Garfield Re-2 school board members, along with Superintendent Heather Grumley, second from right, and Assistant Superintendent Lisa Pierce, far left, listen to public comments about the district’s new name change policy during a meeting at Kathryn Senor Elementary School in New Castle on Jan. 22. Under a new Colorado law, public schools are required to implement a written policy that honors a student’s request to use a chosen name at school that reflects their gender identity.
Garfield Re-2 School District is considering requiring its staff to notify parents if a student requests to use a chosen name at school that differs from their legal name and reflects their gender identity — a move that some community members support, while others worry it could further isolate transgender kids, and even put them at risk.
The district’s school board proposed adding mandatory parental notification as part of a new name change policy it’s now required to have under a Colorado law that was passed last April.
House Bill 1039 requires public schools to implement a written policy for how they will honor a student’s request to use a gender-affirming name at school — and refusing to do so is now considered discrimination.
The bill intends to protect the rights of transgender students whose chosen names differ from the names they were given at birth, and it allows such students to file a report with their school or even a federal civil rights complaint if school staff intentionally refuse to use their preferred name.
“This was something that came directly from students who were concerned about their peers and issues they had at school,” said former Colorado state Rep. Steph Vigil, who was a prime sponsor of the bill. “Now school districts have to comply with the law and under no circumstances anymore are they allowed to just outright refuse to address a kid how they want to be addressed.”
Schools cannot require parental approval under the law, which leaves it up to individual districts to decide whether or not they will notify parents when a student requests a name change.
The Roaring Fork School District, which approved its new policy at a school board meeting on Oct. 9, maintains that “parents may be notified of their student’s name change if appropriate.” Meanwhile, the Aspen School District has not yet implemented a written name change policy, but said it’s in the process of reviewing the new state law.
“The district’s non-discrimination/equal opportunity policy includes gender expression and gender identity as protected status,” said Monica Mendoza, who handles communication for Aspen School District. “ASD is currently reviewing Colorado HB24-1039 to ensure our current policy meets the law and whether the policy needs some revision.”
The idea of mandatory parental notification for Garfield Re-2 schools was first proposed by the district’s school board during the first reading of its new chosen name change policy in New Castle on Jan. 8.
A second reading is scheduled for Feb. 12 and a final decision is expected at the following meeting on Feb. 26. Both meetings will include a public comment period.
Local mom Ashley Stahl, who leads PFLAG Roaring Fork Valley and Cook Inclusive, stands outside the school board meeting room at Kathryn Senor Elementary School in New Castle on Jan. 22. Stahl and a majority of other public commenters at the recent meeting spoke against the school board’s proposal to require that parents be notified if a transgender student requests to use a chosen name at school.
Prioritizing communication
After the state law was passed in April, the nonprofit Colorado Association of School Boards provided its member school boards across the state, including the Garfield Re-2 board, with a sample policy as a starting point for crafting their own versions.
“We provided them with a draft that’s basically, ‘Here’s our best guess of what the legislature intended, but you definitely need to consult your legal counsel and consider how your board wants to make decisions,’” said CASB Executive Director Jubal Yennie. “School boards in Colorado have a great deal of latitude with local control and local jurisdiction to be able to change those policies as they see fit.”
CASB’s draft policy included the same line that was adopted by the Roaring Fork School District, which says, “parents may be notified of their student’s name change if appropriate,” but Re-2 school board’s Vice President Fathom Jensen requested their district change the suggested language at the Jan. 8 meeting to, “parents will be notified of their student’s name change.”
“I think the biggest thing that really did not sit well with me overall in this policy, is we have tried so hard to get parent engagement and parent involvement and communication,” Jensen said at the Jan. 8 meeting. “And if we start doing things like ‘Maybe we’ll call you, maybe we won’t,’ that’s not going to be reciprocated and then they will stop trusting us, and they will stop coming to us.”
Several school board members agreed with Jensen, including the board’s president, Britton Fletchall.
“To me, it’s like the Colorado law was kind of set up to subvert parents, and I have kind of a problem with that,” Fletchall said. “If a student is that committed, then realistically, once their parents are involved and the parents want to go that route, then we would support that parent and that student and make them as comfortable in school as possible.”
Speaking out
Garfield Re-2’s proposed change to CASB’s suggested-language sparked about a dozen community members to speak out during public comment at the following school board meeting on Jan. 22.
The meeting was planned to be the second-reading of the name change policy, but the agenda item was postponed due to the absence of the board president.
A majority of commenters were against mandatory parental notification, including local mom Ashley Stahl who leads PFLAG Roaring Fork Valley and Cook Inclusive and is opening the new Queer Resource Center in New Castle. She helped organize several anonymous letters from parents, students and educators that were read by community members at the start of the recent school board meeting.
Stahl and others pointed out that requiring a transgender student who wants to use a chosen name at school to tell their parents about their gender identity before they’re ready could put them at risk of verbal or physical abuse at home, mental health challenges and even suicide.
“By enacting this policy, you’ll actually accomplish the exact opposite of what you intend,” Stahl said. “Fewer parents will end up being informed about their children’s identity and what’s going on with them, because fewer kids will come forward at all to anyone.”
According to Stahl, transitioning is often a slow and deliberate process where a young person might start by trying out a new gender-affirming name or pronouns in a safe, supportive environment.
