Majority of Idaho Schools Fail to Adopt Recommended LGBT Protections

The Idaho School Board Association issued guidelines this year aimed at preventing discrimination against LGBT students, but almost all public school districts in the state have simply ignored them, the Associated Press reports.

A few of the state's 115 districts have rejected them outright, "but many more have not even broached the issue while going through their annual policy updates," the AP notes. Just one district, the Teton School District in eastern Idaho, has adopted the recommendations.

The guidelines, issued in July, call for gender-neutral dress codes, equal treatment of same-sex couples, and steps to meet the needs of transgender students, such as offering them separate restrooms or changing facilities, but not requiring that they use them. The school board association also urges principals to meet with transgender students to discuss how best to accommodate them.

"Our executive board looked at what was going on across the nation and decided it was time to send out some model policy," Jess Harrison, a spokeswoman for the school board association, told the AP.

Of the schools that have not adopted the model policy, 14 have more general statements about anti-LGBT discrimination, the AP reports. Another 33 address bullying and harassment of LGBT students, but not other types of discrimination.

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There is no deadline for adopting the policy, and neither the school board group nor the Idaho State Department of Education has a means of tracking how many districts have implemented the new policy, according to the AP, which based its report partly on school handbooks posted online. Not all districts post their handbooks on the Internet.

Some school administrators in the state said they needed more information before implementing the guidelines. "We have some questions that we wanted clarified," Eric Anderson, superintendent of the Hagerman School District, told the news service. "This is the first time we've seen anything like this."