Across the country, queer and transgender rights are under attack—and schools are one of the main battlegrounds. Book bans and restrictions on trans kids’ ability to use bathrooms, play sports, and use their chosen name in school have become common conservative talking points. And it has an impact. The Trevor Project, a national organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention, reports higher rates of suicide among LGBTQ+ students whose schools do not affirm their identity.
Homophobic and transphobic ideology, and the harm it inflicts, has settled in Natick. Parental Rights Natick (PRN) has become a small but vocal presence in town politics. The group, which is backed by the Christian organization Massachusetts Family Institute, pushes back against so-called “gender ideology” in schools, saying that parents should be able to opt students out of learning about topics related to gender and sexuality, and that students should not be able to express themselves in ways that their parents don’t know about.
PRN strongly supported a candidate, James Roberts, in the School Committee race this past March. Roberts, who campaigned on ensuring that students cannot change their gender status at school without parental consent, lost handily.
PRN did not respond to our request for an interview.
In the face of the threat PRN poses to the well-being of LGBTQ+ students in Natick, we spoke with more than half a dozen queer and trans students and alums, as well as administrators, a teacher, and a parent, about the importance of representation and support for LGBTQ+ students in Natick, what the schools are doing well to support queer and trans students, and what needs to improve. Our conversations focused on Natick High School (NHS) rather than the elementary and middle schools, due to the people with whom we were able to speak.
The students with whom we spoke, though agreeing for the most part that Natick is a relatively accepting place, overwhelmingly stressed the need for increased representation and understanding of queer and trans identities in schools, especially in core classes’ curricula, in sex education, and amongst staff and faculty.
What is the environment at NHS like for LGBTQ+ students?
From our conversations, a common theme emerged: LGBTQ+ students and alumni in Natick feel grateful to live in a relatively accepting town. While they said they feel that their experience being queer in the Natick Public Schools (NPS) wasn’t or hasn’t been too bad, there are certainly areas that they think must improve. In particular, these students said they did not feel well-represented, whether in the curriculum, staff, or beyond. Even though most LGBTQ+ students did not face outright bigotry from any staff members or violent bullying from students, they said that this does not equal active inclusion.
The Natick Public Schools have, overall, become a safer environment for queer and trans students in the past decade and a half.
Brenna Keefe ’12, an NPS alum and current NHS teacher, wasn’t open about her LGBTQ+ identity until after she graduated. As a student at NHS, she witnessed fights against students in the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance that occurred just because of the students’ queer identity. Keefe was concerned about what her friends would think if they knew she was LGBTQ+, and she was also concerned for her safety. Although she is aware that there is still room to grow, she is glad that queer and trans students at NHS today tend to have an easier time of it than she did.
That’s not to say, however, that LGBTQ+ students today face no obstacles. This doesn’t often manifest itself in the form of fights, as it did when Keefe was a student, but rather as exclusion from both the general student body and from representation in the curriculum and in the staff and faculty.
“I definitely think that Natick, [on] the spectrum of tolerant to intolerant, definitely pushes more towards intolerant than you would expect it to,” Connor Grome ’23 said. “[My experience was] not super cohesive with the rest of the student body. I was very grateful that there was never any bullying at Natick High School, [but there were] definitely a lot of weird associations and games around identity. It didn’t make you apt to be the most included member of the community. People had a tendency to say ‘Okay, that’s cool, do your thing, whatever, but keep us out of it.’ ”
Grome and other students with whom we spoke acknowledge there is only so much that school staff and administration can do to be aware of student culture, much less to change it.
Data collected by the district reflect the outcome of the challenges faced by queer and trans students in Natick. The 2021 MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey results show that LGBTQ+ students are particularly susceptible to mental health challenges, due in part to the sense of isolation that they can experience, according to School Committee Chair Shai Fuxman. (The survey is administered every two years, and Fuxman has not yet seen the 2023 data.)
NPS’s support of LGBTQ+ students
At the top of NPS’s chain of command, the School Committee sets standards for the district. One of these is a commitment to inclusion and belonging.
Within the context of that commitment, NHS has several policies in place to support queer and trans students. Some are working pretty well, according to queer and trans students, while others have a ways to go.
