The school board for the largest district in Manhattan passed a resolution Wednesday night asking the New York City Department of Education to consider banning athletes from playing on sports teams that do not align with their biological sex.
The Community Education Council District 2 resolution asked city school officials to create a committee to review policies on allowing students to play on the sports team associated with their gender identity. Although the measure passed 8-3, city officials are unlikely to entertain the resolution, as New York City Department of Education Chancellor David Banks labeled the move “despicable.”
“If we have a proper and real conversation, one of the outcomes could be that nothing changes and that we all discover that these guidelines are just perfect as they are,” said Maud Maron, Community Education Council District 2 member and resolution co-sponsor. “But another one of the possibilities is that we realize that the excluded voices had something really important to offer and they should have been heard from in the beginning.”
According to its proponents, the resolution is meant to start a discussion about the impact of letting boys compete in girls sports and involve parental input. Members of the Manhattan school district also said they do not know how the initial decision to institute the 2019 “Guidelines on Gender,” which replaced sex with gender identity, was made and are calling for transparency from the city.
The resolution does not explicitly call for a ban on restricting boys from competing in girls sports, but Maron, who previously ran for Congress as a Democrat, has advocated such a position in the past.
Leonard Silverman, president of the Manhattan school district council, was supportive of the measure but skeptical of its ability to change anything at the city level, saying, “Unfortunately my experience has been that organizations including the community education councils, are sometimes created to give the appearance that parents have control over process when the reality is, that we really don’t have any control,” according to the New York Post.
The city’s Department of Education also released a statement Wednesday throwing cold water on the resolution.
“At New York City Public Schools, all students have the right to have their gender, gender identity, and gender expression recognized and respected,” the statement said. “In our schools, every student can participate in sports and competitive athletics in accordance with their gender identity, and we prohibit any exclusion of students based on their gender identity or expression.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Manhattan school district’s push to block boys in girls’ sports followed a Nassau County, New York, executive order blocking female sports teams from using ballfields and athletic facilities unless they keep males off their teams.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman signed the order in late February, saying, “There is too much bullying going on of biological males trying to inject themselves in women and female sports and we will not tolerate that in Nassau County.”