The Board of Education in Princeton is grappling with ways to make the township's public schools more accessible for transgender and gender nonconforming students - a discussion echoing in school districts around the country.

Princeton High School in a file photo.

Last month, the Department of Education gave officials at a high school outside of Chicago a month to resolve a dispute involving a transgender girl who sought to use the girls' locker room for changing and showering, or risk forfeiting federal funding.

Maine's Supreme Court ruled last year that under existing state anti-discrimination laws, a transgender girl must be permitted to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for the gender with which she identifies.

Closer to home, officials at Cherry Hill High School East recently responded to a student-led petition drive by establishing a single use, gender-neutral bathroom where users could feel safe and protected from harassment.

There are an estimated 700,000 transgender people in the United States.

"If you're in a high school of 2,000 kids, you're probably going to have somewhere between two and four trans kids at any one time," Dr. Norman Spack, co-director of the gender management clinic at Boston Children's Hospital, recently told ABC News.

Princeton's policy, introduced at a recent board meeting, is designed to "address the needs of transgender students in compliance with applicable anti-discrimination laws," the proposal says.

It would be up to individual students or their parents to determine whether they identify as a man or woman, or as gender nonconforming.

The Department of Education defines the latter as "a person whose gender-related identification and/or gender expression does not conform to social expectations or norms for a person of that sex assigned at birth."

An important clause in the proposed policy prevents school staff from revealing a student's gender identity to anyone, including the student's parents, unless they believed the student's safety was at stake.

Tragically, we know transgender students are at high risk for murder and suicide; this year alone, seven transgender women have been killed in this country.

The journey through middle school and high school is filled with landmines for everyone, even without the confusion and loneliness of feeling trapped in the wrong gender.

Things are changing - slowly, slowly - for members of the transgender community. In July, President Obama signed an executive order prohibiting transgender discrimination by federal employees and contractors. New Jersey is one of 18 states with similar anti-discrimination laws on the books.

But change is hard - we saw that with movements for civil rights, for women's rights and for gays and lesbians.

We commend Princeton officials for starting the dialogue, and hope the ensuing conversation can be carried out with respect, tolerance and compassion.