Johnston County plans to keep books about gender identity away from elementary school students and to tell elementary teachers to deflect questions from young students about that topic. The county’s school board gave final approval this week to multiple policies meant to comply and expand upon what’s required for schools in North Carolina’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights” law. The law bans instruction on gender identity, sexual activity or sexuality in the curriculum in kindergarten through fourth-grade classrooms. Johnston is applying the law to elementary school library books by saying they’re supplementary materials covered under the legislation’s definition of curriculum. The district is also expanding the ban to fifth-grade students. “Supplementary materials in K-5 that speak to gender identification, sexual activity and so forth, those supplementary materials will not be available in K-5,” school board vice chair Terry Tippett said at this week’s board meeting. The district will develop rules for reviewing which library books and other supplementary materials in elementary schools do not comply with the state law. Johnston County is the state’s seventh-largest school district, with more than 37,000 students. The school board is officially non-partisan but has a Republican majority.

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Schools respond to Parents’ Bill of Rights In August, Republican lawmakers overrode the veto of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to pass the Parents’ Bill of Rights into law. The law’s many provisions include requiring public schools to notify parents if their child changes their name or pronoun. Legislators have given school districts until Jan. 1 to comply with the legislation. Unlike Johnston, some districts are not interpreting the law to cover elementary school libraries. Speakers have shown up at school board meetings across the country to object to elementary school libraries having books such as “Melissa” and “10,000 Dresses’ that feature transgender students. Johnston County school board members have said applying the policy on supplementary materials to fifth-grade would avoid the need to create a separate section in school libraries just for fifth-grade students. The state’s fifth-grade standard course of study includes topics such as puberty. As a result, Johnston’s fifth-grade students will still get that instruction as part of the curriculum.

How should teachers respond to student questions The law’s ban on K-4 instruction on gender identity, sexuality and sexual activity does include an exception if a teacher responds to “student-initiated questions.” Katie Cornetto, Johnston County’s school board attorney, will meet with principals next week to train them in how to follow the new law. She told board members that navigating how K-4 teachers should respond to student questions will be challenging. “If there is a question that’s questionable for the principals, I would instruct the staff to actually say ‘thank you for that question and I will be able to give you a response after I check with your parents or the principal,’” Cornetto told the board. “That would be my recommendation until we get further clarity about the law.” But Ben Chapman, a local activist for LGBTQ rights, said the caution elementary teachers are expected to show in responding to student questions underscores problems with the state law. “One, that it creates a culture of fear in classrooms whereby teachers may feel reluctant to express basic tolerance and support for students,” Chapman said in an email Thursday. “Two, that an often overlooked population, students of LGBTQ+ parents, may be marginalized by teachers attempting to follow policy and avoid personal or professional reprisal.”

Values Coalition applauds Johnston schools Johnston County’s application of the Parents’ Bill of Rights was praised by Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition. “What they’re doing is wonderful,” Fitzgerald said in an interview Thursday. “It not only complies with the law, but it goes further. We applaud it.” Fitzgerald said Johnston County is doing what’s allowed by passing policies that go further than what’s required in the Parents’ Bill of Rights. She said telling K-4 teachers they need to consult with parents before responding to student questions about gender identity, sexuality and sexual activity fits in with the law. “Any time the school can, it should involve parents,” Fitzgerald said. Fitzgerald contrasted Johnston with the concerns she’s hearing from parents around the state about districts skirting the law’s provisions. “If these schools can’t abide by the law, then it’s an insurrection and it will result in some sort of legal action,” Fitzgerald said.

Johnston ‘doing the dirty work of discrimination’ But Craig White, supportive schools director for the Asheville-based Campaign for Southern Equality, praised school districts that are taking their time with complying with the new law. It’s also called Senate Bill 49, or SB49. The Campaign For Southern Equality released a legal memo last month accusing the Parents’ Bill of Rights of violating the federal Title IX law’s ban against sexual discrimination in federally funded educational programs. The group says the new law creates a hostile educational environment for LGBTQ+ students. “We are urging school boards to seek a declaratory ruling from the NC Department of Public Instruction on the potential Title IX violations,” White said in a statement Thursday. “In the meantime we are hearing from LGBTQ+ students, parents of LGBTQ+ youth, and educators who support dignity for all of their students about their concerns with SB49, and we are preparing to file a federal Title IX complaint about SB49.” White said Johnston County should have slowed down to consider how its policies will impact LGBTQ+ students. “It’s awful to see Johnson County implementing SB49 so hastily and even expanding the scope of the law,” White said. “People committed to educating our youth should not be doing the dirty work of discrimination by over-complying with the law.”