Nearly all public school districts in the Washington, D.C., region, including school districts in Northern Virginia, are now going to include gender identity as a protected class in their nondiscrimination policies. Arlington Public Schools, which is in Northern Virginia, right outside Washington, D.C., “added a new question on its form for students to indicate a designated gender, including male, female and ‘X,'” according to WAMU. “Next year, DC Public Schools is adding ‘non-binary’ as a gender option to its forms, and Alexandria City Public Schools will add a space for preferred name and gender identity in the district’s online form.”
WAMU reported about a student named Addison Moore, who “identifies as non-binary, which is when a person doesn’t identify exclusively as male or female” and, though Moore is already graduated, struggled the first few years of high school because these provisions did not exist. Moore is glad these new requirements are in place.
