Far-right Mesa school board member proposes policy to out trans students, bringing national attacks local

A newly elected school board member is attempting to bring national and statewide attacks against LGBTQ students to Mesa, despite the district’s history of inclusivity and a prior legal challenge validating the district’s current policy. 

In an April 8 Mesa Public Schools Board meeting, recently elected governing board member Sharon Benson proposed a “gender dysphoria” policy that would require teachers to get written parental permission before using a transgender or nonbinary student’s preferred name and pronouns.

The policy would also require students to participate in activities or facility use—such as bathrooms or locker rooms—that align with their sex at birth rather than the gender they identify with. It would also allow school personnel to reject the use of a student’s preferred name or pronoun. 

Refusal to use a student’s preferred name or pronoun would not be considered discrimination or bullying, according to the draft of the policy. 

Community rushes to defend current policy 

The school district, which is the largest in the state, has current guidelines that state students have the right to be addressed by the name or pronoun that corresponds to their gender identity, and that school personnel use that name and the appropriate pronoun. 

Current guidelines also say that transgender students must be allowed to participate in activities and access facilities that align with their gender identity. 

 Over 80 students, teachers, parents, and community members signed in to speak at the board meeting Benson’s proposed policy was initially scheduled to be voted on—the vast majority spoke in opposition to Benson’s policy.  

Many speakers noted that the forced parental notification aspect of the policy could put students at risk of family rejection, homelessness, and violence.

Over half of LGBTQ youth have experienced at least some form of parental rejection, according to a Human Rights Campaign report.

“I was forcibly outed at 16 living in conservative Iowa. I came home to my family, who beat me in the basement. This is the reality you are trying to enact through policy,” said Gabe Hagen, a local business owner.

“Forcing educators to disclose to parents when a student requests to use their preferred name or pronouns can be dangerous, especially for students who may face rejection, abuse or even homelessness,” said Noah White, a transgender student at Dobson High School. “Outing a student before they are ready strips them of their agency and can cause serious emotional and psychological harm.”

Discussion over the proposal ended with a decision by the board to seek further legal guidance on Benson’s measure before making any further decisions. 

Nothing new

Graham Corp, a special education resource teacher at Rhodes Junior High School, and incoming president of the Mesa Education Association, doesn’t see this type of policy to be anything new—rather, part of a trend across the country, and one that’s already happened in the district. 

Corp has already experienced a situation where a parent let him know that their child shouldn’t be called a nickname the child requested because it had a cultural association she disapproved of—not because it was the child wanted to be referred to by a different gender. 

This is an example of how Mesa Public Schools is already a very transparent and forthcoming district with parents, Corp said. 

“We are [already] consistently looping parents into the conversation, we’re keeping legal guardians abreast of all decision making,” Corp said. “I’ve encountered no issues in regards to our current guideline policies, in regards to transgender students.”

Other attempts to politicize public schools

Benson isn’t the first board member to try and remove the policy.Rachel Walden, who is also a Republican member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, claimed the district’s guidelines supporting transgender students were in violation of Arizona’s parents’ bill of rights law. 

With the help of America First Legal, a far-right legal nonprofit founded by White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Walden sued the district in 2023 to have the policy removed. The district defended its policy, and the lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.

Walden also proposed a policy that would ban the display of any flag creating “a divisive environment,” that was modeled after a similar California policy that banned pride flags from classrooms. A similar bill was proposed at the Arizona legislature earlier this year, but was abandoned by its sponsor after he compared support of the LGBTQ community to supporting Nazi ideology.

Other school districts have passed policies that target transgender and nonbinary students and staff, such as Peoria Unified School District—which adopted policies in March that require students to use restrooms based on sex assigned at birth and defines sex as a biological classification at birth.

Benson’s proposal mirrors legislation that has also been introduced at the state level. 

Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, has introduced legislation for over a decade intending to prevent teachers and employees from referring to a student by a name or pronoun that differs from their given name or biological sex, and he was the first legislator in the country to introduce some form of a “bathroom ban.”

READ MORE: Arizona state senator ignores LGBTQ community, continues 12-year crusade against transgender students

Benson has also been named in a defamation lawsuit, filed by Mesa Public Schools teacher Tami Staas, who is also the executive director of Arizona Trans Youth and Parent Organization (AZTYPO), an organization that provides a safe space for families with gender-diverse children.

