisions, social and emotional health, and family and community engagement.

Each of these areas has a strong connection to Jamestown’s strategic plan, and incorporates various school improvement actions within them. For example, under curriculum and instruction, school officials showed samples of a walk-through template, which measures what is actually going on in a classroom at a given time. Melissa Emerson, Washington Middle School principal, remarked on the progress that has been made due to tweaks of the PBIS program, or Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports program.

Emerson said the program began in 2011-13 and has been functioning ever since. While the program initially was successful with a “token economy” or reward-based system, in 2015-16, Emerson said there was a “behavior explosion” of student write-ups, disrespectful behavior, low morale and too many students in In School Suspension and Out Of School Suspension. A meeting at the end of the year brought the idea that the program needed restructuring.

However, this year, things appear to be looking up, she said.

“There is a different feel at Washington,” Emerson said. “The atmosphere has changed completely.” While there is still work to be done, she said she has felt a positive impact.