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/
That is an issue in many schools is bullying. I went to school in the 80’s and I was bullied for being nerdy.
My parents had one rule, I could not start a fight but if someone put their hands on me, I could defend myself.
I beat the crap out of three bullies in about two weeks and that solved my problem. That shouldn’t have been the solution but back then that was the solution.
I get kids that are different will be picked on but we need to stop that crap as much as we can.
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.
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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.
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In this scenario who cares? The real issue is the kid was being bullied. Schools need to stop that as much as possible.
I have heard people say it’ll make them stronger but in the work force, they would get sued for allowing bullying behavior.
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.
It’s not hard to guess the kid is weird, which is why they were bullied. It is an assumption, but I think it’s a fair assumption.
I suspect the parents told them they were non-binary. When I was in third grade, I wanted to be a cat. Hell, if my parents told me I could be one, I might have thought I was a cat.
Instead, they told me to play with my transformers and stop being weird.
Honestly, my heart goes out to the kid. I had some very “weird” (read: abusive) parents growing up, and I suppose that was about the age I figured it out.
Mine would make up medical problems and constantly pull me out of class and lied to me about not having a middle name for years and years before we went to live with my older brother at 16 (little bro came too, he was 14).
Circa 2004ish I tried to reach out to my HS counselor about being bullied. She offered to do mediation between me and the bully, that made things much worse.
Same here.
I’ve always heard the argument it’ll toughen them up. I just think it’s abusive.
I know we can’t make a life free of bullying but we should try to minimize it.
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
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I think it feels creepy to me because I have 30+ years of brain wires telling me that sex and gender are the same thing. I know they are not, but my brain doesn’t.
but what 3rd grader identifies as nonbinary?
This one do.
