FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida public school worker is being threatened with termination because she let her transgender daughter play volleyball with girls in high school. On Tuesday, she attacked the people who told on her child, saying that the investigation that followed destroyed the girl’s life.
Jessica Norton said her daughter was doing well at Monarch High School in the Fort Lauderdale suburbs before someone told a Broward County school board member in November that the 16-year-old was playing volleyball on the girls’ senior team, which seems to be against the law. The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act of 2021 says that kids who were born male can’t play sports for girls.
The tip in November led to a review by the school district. Because Norton let her daughter play, she could lose her job as a computer information specialist at Monarch. Investigators also said she didn’t do her job and change the child’s gender on school records from “female” to “male,” which is what the policy says she should have done.
Norton told the school board on Tuesday that her daughter had been chosen as the homecoming princess and was the president of both the freshman and sophomore classes. She was also named the head of philanthropy by the student body. All of that stopped when the girl left Monarch and the investigation started.
Norton said, “They ruined her high school career and the memories she will have forever.” “I saw the hope in my daughter’s eyes as she talked about planning and going to prom, taking part in and leading senior class traditions, giving a speech at graduation, and going to college with the confidence and joy that any student like her would feel after a successful and supportive high school experience.” And 203 days ago, I saw that life end.”
The girl now goes to school online.
Norton has worked for the district for seven years and got great reviews before November, but none of the nine board members replied to her.
In the past few years, how to treat transgender children has been a big problem all over the country. At least 25 states have banned gender-affirming care for children, and Florida is one of them. At least 24 states have also banned transgender women and girls from playing certain girls’ and women’s sports.
On Tuesday, the board was supposed to decide on Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s suggestion that Norton be fired. However, the decision has been put off for at least a month. Norton should have been suspended for 10 days, but Hepburn didn’t follow through with the plan. He didn’t say why. Norton could be fired, put on hold, or nothing could be done.
When the investigation started, Monarch Principal James Cecil and three other managers were temporarily moved. After student protests, they were put back on the job. The school was given a $16,500 fine by the state’s athletic board.
There are twice as many Democrats as Republicans in Broward County, Florida, and there are a lot of LGBTQ+ people living there. With almost 255,000 students in 327 schools, the countywide school district is the fifth biggest in the country.
The district’s investigation report says that after getting the tip, board member Daniel Foganholi called the district’s police department. Last year, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis put Foganholi in charge after the elected board member was found to be unfit to work.
DeSantis has signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act and other laws that help transgender people since 2021. They are the plaintiffs in a federal case that aims to stop the act.
Foganholi didn’t answer emails he was sent last week or Monday asking for feedback.
Norton’s child has been taking estrogen and puberty blockers since they were 11 years old, but they have not had surgery to change their gender. Procedures like this are rarely done on kids.
Her parents say she often sat on the bench for Monarch’s volleyball team and that being born male doesn’t help her in any way. “She looks like a girl to me. She seems very small and very skinny,” Cecil told the police when they asked him to describe the child.
Because Foganholi complained, Broward schools sent two cops to look into it. A person to look into things was also hired by the state’s education department.
That girl’s school papers were taken out and put in a vault. People from Monarch and the daughter’s middle and grade schools were asked about who knew the girl was transgender and when and how her records were changed. Norton and three Monarch basketball players were also talked to.
Norton has two older children. She told them that she put her youngest child, a boy, in kindergarten in 2013, four years before she started working for the DPS. In first grade, the child changed into a girl. She said that other kids and adults knew, so it was never really a secret.
She said that she asked a school worker to change her child’s gender on their papers when the child was in the second grade. She said that’s what Superintendent Robert Runcie told her to do at the time. Runcie quit the area in 2021 because of a different problem, and no one ever got in touch with her.
But the district says that changes like that can only happen after the parent changes the child’s birth certificate. Norton didn’t get his birth certificate changed until 2021 after he started working for the district. If Norton had known about the district’s policy, they say she should have asked in 2017 that her child’s gender be changed back to male on her records.
Norton told the police that she didn’t because the new records were correct—her child is a girl.
Norton knew that her daughter would not be able to play girl’s sports when she started high school in 2022 because of a new law in the state. The police asked her why she let her daughter play volleyball and why she wrote “female” on a form that asked about the child’s “sex at birth.”
The man told them, “Because she’s my child and she wanted to play.” Norton was in charge of the junior varsity volleyball team.
Investigators talked to the volleyball players for Monarch. They said that the team didn’t change clothes or take showers together, so Norton’s daughter was never naked with them. All three said they knew or thought Norton’s daughter was transgender, but the fact that she was on the team didn’t worry them. Last year, the Knights had a 13-7 record.
One girl told police, “I didn’t really have a problem with it because I didn’t think she was a threat to anyone else.”
