Florida Schools Try to Adapt to New Rules on Gender, Bathrooms and Pronouns
As a new school year begins in Florida this week, parents are filling out a flurry of new forms — specifying a student’s nickname or new name; allowing a child to check certain books out of the library; and opting in or out of health services ranging from counseling to temperature checks, calamine lotion and ice packs.
The new bureaucracy is an offshoot of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s increasingly muscular push for “parental rights” in education, with new laws and regulations that broadly restrict classroom instruction on gender and sexuality, including in high school, and prevent transgender students and staff members from using group bathrooms that match their gender identity.
Teachers will also be barred from asking students for their preferred pronouns and could lose their professional certification for violating the new laws.
Course lists and classroom libraries are also under the microscope, with districts seeking to excise material that touches on gender and sexuality, including in classics like “Romeo and Juliet.” Here is how some Florida school districts are interpreting the new laws.
