LGBTQ students
State Rep. Julie von Haefen on a bevy of bills that threaten to undermine public education
This past week was crossover week at the North Carolina General Assembly – the legislature’s self-imposed deadline for passing bills to keep them eligible during the 2023 session. It’s an event that helped turn the steady stream of backward-looking bills that have been winning approval from the Republican supermajorities into a virtual torrent. Fortunately, despite […]
Rep. John Autry discusses the attacks on transgender students and the promise of psychedelics
It’s a hard truth of American politics that many state and federal lawmakers base their decisions and votes almost exclusively on how it will impact their own political futures. Often, even hugely momentous, life and death votes are cast with an eye to the polls and the views of TV talking heads, rather than the […]
Proponents of massive school privatization scheme owe us answers
If legislative leadership has their way, our public schools will be radically transformed by the 2023 legislative session. Bills targeting Black students and trans students threaten to make our schools increasingly hostile for many children. They are seeking to radically overhaul school funding in ways that harm rural students, students with disabilities, Black students, and […]
State Senator Natasha Marcus of Mecklenburg County
State Senator Natasha Marcus of Mecklenburg County on the latest from the General Assembly, including the legislature’s worrisome rush to further weaken state gun safety laws.
Monday numbers: North Carolina and the national wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation
Last week, Policy Watch delved into the stories of LGBTQ youth as new bills legislating their education, healthcare and identities work their way through the North Carolina General Assembly. The bills are part of a continuing wave of hundreds of new anti-LGBTQ measures filed across the country in the new year, many targeting transgender young people.
We don’t have to choose between supporting trans kids and respecting their parents
Republicans in the Iowa General Assembly and Gov. Kim Reynolds are determined to earn their culture war medals this winter with multiple bills attacking the phantom menace of transgender indoctrination. But perhaps the thorniest and most dangerous of these mean-spirited proposals is House File 180 (formerly House File 9). This would, among other things, require schools to obtain a parent’s permission before “facilitating any accommodation that is intended to affirm a student’s gender identity” if that identity is different from the one on the student’s birth certificate. [Click here to read North Carolina Senate Bill 49.]
Republican lawmakers to NC schoolchildren and teachers: The attacks will continue until morale improves
In case you hadn’t noticed, North Carolina public schools, along with the children and teachers who inhabit them, are suffering mightily these days. The Public School Forum of North Carolina reports that the number of youth suicides in our state has doubled in recent years and that there’s been a 46% increase in the number of kids who have suffered with one or more “major depressive episodes” since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, thousands of educators are voting on the state of our public schools with their feet.
New Durham Public Schools policy to support LGBTQ students wins accolades
Queer author and former DPS student says such a policy "would have made a world of difference in my childhood" As a Durham middle school student in the late 1990s, Maximillian Matthews struggled to find his sexual identity. Matthews, who identifies as queer, was bullied and taunted. He felt unseen and unsupported by teachers, counselors and school administrators.