When the Trump administration targeted the Kansas City, Kansas, school district where Reed, a transgender student, spent formative years of her life, the 13-year-old felt threatened.
“I’m like, God, I’m scared — I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Reed said.
After federal officials investigated four Kansas districts for their transgender policies, the Department of Justice increased that pressure with a lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools.
The lawsuit is the furthest escalation against one of the four districts thus far. Topeka Public Schools reached an agreement to stop the probe. The Shawnee Mission School District and Olathe Public Schools are gearing up for a possible legal battle.
Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools, which relies on federal funding the most of the four targeted districts, may have that funding stripped.
The lawsuit is the Trump administration’s latest flashpoint in its battle against what President Donald Trump calls “transgender insanity.”
The federal focus on the Kansas City, Kansas, district came while Reed was attending school there. Reed’s mom requested the Kansas News Service not use Reed’s last name due to concern for her privacy.
“I just liked how welcomed I was, and how much support I got from most of the people there,” Reed said. “It was such a homey school — Rosedale Middle School is an awesome school.”
Reed has worn dresses, and experimented with her hair length and pronouns for years. But when she started middle school at Rosedale, which combined students from four elementary schools, most students — without Reed’s prompting — started using she/her pronouns for Reed.
“It was natural, but it was also my decision,” Reed said.
Reed’s mom, Sarah, had been discussing Reed’s identity with her school throughout elementary school.
When Reed was in seventh grade, her mom changed her pronouns with the school.
Federal officials allege in the lawsuit that the district allows students to transition in secret by withholding information from parents. The district maintains that they’re in compliance with federal law.
Sarah disagrees with the claims from federal officials.
“There was nothing kept from me,” Sarah said. “They absolutely reached out and had that conversation with me as it came up in classrooms … they felt comfortable talking to me about it and they came straight to me.”
The Department of Justice declined to tell Kansas News Service if they spoke with any parents who had a different experience.
The communications department for the district prevented school staff from speaking with the Kansas News Service, but addressing parents in a Facebook post in July, one teacher said “the bigger problem is that your kids don’t feel comfortable enough talking to you, their parents, about this.”
In the DOJ’s complaint, it says the district’s policies allow students to request for their parents not to be informed of their at-school transition — or exclude parents from participating in the meeting where students and school officials discuss things like preferred name, gender, pronouns and restroom use.
The complaint says the district reviews those requests on a case-by-case basis, taking a student’s welfare, age, grade and other relevant information into account.
The district said the only reason they would not inform a parent is in cases such as the student is no longer a minor, the student is emancipated or parental rights have been terminated. The district could also decline to alert parents if there is an active law enforcement or Department for Children and Families investigation into abuse or neglect by the parent or there is reason to suspect abuse or neglect by the parent.
The complaint says the district “direct(s) staff to help students socially transition to a different gender at school and to withhold this information from parents as confidential.”
Federal authorities say this violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
In a statement last week, the district denied any wrongdoing. In the same statement, they declined to comment further on the lawsuit.
But in July, district superintendent Anna Stubblefield told KSHB the district’s approach to transition is a guidance, not a policy.
“Students still show up as their full selves, so we have to make sure they have to navigate school in a safe way,” Stubblefield said.
Sarah said she felt like the district was supportive, but never invasive.
“It was just ‘this is what we need to do so your kid can be safe at school and learn,’” she said. “That’s simply the goal, right? To make sure students are integrated in the school community and that they’re there to do their jobs as students.”
In an interview, Reed and Sarah mentioned the support of school staff — specifically teachers — well over a dozen times.
Reed recalled a time when she was in third grade, and had shoulder-length hair, before she came out. She went to the restroom, where she ran into high school students.
“They came into the bathroom and they were yelling at me, saying ‘are you a girl?’ asking me all these questions and I felt so harassed,” Reed said.
Reed said that the altercation made her cry, and when her teacher saw she comforted Reed and let her see the new seating chart early — a valuable currency in her elementary school.
Sarah said the teachers helped the other students understand Reed’s identity. They’d remind students of her pronouns.
“It was always just very simple answers to very complex questions kids had, but when those things happened they did reach out and let me know,” Sarah said.
Reed transferred out of the school district when her family moved across the border about a year ago.
Other Kansas districts targeted
The lawsuit comes after the federal government originally targeted districts in Olathe, Shawnee Mission, Topeka and Kansas City, Kansas.
In April, the U.S. Department of Education said that the districts had policies that violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and Title IX.
In August, Topeka Public Schools entered a voluntary agreement with the department of education to stop creating gender support plans.
Olathe Public Schools tried to enter a similar agreement in May, but the department rejected it.
The Shawnee Mission School District never agreed to a resolution, and an attorney representing the district called the probe a “sham process.”
The Shawnee Mission and Olathe districts have been gearing up for a legal battle for months. In August, the department said it is partnering with the DOJ — just like the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools lawsuit — to take action against the Shawnee Mission and Olathe districts.
The DOJ called the lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas Public schools a “first-of-its-kind." The Trump administration has threatened public schools with federal funding cuts over their transgender policies and parental knowledge — like in Maryland and Michigan — but this is the first lawsuit.
Grace Hills reports on politics for the Kansas News Service.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KMUW, KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KRPS and High Plains Public Radio.
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