While school districts grapple with attacks on transgender students, some schools are moving in the other direction. Champlain Valley School District has passed expansive rights for trans students.

Transgender students have faced an array of threats in recent years. Several states have barred them from sports, restricted their bathroom access, banned books about them from school libraries, and even mandated forcibly outing them to their parents. Surprisingly, some school districts in even the more progressive states have adopted similar policies. The story in Vermont is different, however. Just last week, Champlain Valley School District, the state's largest, explicitly and comprehensively codified rights for transgender students within its jurisdiction.

The new policies passed unanimously and endeavor to go above and beyond even the state level protections that Vermont offers trans students in the state. Although the policies were previously informally practiced, codifying them explicitly allows trans students to know that their school district has their back. It also makes it harder for individual schools in the district to bow to pressure from right-wing groups to discriminate against trans students in the district.

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