BATAVIA - More than 100 parents of Batavia High School students attended a meeting Monday evening to hear from legal and medical experts about a transgender teacher's decision to start the school year as a woman.
The almost unheard of question of how to deal with a teacher who leaves in June as a man and comes back in the fall as a woman is drawing attention from around the world. But for parents, the question Monday was whether their teenage children will be able to get past the unusualness of the situation to learn.
Amber Robinson's 14-year-old son is scheduled to be in the teacher's Earth Science class this year. Robinson said she has already tried - unsuccessfully - to transfer her son out of the class.
She is worried that the controversy regarding the teacher will shift the focus off the class.
"I'm worried about how this is going to impact my son. Academically, he struggles," she said. "He's scared. He knows he's not mature enough to handle it. He is afraid he is going to snicker or giggle. What are you going to do? It's a man standing there in a dress."
Tom Bodie's son had the teacher last year for Earth Science and is scheduled to have her again this year for forensics. She's a good teacher, Bodie said, but he doesn't want his son in the class.
"If they won't take him out of the class, I'll pull him out of the school system," he said.
"I don't like it, its an abomination. God sent him into this world as a man, he should stay a man," said Bodie.
Some parents said they were pleased with the school district's decision to hold the information session.
"This needs to be done. This needs to be addressed not only with parents but with kids," said Ann Collins, whose boyfriend's daughter attends the school.
She advocated a fact-based presentation to the students with the teacher directly involved. "That will help avoid whispers and crude comments," she said. The teacher's sex change should be explained as a medical condition.
"Any reasonable adult knows there are anomalies that come along. It just happens," she said. "Some people choose to live with it for years, and years and years, and some people choose to deal with it."
The teacher, who has worked in Batavia for several years, has been diagnosed with gender identity dysphoria, a medical condition in which a person feels anxiety over living as a gender one feels is incorrect. Transgender people must live as a member of the other gender for a year before they can undergo a sex change operation.
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