Meeting to mobilize resistance to transgender student policy fizzles

"The thing that people need to understand is that there is no issue. There's no emergency. There's no complaint. There's no tragedy. There's no threat. There's no policy injustice."

This post has been updated, see below.

I arrived at the Laurel Grange Community Center, located at the corner of Sawmill Road and Snake Hill Road in Glocester, Rhode Island around 5:30 pm.

“Hey, Steve!” said a man in a pickup truck who identified himself as Cassidy. “There’s no press allowed.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“We canceled the meeting because you were out here,” said Cassidy, as more cars arrived for the meeting.

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “But I don’t have to be here. I have other places I can go. It was good to meet you.”

The meeting wasn’t canceled, but it was a private event, not a government meeting subject to the Open Meetings Act. Organizer Lauri Gaddis Barrett, a political activist from Glocester, was well within her rights to exclude me. Gaddis Barrett is a conservative anti-trans activist seeking to convince the Foster-Glocester School Committee to challenge the state-mandated Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Transitioning Students policy in court.

Though I couldn’t attend the meeting, I spoke with people who did. My thanks to those who shared their experiences. What follows is a synthesis of their impressions.

Attendee: They made everyone who attended sign in, with their name and email address, and they said anyone who didn't sign in would be asked to leave.

Steve Ahlquist: They'll probably just send emails to keep you in the loop as to what they're doing next.

Attendee: We’re supposed to be sent a follow-up document. We'll see if that happens.

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The attendees I talked to estimated that just over 30 people attended the meeting. 12 people showed up in support of trans students and the school policy, and eight people verbally expressed anxiety or concern about issues relating to trans students in schools. The rest were undecided, or their attitudes were unclear. Of the eight people identified as being opposed to the transgender student policy, maybe three or four were actually from Foster or Glocester.

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Attendee: I think they started late because they were kind of shocked that there was such a turnout of people who were in opposition to their views. The meeting started with Lauri Gaddis Barrett saying that the conversation was going to be nonpolitical. But she was wearing a DeSantis 2024 hat. When asked about her hat Gaddis Barrett said, "Everyone knows I'm a conservative."

Steve Ahlquist: What were your impressions of the meeting?

Attendee: There was no agenda, mission statement, goals, or organizing principles laid out. It was not clear in any way what this meeting was attempting to accomplish. There was general talk about the issue, and I think one person even said, "I can't believe we're dealing with this here in Foster-Glocester," but nobody would say what "It" was.

Steve Ahlquist: What was the tenor of the conversation?

Attendee: Someone asked if the meeting was being called in response to an incident regarding a trans student at Ponagansett High School. There was no incident. There's nothing. What happened at this meeting was a whole lot of vague, nonspecific discussion about some amorphous something that nobody could name. There was no problem anybody could point to, no emergency, no wrong had been done. There was nothing anybody could speak to.

The crux of Gaddis Barrett's issue is that there is a lack of transparency from the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) and/or the Foster-Glocester School Committee about the "protocol" of enforcing the Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Transitioning Students policy.

She kept bringing it back to this “protocol that I've asked RIDE for that is not being shared with us." And her supporters were like, "They're hiding things from us."

Steve Ahlquist: I don't think there's any such document as the "protocol." The policy of the Foster-Glocester School District regarding the Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Transitioning Students policy is that the District will follow the state’s guidelines. [See here and here.] I think they are looking for a document between the District policy and the RIDE policy, and there's a good chance no such document exists.

Attendee: The state guidelines incorporate the protections of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Under this law, if a transgender student does not feel comfortable at home about their transgender status, and if they tell the school administrator, that school administrator does not have to inform the parents. There was a couple at the meeting who objected to this. They said, "Those parents need to know. Those parents should have a right to know."

They don't understand the law or the ramifications for transgender students.

The thing that people need to understand, is that there is no issue. There's no emergency. There's no complaint. There's no tragedy. There's no threat. There's no policy injustice. There's a small number of trans kids in the school and school districts are trying to figure out how to serve those kids. That's fine, and that's it.

It's obvious what their bias is - what their prejudice is - but no concrete issue was discussed.

Steve Ahlquist: Did you get a sense of what the next steps might be?

Attendee: Towards the end, things became more fraught. "I don't want boys in girls' bathrooms," said someone. Another person brought up how Russia made people change their language, and that's how they instituted their authority. Someone else referenced something that nobody could necessarily quote exactly where a student was being transitioned without their parent's knowledge.

Steve Ahlquist: There's a lot of fake conspiracy theories out there. It came up during the Mike Flynn visit.

Attendee: In the end, all we know is that there is a group of parents who are concerned about something related to trans kids. We don't understand what that concern is. They're waiting for a protocol that we're not sure even exists. The point of that meeting wasn't to come to a resolution, it wasn't to work across lines, it was to reinforce the wind tunnel of trans opposition. They're not concerned with solving a problem. They're concerned with limiting human rights.

