Unofficially, transgender students in Lakota Local Schools can use the bathrooms that align with their gender identities. But a sharply divided school board has voted down an effort to write a formal policy, saying it needs more time to pick the right words that would govern in the state’s eighth-largest school district.

Dozens of white-clad supporters of a written policy packed the Thunderbird room at the district’s central office at Monday night’s monthly board meeting to urge the five members to vote yes. Parents and friends of transgender students spoke out that it wasn’t enough for Lakota students to rely on the goodwill of teachers and administrators.

“This is not going to go away,” Linda Nix, whose transgender son graduated from Lakota West High School, said in asking the board to vote yes. “It’s only going to compound. This should not be about politics, or about personal or religious beliefs. It’s about what is best for our district and for our students.”

Board Member Ray Murray, after consulting with parents, took on the issue that the Lakota schools don’t have formal policies for transgender students. Such policies govern the use of school bathrooms and locker rooms but also require teachers and staff to use a transgender student’s chosen name and preferred pronouns. He studied the problem and drafted the language that came before the board Monday as Board Policy 5000.

Murray said his proposal was almost exactly like one that the Bexley schools approved for the district outside Columbus. He said he had offered other model language that other board members would say they could vote for – “until you put the word Lakota in it. Then it’s, well, no.”

Board Member Todd Parnell, however, said he was concerned that the language was too vague and would open the 16,000-student district to possible litigation. He pointed out that the district’s legal advisers had raised alarms about Murray’s proposal. “It’s poorly written policy, and it does not have legal support," Parnell said. “It’s a completely rushed and haphazard process coming up with this thing. We need to rewrite the thing and do it right.”

Board Member Lynda O’Connor and Board Chairman Ben Dibble were also opposed. Board Member Julie Shaffer, who joined Murray on the losing side, said the district needs the policy to standardize treatment of transgender students across all the Lakota schools. She said her own daughter was bullied when she stood up for transgender classmates. “We are not living up to the standards that we say we are.”

The supporters of the proposal said they intend to get the matter on the school board’s January agenda.

That the Lakota district, in conservative Butler County, is having this conversation indicates the breadth and speed of the transgender social revolution. In part, the movement was triggered by the Dec. 28, 2014, suicide of a transgender girl named Leelah Alcorn from Kings Mills in neighboring Warren County.

The 17-year-old student at Kings Mills High School in Warren County wrote in a suicide note that she had despaired over rejection from her conservative parents and society. Her death galvanized transgender communities and their supporters – as well as conservative politicians who in several states promoted “bathroom bills” to prevent transgender men from using the men’s room and transgender women from using the women’s room.