Submitted by Andrew Bowman
On May 8th, 2025, the West Shore School Board met for the first of its two monthly meetings. With the school year closing soon, meetings in this month and those of the next few months give a prime opportunity for the board to reflect upon the previous academic year’s successes and failures whilst still having time to prepare for the year to come. However, the capitalization upon such opportunity will have to come at a later time, as this meeting was primarily characterized by the divides in the school district, namely those along the fault line of LGBTQ rights.
The centerpiece of this meeting was Policy 123.2 Sex-Based Distinctions in Athletics, which was largely born of the Independence Law Center, which is affiliated with the Pennsylvania Family Institute, a non-profit primarily concerned with topics such as protection of life at conception, the Christian nuclear family model, and are strong advocates for “religious liberty”. In school settings, this translates to strict rules regarding who can use which bathrooms, book bans, and letters to parents if their kid uses different pronouns at school, the last of which parents would be aware of assuming their child didn’t fear retaliation. A common theme of their policies surrounding sexuality and gender reflect the reactionary push against LGBTQ individuals, with an emphasis on fears of men using gender identity to prey on women. The courtship of the ILC by the West Shore School Board last year attracted the ire of many residents, who protested outside the district’s building and dissuaded the board from bringing on the firm officially. However, according to multiple board members, one of their policies aimed at dividing school sports lived on, and in January it began to take shape. According to multiple board members, the original policy on the table was stricter, being largely basic on ILC-client Northern York’s sex-based athletics policy, but through the policy-writing process, compromises were added such as provisions for prepubescent male athletes to be eligible for reasonable accommodations to compete on teams that would otherwise be exclusively designated for girls. However, not all board members felt that they were heard, chief among them Abigail Tierney, whose insistence that the policy reference the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act and the Pennsylvania Equality Amendment were not reflected on the final version of the policy, which was crafted in mid-April.
Members of the public were divided on the policy, with varying degrees of support of and opposition to the policy being expressed. Support for the policy largely centered around concerns that allowing assigned-male-at-birth (AMAB) students to compete with their assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) counterparts would shut the latter group out of top spots in district sports, stunt their opportunities to grow as athletes, place them in danger due to size and weight differences, and put them in vulnerable positions in the locker rooms. Opponents of the policy, including all three students who spoke on the issue, focused on concerns that the policy does not adequately address the concerns of gender-nonconforming students, especially intersex ones, framing the policy as taking an incredibly nuanced topic and myopically warping it entirely around the gender binary. Residents also voiced worry that this policy will lead to a wave of unfounded challenges to female athletes’ sex as well as concerns as to how the board plans to verify the sex a student was assigned at birth. For reference, the two avenues for this determination are a physical examination and the student’s birth certificate, the latter of which drew concerns over whether the board could legally request a birth certificate to determine sex. There was also a bipartisan desire to stop dedicating time to the issue, with supporters of the policy characterizing the policy as too common-sense to warrant the opposition it received, and opponents urging that the policy either be rewritten or dropped entirely to focus on other issues such as homelessness among students.
The sentiments of the public largely reflected in the views of the board members. Of these, five: Kelly Brent, Brenda Cox, Heidi Thomas, Amanda Davis, and David Brinton, were firmly behind the policy. These members affirmed that it didn’t stop anyone from playing sports, with Brinton characterizing it as proactive and Cox saying it fit the original spirit of Title IX. For her contribution to the discussion, Heidi Thomas, allegedly at the behest of Director of Federal Programs Dr. Ryan Argot, read in full an email that was incorrectly submitted to the board that supported her position and included the line “This takes courage to stand against the evils”. This is in stark contrast to all other electronically submitted comments, the correctly-submitted of which were summarized and the incorrectly-submitted of which were not read at all.
On the other side of the debate stood four members of the board: Adam Trone, Brian Guistwhite, Christopher Kambic, and Abigail Tierney, expressed reservations with how the policy was written with respect to inconsistencies between boys and girls, and the message it was sending to students. Abigail Tierney was by far the harshest critic, saying that the policy employed too broad a brush, that the policy-writing process left too many questions unanswered, and that the recent settlement between Maine, which has similar state laws to Pennsylvania, and the Trump Administration demonstrate that this is not a settled issue. Despite this, the policy passed 8-1, with Tierney being the only opposition vote. Given that the policy had a strong 5-4 majority unconditionally supporting it and the compromises that the opposing minority had secured during policy-writing, it is perhaps not surprising that this was the final result. For opponents of the policy among the public, perhaps this is a call to get more involved in your local community.
As for the immediate future, primaries are coming up, and four of the board’s nine seats are available. In Region 1, Christopher Kambic is seeking reelection and Abigail Tierney will be making way for the next steward of the West Shore School District. In Region 2, Kelly Brent is seeking another term, against Teri Mickle, who voiced her objections to the state of affairs in the board at the meeting, citing multiple issues she’d rather the board spend their time on such as student homelessness. Finally, in Region 3, Brian Guistwhite is seeking reelection against Sandra Gonzales, a frequent speaker at the school board who strongly supported 123.2. For right now though, the dust is settling. Time will tell if and when it gets kicked up again.