Benson labeled Staas as a “groomer” for wanting to create a safe and inclusive environment for LGBTQ students. 

Solving problems that don’t exist 

Christiana Hammond is a parent with two children enrolled in Mesa Public Schools and board member of AZTYPO. 

Her children, a seventh grader and a senior in high school, have faced no issues with the district’s current supportive policies; instead, she criticized Benson’s policy for creating unnecessary controversy. “They’re making issues out of things that aren’t [there], they’re basically solving problems that don’t exist, and they’re not even solving them.”

Hammond sees the proposed measure as part of a larger movement that has been happening for years, saturating the country with anti-LGBTQ—and particularly anti-trans—proposals throughout school boards, city councils, and state legislatures. 

Outside influence on the district’s community-approved policy lend credence to Hammond’s suspicions: in addition to taking on Walden’s lawsuit against Mesa Public Schools, America First Legal filed over 100 lawsuits as of March 2024 challenging policy, laws, and programs that seek to even the playing field through equity or inclusivity, according to reporting from the New York Times.

But far from including parents in their children’s schooling, Hammond sees so-called parental rights laws as a code word for anti-LGBTQ, as parents’ rights are not undermined by LGBTQ supportive policies, but these policies are almost always written to undermine support for LGBTQ students.

Benson’s policy proposal, for example, would create a gap between teachers and their students—students would hide from their teachers and their parents, Hammond said. “It doesn’t really get any better for anybody…It doesn’t foster the communication that they’re trying to say it’s supposed to.”

“They’re treating it like being trans is dangerous, and there’s nothing dangerous, or wrong,” Hammond said. “They’re not necessarily trying to solve anything. They’re trying to create controversy and pit one side against the other, and that is something that schools don’t need to be dealing with now.”

Kelley Dupps, inclusive policy director at Education Action Alliance (formerly GLSEN Arizona), sees a glimmer of good intent behind the policy—that parents should be brought into the decision-making process of mental health and social-emotional issues of their children at the earliest possible time to reduce potential instances of self-harm.

“We heard this evening during public comment that there are homes which are unsafe for students who are outed to their parents,” Benson said. “That is not our call to make as teachers. I am not advocating the mistreatment of anybody. Our bullying policy takes care of that.”

While Arizona does not have any laws protecting LGBTQ+ students from bullying, the district has an anti-bullying policy that includes protections against harassment based on sex, “including gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status or pregnancy.”

Misunderstanding of gender dysphoria

Dupps sees the push to tie gender-affirming care and LGBTQ acceptance to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria as an attempt to medicalize it all—and label LGBTQ individuals as having something wrong with them that needs to be cured or treated.

Minors have the right to confidential care, and the ‘parental notification’ aspect of much of the proposed legislation is meant to break that down for LGBTQ youth, Dupps said. 

The actual diagnosis of gender dysphoria is different from most other diagnoses—it’s referred to as an “affirmative diagnosis,” where the healthcare provider doesn’t take action to get rid of the diagnosis as they would with something like a harmful disease.

Instead, the diagnosis is more like, “I see who you are, and I’m going to affirm this,” rather than push them into the box of being mentally ill, Dupps said.

“What most people don’t understand is that [a gender dysphoria] diagnosis is a joy,” Dupps said. 

“This is always about protecting children, except when it’s not,” Dupps said. “It never centers on the trans child, without making them a villain…[or] any supportive or inclusive adult a groomer.”

While Benson likely knows this policy will not receive the votes it needs to pass, introducing policies like this one can create a basis for other political actions targeting the LGBTQ community.

Dupps does not believe Benson’s proposed policy is reflective of the city, the school district, or the educators in the district—and that was shown through the number of people who spoke out against the proposal.

However, when policies like Benson’s do become reality, Dupps warned, the environment they create can become dangerous, and can lead to outcomes like what happened to Nex Benedict, Dupps said. Benedict was a nonbinary teenager at an Oklahoma high school who died by suicide after experiencing bullying, harrassment, and physical violence, due to their gender identity.  

“They may not mean to make it a dangerous circumstance for trans students, but they must recognize that’s exactly what they’re doing,” Dupps said.