Earlier this year, Maxine Oland, the parent of a transgender student in the Amherst, Massachusetts Regional Public Schools, called out a systemic pattern of anti-trans behavior after her child was “bullied to the point of needing hospitalization for suicidal thoughts.” Oland’s complaint led to an investigation and multiple “top-level” resignations from the school system. Late last month, Oland was able to see a report from the investigation, and she told MassLive.com she is mostly optimistic about its findings.
Reports MassLive.com:
For Oland, who spoke to MassLive on Saturday, the investigation report — which she said should be forthcoming any day now — should not have held up school officials from acting. Oland received a copy of her portion of the complaint from the investigator for her response on August 24 and had 10 days to respond. When responses are received from people involved in the investigation, the report can be completed.
“I think it’s very limited in scope. The only thing Title IX looks at is individual acts of discrimination by individuals,” Oland said. “What I’ve asked for all along are much larger changes.”
At the same time, Oland said she was glad to see the level of detail in the portion of the report that she saw.
Oland said she was pleased to see Superintendent Michael Morris’s plan for supporting LGBTQ and particularly transgender students in the district, much of which came from her own suggestions.
“I had been asking all along for things like making it easy to change names and pronouns, sufficient training for staff,” Oland said. …
Oland described what took place with her child at the middle school when they were at the Amherst Regional Middle School.
“They were bullied by a group of more than 30 children,” Oland said, adding that most of the students she said bullied her child were in eighth grade and older than her child.
Oland said her child was regularly surrounded, followed by groups of boys who were barking at them, yelling transphobic and homophobic slurs at them and making threatening gestures.
It went on for a month before it was stopped, she said.
At the same time, she said she found that the guidance counselor assigned to her child was unwilling to use her child’s correct name and pronouns, dismissed concerns about safety and generally was not a supportive presence.
Oland, under a pseudonym, shared her story with student journalists at Amherst High School’s student publication The Graphic, as part of an extensive article that detailed Oland’s claims and others related to lack of support for transgender students.
Read the complete MassLive.com story here.
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