Oklahoma’s state education board on Thursday voted down a request from two school districts to allow students to change their gender on school records.
The Moore Public Schools district near Oklahoma City and Cushing Public Schools about 70 miles north of the city both requested that students be allowed to change their sex designation on school records.
At a meeting Thursday, the State Board of Education unanimously rejected both districts’ requests.
“What we want to do is bring common sense to schools and say, ‘Listen, we don’t need to be going back recorrecting records based on transgender ideology.’ We have two genders. Those are the genders that are set,” State Superintendent Ryan Walters said during the meeting.
“I believe we’ve got to continue to stand in line in the way, I would say, of these radical leftist Biden judges that are sitting here trying to dictate this to our schools,” Walters said. “I think this is a great opportunity to show the districts – look, we’re absolutely going to stand for common sense. We’re going to stand against this. We’re not going to do the transgender game of back and forth, back and forth. We’ll be clear on this and stand with common sense and Oklahomans. We’re not going to allow the intimidation of our schools.”
Last month, the state education board passed an emergency rule barring school districts from allowing students to change their gender on school records without the board’s permission.
At a press conference Thursday, Walters was asked whether he would ever approve a similar request from a school district on changing a student’s gender in school records.
“We don’t want this issue being thrust upon kids. We don’t want it in the curriculum. We don’t want it in the text. We don’t want it in the novels,” he responded.
Gender identity, bathroom use, and parental notification in school policies have become hot-button issues in recent years.
A student’s gender designation on official school records is usually accessible to parents, but some parents have complained that their children’s transitions began behind their backs at school, long before any changes on school records.
More than 18,000 schools across the country have rules saying school staff can or should hide a student’s gender identity from parents, according to a list compiled by Parents Defending Education.
Some of the larger districts on the list are New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Baltimore, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.
Parents across the country have also expressed concerns about trans-identifying children being allowed to use the bathrooms of the opposite sex.
Meanwhile, gender identity changes are more popular than ever among children. An estimated 300,000 minors aged 13 to 17 identified as transgender as of last year.
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