When They Listen: A LGBTQ+ Rights School Success Story

In 2023 alone, lawmakers introduced 42 bills that restrict discussions about gender and sexuality in K-12 schools. In this story, tbh producer Amaya Dorman Mackenzie shares her story growing up in a school district that supported LGBTQ+ students. She shows what can happen when educators, lawmakers, and community members listen to youth.

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Story Transcript

Sitting around the dinner table every night is a routine so familiar and grounding for me.

Sounds of family talking

I love to look at my family’s faces around the table, so happy to be eating a meal cooked by mama, my mom, Sonja.

Often it is a time full of raucous laughter, as my little brother makes witty jokes and my other mom, mommy or Kym, weighs in with good-humored comebacks.

My moms tell this story about how I expressed my pride in my family from a really young age. Here is Sonja.

SONJA DORMAN MACKENZIE: You came home from preschool one day and you'd been playing with your friends, and you were playing animals because that's what you always liked to play, and one of your friends had said, well, in a family there always has to be a mommy and a daddy. And you had said that's not true because in my family, I have a mommy and a mama and a donor.

I have been in the Berkeley Unified School District, or BUSD, for my whole school career, 12 years. I just graduated. And I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

My experience was of course imperfect, but overall I felt accepted and safe. As I look back I realize how much of this positive experience was shaped by the efforts of the community around me – especially my moms and other queer families.

As soon as I had started elementary school my parents realized they weren’t getting the support they were looking for. And took it upon themselves to fill that gap.

KYM DORMAN MACKENZIE: As queer families, we still, we had an incredibly important role to create kind of an institutional set of traditions that would allow us to feel seen and celebrated that weren't there.

That was one of my moms, Kym.

At that time more elementary schoolers were identifying as transgender and nonbinary, but even in progressive Berkeley, California, they were experiencing bullying and exclusion.

My other mom, Sonja, a researcher in the area of public health and gender studies, knew she needed to do something about this.

SONJA DORMAN MACKENZIE: Why is it that we are so threatened by someone who does not cohere to a gender binary defined by masculinity norms, femininity norms. Why is this? Why is it that this is something that threatens people so deeply, right?

That’s why she helped start the Gender Justice program at my elementary school when I was in 5th grade and my brother in 2nd. It was a 12-week program that ran for two consecutive years and was designed to help kids deepen their understanding of gender norms, different kinds of families, and being an ally.

The Trevor Project is an LGBTQ+ crisis intervention non-profit. they conducted a survey in 2023 that shows that LGBTQ+ youth with access to affirming homes, schools, and online spaces, as well access to gender-neutral bathrooms at school reported lower rates of mental health issues.

In other words, they have a much better experience at school when policies make explicit efforts at inclusion.

And that’s what gender justice was all about. Here is Ashleigh Talbott, my old kindergarten teacher and co-creator of Gender Justice. She also says allyship was essential.

ASHLEIGH TALBOTT: We created Gender Justice to be a place where kids can feel safe, where they can have allies to be with them, their peers, their friends that could also learn language on how to be an ally.

I asked Ms. Talbott what she thought the program’s impact was on the community and school policy.

ASHLEIGH TALBOTT: So I think it definitely changed how adults looked at things and how they really wanted to create like kids centered spaces. And then I also think it helped support other kids who maybe didn't always feel as comfortable or courageous to, to be able to share parts of themselves.

ASHLEIGH TALBOTT: They were like, I think that I can share those parts of me. There are spaces in school where, you know, I feel extra sa safe to share those parts of me.

Today, the school which housed Gender Justice, Washington Elementary in Berkeley, has extensive policies in place in an effort to help all students thrive.

Sounds of a marching band

The school has hired more queer staff, including a trans teacher who Ms. Talbott works with closely. They also have new gender neutral restrooms, and weeks of pride celebrations. The list of changes goes on.

But this was not the case at other schools in the district. I talked to Zak Sinclair, a trans parent of a trans student who specifically requested an elementary school which they thought had the best trans-inclusive policy.

ZAK SINCLAIR: Because the principal is so like supportive of trans kids and, and, and non-binary kids in his school, you know, he, he does extra trainings with the teachers, which should not be school site by school site based.

It's easy to imagine how a principal with different priorities might create a less trans-inclusive space on their campus,

Simply because there are not regular district-wide trainings for all staff on LGBTQ+ student needs.

And sometimes essential things get overlooked. Emma Knisbacher is a senior at Berkeley High.

She’s the president of the alliance for gender expansive youth at her school, has been fighting for the basic right to bathrooms for the past year. Here is Emma.

EMMA KNISBACHER: Berkeley High is not a safe space or a happy space to be a trans kid. Because if you're a trans kid at Berkeley High, when you need to use the bathroom, you either have to walk all the way across the school, which you aren't allowed to do, technically because the hall passes only let you into one building or you have to hide out in a teacher's bathroom. But if you try to use a teacher's bathroom, odds are one of the administrators walk up to you and say you can't go there.

But it isn’t just bathrooms that are a problem.

She says the support given to students at the elementary school level is insufficient for dealing with this ingrained negativity in the high school culture.

EMMA KNISBACHER: Berkeley's really ostensibly progressive, like, superficially, it tries to make everybody feel safe, regardless of ethnicity and gender and sexuality and class. But in reality, when you get to things that actually take a lot of hard work, when you get to actually making difficult situations, difficult realities for students, and everyone in this city better for marginalized communities than Berkeley doesn't step up, unless it's forced.

The district’s slow response to the requests of the trans and non-binary high schoolers was demoralizing. And added to feelings of invisibility and vulnerability at school.

EMMA KNISBACHER: So just really every trans person I know has struggled with their mental health at some point and most of them have struggled with it a lot because this society, this country doesn't make trans people safe, doesn't accept us and it's not gonna accept this anytime soon unless we fight for it.

And fights just like this are happening everywhere, taking place on the local, state, and federal stage.

SONJA DORMAN MACKENZIE: Kids learn how to differentiate and how to discriminate. These are learned behaviors. And if we actually want to counter this, we have to understand that kids actually learn how to be allies.

That's Sonja again. But more people are getting on board with this frame of mind.

The Biden administration has made significant changes

However, anyone who has ever advocated for LGBTQ+ student support, like Kym, knows that the most important fighting is done close to home.

KYM DORMAN MACKENZIE: What has worked consistently at a small scale is a group of teachers, and administrators, and school board members who have really listened to the voices of those whose experience we're talking about, so queer and transgender students and families.

So really, it’s up to us and our allies, to make sure our voices get heard. That's what will make us safe. We know who we are and we know what we need.

We just need you to listen.