RAPID CITY, SD — During their biweekly meeting on Tuesday, the Rapid City Area Schools (RCAS) Board of Education voted in a 3-1 roll call to adopt an item which redefines district policy. The items of specific note redefine the district’s definition of “Discrimination” removing sexual orientation as a protected category and restricting transgender students from use of multi-occupancy facilities such as bathrooms and changing rooms.
This decision comes after years of efforts by the South Dakota government targeting the treatment of transgender children, such as Former Governor Kristi Noem’s “Help Not Harm” bill which restricted children experiencing gender dysphoria from receiving gender affirming care, as well as Governor Larry Rhoden’s signing of HB1259, which restricts transgender children and adults from the use of bathrooms and changing rooms other than those of their assigned gender at birth.
“These are policies that are not necessarily coming from us, they are coming from state and federal funding, and I would never want to lose that. However I cannot vote to remove sexual orientation as a protected class, as a gay man.” said Michael Birkeland, who then voiced his concerns for what he described as “Removing Local Control”. “Whenever anything has come up in the past, we’ve handled it, trans people are not new, this is not new”.
Birkeland, who will be leaving the Board next month was the lone dissenting vote.
