2y ago

Jury awards non-binary former Albany student $317K in school discrimination lawsuit

www.statesmanjournal.com

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Elaine Kelsey, Onaly-Kelsey's mother, provided emails and communications she had with the school district. The jury determined former Oak Grove Principal Jerrie Matuszak knew of the bullying Onaly-Kelsey was experiencing but did not investigate or intervene "reasonably" and as school district policy dictated.
The title said it was discrimination but the article didn’t state that is what the jury found. Reading the article, it seems the jury found the school to be negligent in responding appropriately to the bullying.
Regardless of their gender identity, the real story here is that the school didn’t stop the bullying, which is a larger problem of all schools. Severe bullying is a big issue and one I worry about with my own kids.
- Sorry. Didn't catch this is behind a paywall
  
  No worries!! I actually just tried to read the article again and got the paywall as well 😂
  Here is a link from OPB: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/09/25/albany-oregon-oak-grove-schools-education-discrimination-nonbinary-lawsuit/
I know this is going to sound horrible to some people, but what 3rd grader identifies as nonbinary? IMHO sex and gender may as well be treated as the same thing until puberty, at least.
- Really, 3rd grade huh? Shit that sounds way to young to be worried about all that. That must have been a pretty difficult time for you. I guess I had assumed assumed it would correlate with puberty, so around age 12, or 6th grade.
  It's unintuitive for me because I never felt like I came to "identify" as my gender, so it's difficult to imagine about what age I would have noticed a difference.
- For some kids that's true. For a surprisingly large percentage though, gender identity can be known before they start school. Most will conform to their birth-assigned gender, so for those people, it isn't something they express clearly.
  
  Wow before school ? I never would have guessed.
  What social situations are kids put in that make them confront the question of their gender? Is it mostly like marketing and toys and stuff? Or more like family/social pressure to conform to "roles" (baseball v ballet)?
  Just seems so odd for a kid to have to think about gender in general, I'm trying to imagine non-creepy situations where it would come up lol
- Woah, no one here said anything about bullying being good for the kid. The article doest even mention the reason for the bullying, but it claims that the school didn't do enough/anything to address it.
  My surprise came from a 3rd grader self-identifying as "non-binary". I've never heard that term come from a child, only ever from adults and in academic settings.

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