A district education council is calling on the province to follow the child and youth advocate’s recommendations on Policy 713.
The Anglophone South District Education Council passed a motion at its monthly meeting on Wednesday.
Council members agreed to write to the province’s education minister regarding the gender identity policy in schools.
Roger Nesbitt, chair of the Anglophone South DEC, declined to do an interview about the motion at this time.
The motion came one day after the province’s child and youth advocate released his report on changes to Policy 713.
Kelly Lamrock said the policy, as it stands now, violates the statutory conditions of several laws, including the Human Rights Act, the Education Act, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The finding for the purposes of this review is that the changes to Policy 713 place limits on a child’s legal rights to equality, privacy and accommodation,” Lamrock said in a news release.
Education Minister Bill Hogan made changes in three areas of the policy, though it was one change in particular that has garnered the most attention.
Teachers are no longer allowed to use a child under 16’s preferred name or pronoun, formally or informally, without parental consent.
Students have always required parental consent for their preferred first name and pronoun to be used for official records, however, there was nothing preventing a teacher from doing so informally.
“It should be said that it is not bigoted for a parent to want to know about their child’s major decisions. Equally so, it is not extreme to want children to have privacy and autonomy when they are old and mature enough to exercise,” Lamrock wrote in his report.
“The fault with the changes to Policy 713 is they were pushed through to demonstrate rhetorical support for a principle, but failed to take the steps a government would take to approach a matter with competence and seriousness.”
Lamrock made a total of 24 recommendations and proposed an amended version of Policy 713 that he said would conform with legal obligations, all of which are non-binding.
His recommended policy says students should have the right to choose how to be addressed informally without parental consent starting at Grade 6.
If a child under Grade 6 requests an informal name or pronoun change, it would be up to the principal to assess the student’s capacity, he said.
Lamrock did not recommend any changes to the rule that requires children under 16 to get consent from their parents to make changes to their official records.
The advocate has asked the province to make changes to its policy before Sept. 1. If not, he has also proposed a different policy that district education councils can use to close gaps in the provincial policy.
“Provincial policy takes precedent where the provincial policy is clear,” said Lamrock. “Where a policy is vague, the districts can fill in the details.”
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