“When the time comes to involve their parents, they need support — both the child and the parents — and even the most loving parents can struggle,” Stahl said. “When I came out to my parents, they told me they loved me, but they didn’t know how to support me; their doubts and their fears pushed me back into the closet for another decade.”
Bishop Walden, who grew up in the Roaring Fork School District and now teaches at a day care and preschool center in Grand Junction, also spoke against requiring schools to notify parents.
A sign on a classroom door at the Garfield Re-2 School District’s elementary school in New Castle welcomes students with, “This classroom is our happy place.” The district’s school board will be holding a second reading of its new gender-affirming name change policy on Feb. 12.
“I told my parents that I’m transgender when I was 18, after a few years of trying on new names and pronouns with my close friends,” Walden said. “I can’t possibly imagine having the choice of when or how that conversation happened taken away from me. It would have devastated me and completely altered the course of my life.”
Two people, both mothers with kids in the Re-2 schools, spoke in support of requiring district staff to inform parents if a student wants to use a chosen name that aligns with their gender identity at school.
“I think it’s very important that you always include the parents in choices and decisions that affect our children, because ultimately, we are responsible for them,” said Danielle Cordova.
Michelle Williams, who has three kids in the school district, agreed that parents should be “notified of everything that happens with their children” and praised the school board for wanting to keep families informed.
“I feel like you’re trying to be understanding and you’re trying to involve the families,” Williams said. “I think that it’s really dangerous when we choose to not inform parents about anything, it could set a dangerous precedent, like where does it end? Do we not inform parents about vaping, pregnancy, or weapons?”
Williams also questioned Colorado legislators’ decision to pass a chosen name change law in the first place.
“This policy really is going to affect such a minimal number of students in our district,” she said. “Honestly, it’s so minimal, it’s really an exception and in the private sector, we don’t write policy on the exception.”
After the public comments, Board Secretary Cassie Haskell requested that staff inform the board before the next meeting on Feb. 12 of how many students in the district have requested a chosen name change in the last several years and how the district currently handles such requests.
Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism reached out to the Garfield Re-2 School District seeking similar information, but district leaders were not available to provide that information or respond to other questions as of press time.
Varying responses
Garfield Re-2 is not the first school district in the state to grapple with the question of whether parents should be notified when a student requests to use a gender-affirming chosen name at school.
“There are some districts who want more parental notification … and communication to be involved, and want to work that into their policy, which under the current law, the way we passed it, that’s their right,” said Vigil, the former Democratic lawmaker from Colorado Springs who helped write and pass the bill.
Yennie from CASB also said member school boards across the state vary in how they’re planning to handle parental notification as well as how they’re responding to the new state law as a whole.
“For the most part, you know, people accept, ‘Well, this was the law that the legislature intended,’ and they’re leaving it alone,” Yennie said. “But we are hearing a handful of things from school districts that they’re challenging it and there are groups out there asking school boards to challenge it.”
A couple in the Denver metro area recently sued their local school district and the state over the chosen name legislation. While a federal judge rejected their attempt to immediately block the new law, the case is ongoing and could eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
An uncertain future
Yennie and Vigil agree that some pushback against a law intended to protect transgender students is not surprising given the current political climate.
“With the new Trump administration throwing their weight behind all the executive orders that are coming down, it just makes everything kind of convoluted and people aren’t sure exactly where to go with all these things,” Yennie said. “I think that’s probably what’s created some of this conversation.”
Since taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has already signed a series of executive orders targeting transgender and nonbinary people, including directing the Department of Education to come up with a policy blocking schools from using federal funds to support students who are socially transitioning.
“I don’t think any of this would be coming up at all if it weren’t for the fact that the GOP and their dear leader and their whole movement have decided that transgender people in particular are going to be one of their scapegoats,” Vigil said. “I would love it if we didn’t have to pass bills like this, if it were just a given that if a kid starts going by a different name and they come to school and say, ‘Hey, I go by this now,’ you just respect them and their family.”
While federal policy changes have not yet directly challenged legislation like Colorado’s new law, Vigil acknowledged it’s possible that could happen in the future.
“Trump is just kind of coming in with the sledgehammer and taking a swing at anything he doesn’t like and we don’t have good precedent for that in this country,” she said. “Unfortunately, a lot of it is just to try to push people back in the closet … and it’s scary for a lot of people, but I don’t know necessarily that it’s going to hit this policy in any more of a specific way than everything else.”
Despite an uncertain future, Vigil is hopeful that the state’s new name change law will further protect transgender students from discrimination in Colorado at a time when their rights are being threatened at the federal level.
“If we can create more spaces where they are not afraid to speak up for themselves, then we have a better chance of also preventing some of the severe mental health and even suicide risk that exists for queer youth,” Vigil said. “And certainly families of transgender youth who support their kid, they definitely have a parental right to have their children respected at school.”
The former state lawmaker also urged school districts like Garfield Re-2 to consider a student’s safety and wellbeing when deciding whether it should be mandatory to tell their parents about a chosen name request.
“Most kids who are going through any sort of social transition while they’re still underage, they’re doing it with parental support, but not every kid is safe to come out at home,” Vigil said. “I would argue that a school has an obligation not to put a child in danger if there’s reason to believe that they’re going to be turned out of the house or abused because of this information.”