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Shortly after I published I received more answers to my questions from another attendee. I present the following, lightly edited, as another point of view.

Steve Ahlquist: Can you tell me how you came to be there, and the overall tenor of the room?

Attendee: This week a friend of mine came across a Facebook post titled "citizen-led public forum" to discuss the transgender policy in the Foster-Glocester School district. There were a couple of things about the post that made me suspicious that the room would be leaning toward anti-trans rhetoric. I thought it was important for me to go to the meeting to get to know my community and try to understand where people are coming from and what we need to become more inclusive. Are they driven by fear? Misinformation? And I also went because I just wanted to support trans students. They need to know people in their community are looking out for them.

Steve Ahlquist: How many people were there?

Attendee: There were roughly 40 people there.

Steve Ahlquist: Were they from Foster-Glocester, you think, or elsewhere?

Attendee: Most were from the local community. We went around the room and shared our names and where we were from. Most people were from The Foster Glocester school district or had children or grandchildren in the school district. There were maybe five people not from our area. Three of the people not from the area were teenagers, one of whom was transgender. His aunt is from the town and when he heard about the meeting he decided he wanted to participate and contribute his perspective as a transgender teenager who is navigating the policies and support systems that are set in place for transgender students in Rhode Island.

Steve Ahlquist: What was the attitude of people? And by this, I mean, how many were “anti” trans and how many supported trans kids?

Attendee: There were at least 14 people there in support of trans kids. Quite a few people didn't necessarily have an issue with trans kids so much as an issue with the FERPA policy limiting parental rights and access to their child's private information.

Steve Ahlquist: What did organizers say was the point of this meeting?

Attendee: Honestly it never felt like there was a clear point to the meeting. I think if there weren't so many trans allies at the meeting it could have become a big anti-trans feedback loop. The trans allies were able to contribute to the conversation in a positive, educational way. Those contributions disrupted anti-trans rhetoric and fear-mongering throughout the evening.

At the beginning of the evening, Gaddis went over the history of how the policies came to be. She was pretty adamant that they were based on "guidelines," not "laws" and she explained that she contacted the school board to find out what the "protocol" was in the Foster-Glocester transgender and non-conforming policy. She lamented that she didn't have it yet. I think she suspects that there isn't a protocol as mentioned in the policy and would like to use that to her advantage in shaping the policy for the school district. (But that's me reading between the lines).

The specific ideas being debated were bathroom policies, FERPA limiting parental rights, and/or the need for factual education on the topic of transgender people and their experiences.

Steve Ahlquist: Did the discussion ever get heated, or ugly, in the sense that transphobic statements were being made?

Attendee: It didn't get particularly ugly or heated as a whole. The organizer of the meeting was passive-aggressive a few times to the teenagers who attended the meeting. She completely ignored them when we went around the room to introduce ourselves. They should have been the last group of people to say their names and where they're from but she skipped them. Thankfully, someone called that out and they were allowed to share their names. Later in the meeting, she made a snide comment about parents bringing students to meetings as political pawns. She was insinuating that the teenagers in the room were being used that way. I felt like it was completely disrespectful and that she was trying to invalidate the teenagers who attended the meeting. A handful of us immediately called her out on it – including the kids.

Steve Ahlquist: Did the organizer, Gaddis, have a good handle on the topic and the discussion?

Attendee: She's a decent speaker and kept the meeting pretty organized throughout the evening, but Gaddis relied on low-key dog whistle phrasing when communicating about the policies. She used the wrong language when talking about transgender students and vocally refused to alter her language when she was called out on it. She also wore a DeSantis 2024 baseball cap. And she recommended a website during the meeting that turned out to be very anti-trans.

Steve Ahlquist: Do you think there will be more meetings and next steps?

Attendee: Funny story. I was sitting next to another attendee and they asked if there would be any more meetings and Gaddis skirted the question by saying he was "welcome to have his meeting." So I'm thinking if she has another meeting we will have to hear about it through the grapevine as we did last evening.

Steve Ahlquist: There were people there on both sides of the issue. Was the room leaning towards one side or another?

Attendee: There was strong vocal support from the trans allies including mental health and medical professionals, high school and college educators, parents, and teenagers. And there were a handful of vocal "concerned" parents who would fall into the anti-trans category. The couple sitting behind me was a young couple and you can tell they had a lot of anxiety on the topic. They were pretty vocal, but a lot of the trans allies encouraged them to become better educated and spoke up to contradict misinformation. The trans teenager graciously offered the couple his experience as a student so that they could better understand how policy impacts him as a student and how it doesn't take away from or negatively impact the education of non-trans students.

Steve Ahlquist: Is there something I should have asked that I didn’t?

Attendee: I think you covered it!

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