The Boulder Valley School District plans to provide more training on supporting transgender students to improve consistency among schools and better implement a transgender policy approved in 2012.

Prompting the training is a complaint from a parent who says her children didn’t have a good experience at Boulder’s Creekside Elementary because the school wasn’t prepared to support children on gender identity issues.

The parent, Kate McKenzie, recently filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights, alleging that the district “is not adequately protecting the rights and integrity of its gender fluid and transgender children.”

Her main concerns are that transgender children are not consistently allowed to share their culture and experiences, the district is not adequately preparing staff members and the district is not “adequately evaluating the gender-stereotyped messages” sent to students.

The Office of Civil Rights hasn’t yet decided if it will accept the complaint for an investigation.

“I don’t want to punish the district, but maybe they need a little bit of pressure,” McKenzie said. “Their job is to help schools and give them guidance.”

Reputation as a welcoming district

Jean Hodges, a Boulder resident and the newly appointed national president of PFLAG (formerly known as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), said the Boulder Valley School District generally earns high praise from local trans folks and allies for its inclusive policies.

Boulder Valley students now can change their name and gender in the school system, even if they haven’t done so legally, and students are encouraged to use whichever locker rooms or bathrooms they want.

But both Hodges and Mardi Moore, executive director of Out Boulder, say consistency among schools remains an issue. Schools don’t typically receive training until after they find out they have enrolled transgender students and seek help, they said.

Moore is a member of the Boulder Valley Safe Schools Coalition, a volunteer group that works to foster a more welcoming environment for the district’s LGBTQ students, parents and staff. She’s working with the district to implement a more consistent approach.

“We’re working with the district on how we can push things a little faster,” Moore said. “The Boulder Valley School District has a really great transgender policy, but not all teachers and administrators know that policy exists. They haven’t been provided with the training they need to successfully enact that policy.”

Ron Cabrera, a Boulder Valley assistant superintendent, is working with the Safe Schools Coalition on increasing training.

“We agree there should be something more systemwide,” he said.

He said the district plans to provide basic training on the transgender experience to all administrators in the fall, along with beginning more specific training on topics such as communicating with parents, organizing classrooms and correct vocabulary with school staff members.

“We have a very inclusive approach in Boulder Valley, but in some ways this is new ground for us,” he said. “We’re getting knowledge and training so we can do this correctly and bring every school up to a good readiness place.”

‘They just weren’t prepared’

In recent years, some elementary students have begun openly identifying themselves as transgender — and advocates say most schools, just like the rest of society, aren’t particularly literate on transgender and gender identity issues.

A common refrain is that elementary students are too young to know they’re transgender, or that it’s a phase.

But the American Academy of Pediatrics has published numerous reports stating that a child’s awareness of gender starts in the first year of life. Between 1 and 2 years old, children become conscious of physical differences, and, by 4, begin to stabilize their concepts of self.

McKenzie, the Creekside parent, acknowledged that “we kind of took Creekside by surprise.” She said her daughter Elsa, a transgender second-grader who identifies as a girl, is shy and didn’t want to share her gender identity with her teacher or classmates.

“We were still very, very new to working with a school district,” she said. “In the end, they just weren’t prepared.”

Elsa’s teacher, unaware that Elsa was transgender, nixed a story and an art activity that McKenzie wanted to do with the class that addressed gender identity and transgender themes, McKenzie said

She said the teacher told her that “we don’t teach about transgender identity in the second grade” and a parent permission slip would be required.

“That’s when we got mad,” McKenzie said. “If you’re putting a waiver requirement, you’re essentially saying its something shameful.”

She said her younger child, Sky, a first-grader, is genderqueer, meaning she doesn’t identify strongly with either gender. Sky, she said, is outgoing and more open and had a better school experience with a supportive teacher.

But both her children had problems on the playground with teasing by other students, which she said could have been mitigated if adults had educated their classmates and modeled appropriate language.

She noted that a staff member, trying to help, talked to Elsa about feeling like a “girl trapped in a boy’s body.” Instead of helping, she said, it made Elsa feel alienated because she’s always felt like a girl.

“That’s not how Elsa feels about herself,” she said. “Sex and gender is so much bigger than genitals.”

Mckenzie said she wasn’t comfortable keeping her children at Creekside.

After talking to families of other transgender students to get recommendations, she submitted an open-enrollment application for two focus schools, Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies and Horizons K-8. Both have a reputation for being welcoming to transgender students.

She also applied to Eisenhower Elementary, a neighborhood school that’s nearby. Her children were accepted at Eisenhower but were put on the wait list at both focus schools. She then requested an administrative transfer to Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies, but the district denied the request.

In the denial, district officials said Eisenhower could meet the needs of her children after staff training.

But Mckenzie said she’s still wary — especially because the denial referenced her daughters, even though she was clear in her application that Sky is genderqueer.

“The district thinks it’s trying, but the people reviewing these decisions don’t even get it,” she said.

Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa