Arizona school district lets trans students pick new names on IDs

The Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona has decided to let transgender students replace the legal first names on their student IDs with new first names corresponding to their chosen gender identities, according to a viral video from May that leaked onto social media this month.

In the video from the annual Sparkle Glitter GLSEN Remote Fundraiser and Respect Awards on May 14, the Phoenix chapter of the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network recognized Cocopah Middle School’s Gender and Sexuality Alliances student club with the Sean Nonnenmacher GSA of the Year Award for persuading the district to change its policy.

Cocopah teacher Laynee Langner says in the video, filmed while accepting the award, that she started the school’s GSA chapter with four students in December 2018 and lobbied for more LGBTQ-friendly books in the school library before setting her sights on changing the ID name policy.

“Every single student has to wear their ID all day every day, and these have their ‘deadnames,’ and they wanted that changed,” Ms. Langner says in the video.

A Cocopah student expresses satisfaction in the video that Ms. Langner got the school district to stop requiring the student IDs to use “deadnames,” an activist-created word that Merriam Webster defines as “the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning.”

“One of my friends, who is trans, had their deadname on their ID and we thought that was kind of unfair because everyone was calling them by their deadname,” the student said. “We took it to district board level and got it changed for the entire district so that the entire district’s students could have their proper names on the ID.”

Kristine Harrington, a spokeswoman for the Scottsdale Unified School District, said Monday that the issue of a student wanting to use a preferred name on an ID badge comes up periodically.

“Students or their parents may ask to go by a different name on a case-by-case basis, but there’s no districtwide policy,” Ms. Harrington said, noting that any change on the ID badge would not affect the legal name in their educational records.

“But there’s a continual effort to make sure students feel safe and supported on campus,” she added.

The Oakland, California-based GSA, a national network of LGBTQ student clubs, did not respond to a separate request for comment.

Conservative media watchers have complained that a growing number of GSA clubs in the Scottsdale district promote ideological indoctrination.

In a Dec. 7 column on the “deadnames” policy change, Corinne Murdock wrote for the Arizona Free News that “these clubs are part of a national network pushing a hyperfocus on a child’s sexuality while engaging them in social justice activism.”

Gabriel Hays of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group based in Reston, Virginia, added in a Dec. 8 column that Scottsdale’s decision is “allowing kids to think that biological reality doesn’t matter and that you are what you feel like you are.”

“Apparently in these gay clubs this is taught to be some sort of oppression,” Mr. Hays wrote, referring to the old requirement that school IDs use birth names for identification purposes.

Jill, a mother of two in the Scottsdale district, told the Arizona Daily Independent News Network on Dec. 5 that she first heard about GSA clubs when her 14-year-old freshman returned from the first day at Desert Mountain High School talking about a “sexuality club.”

“Honestly, I thought it was a joke,” said Jill, who didn’t give her last name to the publication.

 “The GLSEN programming is not about support, it’s a bigoted ideology and a full sexualized indoctrination of our kids,” she added.