Public school board trustees will debate policy changes today as part of the province’s new gender diversity guidelines ensuring LGBTQ students are supported in schools and through clubs, like gay-straight alliances.
Earlier this year, Education Minister David Eggen asked all Alberta school boards to provide wide-ranging support to students with diverse sexual orientations, from allowing them to use washrooms of their choosing, trying out for all sports teams, to being addressed as “ze” instead of “he” or “she.”
Boards are being asked to create their own policies around the new legislation, set out Bill 10 and an amended School Act. Eggen stressed it’s critical they provide support to all individual needs, including students who are still questioning their gender identity, and provide them with safe access to washrooms or change rooms of the student’s choosing or enabling equitable participation in curricular and extracurricular activities.
CBE officials have said schools within their system are already supporting gender diversity in all of those ways, and the new guidelines won’t result in significant changes.
School boards across the province are asked to come up with their own policies by March 31.
