This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated May 31, 2024
Pride, the month-long celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community will again kick off as the calendar flips to June. For the third year in a row, Gay Ridge Pride will take place at Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge, this year being held on Sunday, June 2. Despite how far our city has come in acceptance of all individuals, regardless of their orientation or how they identify, we still see repeated instances of LGBTQIA+ individuals being targeted, with some of that recently being directed at the most vulnerable among us, children, and by local elected bodies, no less.
Community Education Councils exist for each of the New York City Department of Education’s 32 local community school districts. Commonly referred to as CECs, they are councils of twelve members that include nine elected parents/guardians who have a child or children attending an elementary or middle school in that respective district.
On March 20, District 2 CEC passed a resolution that supported singling out and excluding trans students from certain school activities. Manhattan State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal said it was completely contradictory to the DOE’s policy on the matter. Many other elected leaders whose districts overlap with CEC 2’s district issued similar statements of condemnation.
On May 2, 18 elected officials, including members of the City Council, State Assembly, State Senate, United States Congress, and the Manhattan Borough President, issued a joint statement pointing out that “Chancellor Banks has made clear that the resolution does not conform with the values of the Department of Educations, issuing a firm statement that the recommendations laid out will not be accepted or considered.” In addition, the statement called on CEC 2 to rescind the resolution.
One CEC 2 member who vocally supported the anti-trans resolution responded to the joint statement by dismissing it and referring to “trans ideology” being used to “address mental disease.” She, along with a fellow CEC 2 member, had received media attention and rebukes from elected leaders in January when they served as featured panelists at a Manhattan event held by Moms For Liberty, a group that has been labeled as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This same CEC 2 member is also a founder of PLACE NYC, a group that has increasingly become more aligned with Moms For Liberty’s exclusionary ideology. In the 2023 CEC elections that took place last spring, all but one of PLACE NYC’s eight endorsed candidates made it onto the council.
Here in southern Brooklyn, the election for CEC 20 members was an even bigger success with PLACE NYC, with all nine of its endorsed candidates being elected to the council. Unsurprisingly, CEC 20 has been having its own anti-trans controversy.
Following groups of parents criticizing a CEC 20 member for anti-trans social media posts, the public comments section of the CEC 20 monthly meeting on May 8 was dominated by speakers who expressed that they were there to support that council member, while spewing anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric.
That week, Senator Gounardes and Councilman Brannan issued a joint statement condemning the dangerous and hateful comments and expressed that they are “deeply disappointed and concerned that CEC 20 leadership did nothing to push back against this disturbing scene as it was unfolding.”
The president of CEC 20 issued a statement addressing the public speaking portion of the meeting, stating that the threshold for these comments being the First Amendment, which protects almost all forms of speech from government intervention. As elected parent leaders who are not official representatives of the Department of Education, but rather volunteer councils that work in conjunction with, and as a check on, the DOE, CECs are not the government and, therefore, the first amendment is not the measuring stick.
Furthermore, as per DOE guidelines, managing public comment is the prerogative of the meeting chair, who has discretion to maintain order as long as the methods adopted are impartial and neutral as to content. As president of CEC 21, I made these facts explicitly clear at our monthly meeting a week after CEC 20’s, and that while we respect and encourage the sharing of opinions from across the ideological spectrum, our council will not countenance discriminatory and/or harassing comments against anyone.
I intentionally did not name elected CEC members that have been the focus of these controversies, as they are volunteer parent leaders. However, that does not mean they should not be accountable for what they choose to promote as members of their councils. With trans kids having suicide rates many times higher than other students, it is imperative that parent leaders not let anti-trans rhetoric an opportunity to further harm some of our most vulnerable children.