The policies for which the students we spoke with had the least criticism were those around gender and transitioning. NPS has a support plan that helps students through their transition in a way that keeps them safe, Fuxman said. For example, students have the agency to select staff members with whom they are comfortable to be on their transition support team. They do not have to involve their parents if they do not feel comfortable or safe doing so.
Although the ease of the process can vary based on which guidance counselor a student has, students have generally had success with getting their name changed in the school’s system. Doing so allows their chosen name to be displayed on their school email and on Powerschool, the software that NPS uses to store students’ grades, classes, and more.
In addition, school staff and faculty have undergone training on equity, implicit bias, and culturally responsive practices. These trainings have covered LGBTQ+ issues, as well as race, religion, and other identities. School Committee members are scheduled to attend a similar training in the fall.
Current policies that students appreciated also included teachers’ asking for students’ chosen name and pronouns, and the existence of gender-neutral bathrooms at NHS, though many students thought that these policies weren’t yet doing enough.
Fuxman is aware that, while NPS has several supportive policies in place, there is more that the district can do to improve. He knows, too, that open channels of communication are important in hearing feedback about these issues from those most affected.
“Queer students are the ones who will know best what they need,” Fuxman said. “So I don’t have specific ideas [for how NPS can improve its support for them] other than to make sure that they can tell us what they need, and if and when they do, that we address it.”
Curricula
Some of the students with whom we spoke, who all either currently attend NHS or graduated in the past several years, do not remember a single mention of queer or trans students in any of their classes. Others, due to variations in both memory and class schedules, remember a few—but only a few.
None of these students felt well-represented by these low numbers.
“When we don’t learn about those kinds of things, it just contributes to this feeling of exclusion,” a member of the class of 2025, who wishes to remain anonymous, said. “You don’t feel like you’re seen in history, you feel like you’re out of place.”
When that student took AP United States History last year, their teacher told the class that they would talk about the Stonewall riots, the demonstrations against a police raid of a gay bar in New York City that sparked the modern gay rights movement.
The riots were never discussed.
Though the student was disappointed, she felt resigned, too. She had never discussed queer topics in school before, and had figured that this time would be no different.
That student has had to go out of their way and do their own research to learn about figures like Harvey Milk and Marsha P. Johnson, and events like the Lavender Scare and the HIV/AIDS crisis—information that is fundamental to queer history.
An LGBTQ+ parent of an LGBTQ+ student, who wishes to remain anonymous, believes that, as factual historical events, queer and trans topics must be taught in schools.
“It’s fact; it happened; this isn’t something that requires an opinion,” the parent said. “Parents should definitely not be allowed to opt their children out of learning certain parts of history, or certain facts; this is school. Math is hard; you gonna not learn algebra? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a slippery slope, is what it is.”
Several students with whom we spoke said they believe that learning about queer and trans topics in schools is beneficial for everyone, as it increases all students’ understanding of the world around them.
“[Not talking about LGBTQ+ topics in schools] would be a hindrance in the ability to see the world in diverse ways,” Leah Zarin ’23 said. “[Schools tell us to] always consider other perspectives. Everyone’s identity plays a huge part in their perspectives on life. If you take away the ability to talk about your identity and if you don’t have that learning experience built in, [you’re missing something] that’s key to understanding tons and tons of people’s perspectives on the world.”
When classes discuss LGBTQ+ topics, it normalizes queer and trans identities, Mali Zekavat ’23 said.
“It shows representation and pride and how students who are queer shouldn’t feel ashamed,” Zekavat said. “If it was taught to me like it was normal, that love is love, then I would have been less anxious and depressed trying to figure out myself in high school. Because a lot of people are homophobic and are harmful. No one wants to feel that when they go to school. School is supposed to be a safe place.”
Further, feeling reflected in course material can increase student engagement in coursework. A member of the class of 2020, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that she would have been more interested and engaged in her English classes if the reading selection had been more diverse and had better reflected her queer identity.
For the anonymous LGBTQ+ parent of an LGBTQ+ student, the fear of queer and trans topics being excluded from schools is personal.
