Starting this past summer, Upper School Diversity Dean Karen Dye and Upper School Dean of Students Max Delgado formed a transgender task force to work on creating policies and practices for transgender students and faculty.  

“The policy piece is more of a general sort of language, like the other pieces we have in our handbook for harassment…[the policy would] talk about how transgender students and faculty are part of our community and how we need to have respect for them,” Dye said.

This policy would affect the curriculum, athletics, gender split activities, dress code, and overnight trips at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, to name a few. At the beginning of last year, Upper School Principal Chris Hughes started the discussion by talking about gender neutral bathrooms at SPA, but Dye believes that more steps need to be taken for the transgender community.

Some students have had the opportunity to help contribute to the discussion around this new policy.

“Some student groups were helping us move forward, like the Gender and Sexuality Acceptance Club and Rainbow Connection, not in making the policy but certainly in sharing their experiences,” Dye said.

Although Dye expects that the policy will be completed by the end of this year, it is hard to determine when exactly it will be put into effect at SPA.

“We’re at a point where we’re starting to get the language for a policy and we’ll see what that’s like at different areas in the school…I expect it to be in effect by the end of the year but I don’t know for sure,” Dye said.