“If we don’t learn our history, we are doomed to repeat the bad parts of it,” the parent said. “And some parents, like these Parental Rights [Natick] parents, [don’t want] their children to even know that my kid exists.”
NHS is actively trying to increase representation in its academic materials, Principal Josepha Blocker wrote in response to questions emailed by the Natick Report.
Sex education
A recent NPS audit of the wellness curriculum asked community members at the elementary, middle, and high schools for feedback on their school’s health and physical education classes. According to the audit’s results, students, teachers, and parents alike wanted more information about sexual health and gender identity in middle and high school wellness classes. 74% of parents and guardians and 79% of staff surveyed agree that one semester of health education over four years of high school is insufficient.
NPS follows the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)’s guidelines, which include academic standards in every subject area. In September 2023, in response to years of advocacy, DESE updated its health education standards for the first time since 1999. The new standards set a framework for a comprehensive LGBTQ+-inclusive health and physical education curriculum.
According to the audit, however, middle school health classes have time to address only 50% of the health standards in their curriculum. And according to the students with whom we spoke, all of whom took NPS health classes before DESE’s health standards were updated, the topics that were addressed were not comprehensive or queer-inclusive. These students believe that LGBTQ+ topics should not be confined to their own, ultimately-skipped section, but should be woven throughout an improved curriculum.
“They generally taught pretty much every unit in a heteronormative way—which obviously excludes a large percentage of students who benefit from applicable comprehensive sex ed,” Hannah Schwichtenberg ’24 said. Schwichtenberg got involved with sex ed advocacy after taking the class at NHS and feeling deeply disappointed.
LGBTQ+ people are at higher risk for being victims of sexual assault, rape, and mental health issues, Schwichtenberg continued. Further, about 21% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. According to Schwichtenberg, this makes it even more crucial to cover queer and trans topics in health class.
However, the students with whom we spoke remembered very few mentions of queer and trans topics, if any, in their health classes. Some recalled basic definitions of vocabulary related to gender and sexuality in middle school health. At the high school level, some students remembered being taught that the forms of contraception about which they were learning apply to all types of sex—but that’s about as detailed as it got.
What these students didn’t learn is how queer and trans sex works, or how exactly to stay safe during it. Every scenario presented while students were learning about domestic violence and power dynamics in relationships involved a straight couple, according to Grome, leaving LGBTQ+ students under-equipped to recognize signs of danger in their own relationships. Students also did not learn about why LGBTQ+ people have a higher risk of being sexually assaulted, raped, or facing mental health issues, or how LGBTQ+ people can protect against those specific risks they face.
As a result, queer and trans students can be forced to turn to the internet and social media, which can be ripe with misinformation and stereotypes, in an attempt to learn about how to stay safe.
“The whole point of sex ed [is] that you’re helping students to learn [how to be safe],” the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said. “We can’t prevent people from doing things that they want to do, and we shouldn’t prevent that, so the best thing we can do is teach people how to be safe. And if we’re teaching just heterosexual people how to be safe, then that’s less inclusive of everyone else, and then it’s not really accomplishing the goal of [the] health curriculum in the first place.”
Gender-neutral bathrooms
In recent years, in response to student advocacy, NHS increased its two gender-neutral bathrooms to three. However, problems remain.
Even with an increase in the number of gender-neutral bathrooms, resources are stretched thin. The gender-neutral bathrooms each have only one stall, and are shared by an ever-increasing number of students, many of whom need to squeeze in a bathroom trip in the brief five-minute break between classes. Students often have to walk far and wait in line to use a bathroom in which they feel comfortable, and teachers sometimes get upset when these students are late to class because of it, the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that gender-neutral bathrooms are sometimes locked even when their single-gender counterparts are open, that hall monitors sometimes confuse gender-neutral bathrooms with teachers-only ones and tell students they are not allowed to use them, and that straight couples sometimes use the gender-neutral bathrooms for their own purposes, taking away a space specifically designated for their queer and trans peers.
“It’s such a funny ironic cycle,” Grome said, reflecting on straight couples in the gender-neutral bathrooms. “Here are these things that we have designated for queer people to be able to have a positive experience at Natick High School, and, history of the world: straight people are coming into these spaces and co-opting them for their own game … I hate that that side effect is calling into question the work that we’re trying to do, [but] we should not let that negate the basic—basic!—needs for queer students.”
NHS has begun to regularly announce that openly non-binary students should have preferential use of the single-stall bathrooms, Blocker wrote.
Pronouns
Multiple students recall the 2019–2020 school year being the first time that teachers asked students what pronouns they use. Now, the number of teachers asking for pronouns, often in start-of-year get-to-know-you forms or icebreakers, has greatly increased, which many students we spoke with were thankful for. However, asking for pronouns is not yet ubiquitous at NHS.
“A lot of teachers don’t ask, and then when it’s brought up in some way, shape, or form, seem to be visibly uncomfortable with the idea, as if their teaching philosophy doesn’t align with that of the school,” Schwichtenberg said.
Even teachers who do ask students for their pronouns do not always use them in a fully correct way.
For instance, when students share that they use multiple sets of pronouns (both she/her and they/them, for example), teachers—and peers—tend to pick only one set, most often the more binary one. Though these teachers and peers are still referring to students with pronouns that are correct in this case, it can feel to students like the entirety of their identity is not being seen or understood.
Further, when students share that they use only they/them pronouns, teachers do not always refer to them as such. Teachers sometimes refer to these students with only their name, Schwichtenberg said. Although this does prevent teachers from misgendering these students, Schwichtenberg continued, it also reflects a discomfort with they/them pronouns. Teachers also sometimes misgender their nonbinary students entirely, the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said.
Schwichtenberg said she cannot recall ever hearing a teacher refer to a student with they/them pronouns, even though some students in her classes use those pronouns.
In addition, in world language classes, students are not always taught how to use gender-neutral pronouns in the language they are learning, leading them to misgender their peers, the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said. Students should be taught how gender-neutral pronouns work in their language courses, the anonymous member of the class of 2025 continued, as it is important that LGBTQ+ students feel respected in all of their classes.
Multiple students suggested that teachers receive more training on using pronouns correctly. They also suggested that, in their get-to-know-you forms, teachers add a question about whether they can use a student’s chosen name and pronouns around their parents too. A handful of teachers do this already, and it allows students whose parents aren’t accepting—or students who just aren’t ready yet to come out—to be their true selves at school.
Openly queer staff members
Class of ’12’s Keefe, who now teaches special education, skill development, and Global Awareness at NHS, is openly gay. She shows her students pictures of her wife at the start of the school year, like many straight teachers who share photos of their families.
When Keefe was student teaching, she was placed in an elementary school whose teachers were openly speaking in a derogatory way about the gay parents of one of their students, and about Keefe’s lesbian professor. Though Keefe ended up leaving the program, the experience stayed with her.
“It made me think, ‘If those are the teachers that these kids have, then who’s telling them what’s right and what’s wrong?’” Keefe said. “So I’ve … been open[ly gay] everywhere [that I’ve taught].”
Keefe has received emails from Natick parents, requesting that she not be open about her queer identity and her wife, and that she not ask students for their pronouns.
“That’s just honestly something that I’m never going to not do,” Keefe said. “Because I didn’t have that. And to take that away from kids who are going to feel that same way just feels like a disservice … If kids don’t have that one person [to trust], then I’m not doing anything to help the community at that point. And that’s what I don’t want to be.”
As a result of being open and proud about her identity, Keefe said she has had beautiful moments of mentorship, connection, and trust with students.
Once, when Keefe asked her class a question of the day, one student answered that they had a favorite day of the year. Keefe asked why this day was the student’s favorite, but the student said that information was just for her at the moment.
A few months later, after Keefe and the student had gotten to know each other better, the student emailed Keefe an explanation of her answer. The day was her favorite, the student said, because it was the day she decided on her chosen name. She signed the email with that name, the first time she had ever used it in an email signature. The email is now framed in Keefe’s house.
“It gives me chills even now,” Keefe said. “I have goose bumps everywhere. It was beautiful to know that that person felt very comfortable sharing that with me… It’s heartwarming; it makes me feel good that kids feel safe enough, that I’m creating that safe space for kids to share that.”
The students with whom we spoke were greatly impacted by the few openly LGBTQ+ teachers they did have. For instance, many years later, Grome recalls the first openly queer teacher they had in the Natick Public Schools, and the difference she made for them.
“[She] was one of the first examples that I had [of] a queer person in a role of authority, and that was very formative for my education,” Grome said. “I definitely mark that as one of my big moments within the Natick Public Schools system: seeing that fearlessness and willingness to talk about it.”
NPS encourages students to have a “trusted adult” within the school system, someone with whom they can talk through problems and daily life, and someone who can know them well and cheer them on. This can be difficult for queer students, however, as they may be unsure about how much of themselves they can share with staff and faculty, or about the extent to which they’ll be understood. Openly queer teachers, then, are crucial sources of support.
Class of ’23’s Zarin found trusted adults in the two teachers she knew were queer.
“Those two teachers both were very key parts of my ability to succeed,” Zarin said. “Having them to talk to during the time where I knew that I was trans but wasn’t out fully yet was a big part of why I made it through school.”
Due to the overwhelmingly positive impact that openly LGBTQ+ teachers have on queer and trans students, many of the students with whom we spoke said that they wished there had been more openly LGBTQ+ teachers in the Natick Public Schools.
The need for openly queer staff members extends to social services staff; when students are experiencing a hard time, trusting their guidance counselors can be necessary for getting through. However, the students with whom we spoke could not recall any openly queer social services staff. For Zekavat, this proved an obstacle to getting the support she needed.
“None of [the social services staff] in the entire group shared any similarities with me,” Zekavat recalled. “Which made me feel not necessarily comfortable talking with any of them because I didn’t know what their views were or what their own values were, [or] what I could say without being judged.”
Similarly, Keefe suggested that there should be more trauma- and queer-informed care and support in the Natick Public Schools so that all students can be cared for in a way that fits their needs and makes things better, not worse. Schwichtenberg concurred, saying that homophobia and transphobia often grow simply from a lack of information, and training around these topics could help.
The need for change
Policy change to more fully support queer and trans students in the Natick Public Schools would come at a time when the rights of queer and trans students are on the line around the country and right here in Natick.
“I have a lot of anxiety around politics, but especially things that I feel like are posing a danger to people,” the anonymous member of the class of 2025 said. “And it’s really tough to hear about states that are making it impossible for people to even discuss their identities, let alone be themselves. It’s awful to hear about people trying to suppress trans identities and trying to gatekeep gender affirming care. And when we’re facing such a pivotal election, there’s a lot of pressure, and that compiles when you feel like your rights are about to be taken away or that your life is on the line.”
This political fear is personal too.
“It hurts,” Zekavat said. “You feel conflicted about whether or not you should be truly okay with who you are or if what you’re doing is okay or allowed, if you’re allowed to be proud in public of who you are and who you love. And no child wants to be scared about that, especially not a high schooler. It’s already so difficult for one to be confident in their identity and figuring themself out as a person, as a student—they don’t need more baggage.”
Keefe is afraid of what will happen if the safe spaces that she didn’t have in the past and that she is creating in the present are taken away in the future.
“Knowing the impact that a safe environment can have on kids to be themselves…to think that that could be taken away for future kids is really scary,” Keefe said. “Not only for myself, but all of the people in the queer community that I’ve met, knowing that they’re scared for their own safety, they’re scared for their children’s safety, they’re scared of what could happen—it’s not a comforting feeling.”
A group of parents has been forming to stand up for Natick’s queer and trans children. This group includes the anonymous LGBTQ+ parent of an LGBTQ+ student, who feels the danger deeply.
“All you need to do is look at the Trevor Project and all the numbers from all over the country and look at the news at these nonbinary and queer kids who are bullied literally to death, and you can see that this is a problem that we need to get in front of,” the parent said. “And if it has invaded our town, we are standing up for every single one of these kids.”
In accordance with the district’s stated values of inclusion and open lines of communication, NPS has this opportunity to listen to queer and trans student’s needs and to fight back with acceptance, making its schools as safe a space for all students as they can possibly be.
