Craig Slutzkin is the president of Group Schooling Council District 2.
Zoom/Group Board 5
A Manhattan-based Group Schooling Council voted on Sept. 10 to rescind a widely-criticized anti-trans sports activities decision, drawing reward from advocates who commonly protested the decision at conferences within the aftermath of the vote.
Members of Group Schooling Council District 2, encompassing Chinatown, Tribeca, West Village, Chelsea, Kips Bay, and the Higher East Facet, voted 7-3 to nix the decision, which known as for the formation of a brand new committee that would assessment and probably oppose trans inclusion at school sports activities.
Often known as Decision 248, the vote was non-binding and Group Schooling Councils are impartial from the town’s Division of Schooling, however they’re usually considered as New York Metropolis’s model of college boards and function liaisons between the individuals and the federal government. Notably, the town squashed any notion that the decision would immediate coverage adjustments when the Schooling Division clarified that “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.”
A number of members who sponsored and supported that decision final yr — together with Maud Maron, Sabena Serinese, and Len Silverman — are not on the council. Furthermore, the 7-3 vote notably mirrored the new-look make-up of Group Schooling Council District 2 after latest elections led to important turnover inside the council’s ranks.
Guardian Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Schooling (PLACE), a conservative-leaning training advocacy group whose members have been amongst those that supported Decision 248, noticed 4 of its seven candidates lose their bids for Group Schooling Council District 2 in latest elections. The president of the group training council, Craig Slutzkin, who additionally supported the decision, is once more serving as president for the brand new 2025-27 time period.
Within the aftermath of the decision’s preliminary passage, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine opted in opposition to reappointing Slutzkin to a put up on Group Board 5. In one more signal of the general public’s outrage over the decision, alums of Townsend Harris Excessive College in Queens — the place Slutzkin serves because the Townsend Harris Alumni Affiliation co-president — wrote an open letter that includes lots of of signatures condemning what they described as his “unacceptable support for transphobia” as a member of CEC2 and labeling him as a transphobe who “shouldn’t maintain management positions inside the faculty’s alumni affiliation.
“Anti-inclusion politics have no place on any council, least of all in the district covering the birthplace of the modern queer liberation movement,” mentioned Dr. Megan Pamela Ruth Madison, who’s a founder member of the group often known as Aunties & Associates for Liberation and serves on the board of Trans formative Colleges, which is a free after-school program targeted on serving the wants of trans, queer, non-binary, and gender-expansive youth. “Unfortunately it’s not just anti-trans policy that’s made it onto our school boards; it’s anti-Black, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, often under the guise of ‘standards’ or ‘accelerated curriculum.’ We won this fight, but organizations like PLACE NYC won’t stop here.”
The newest vote comes 5 months after greater than a dozen elected officers in Manhattan signed a letter asking New York Metropolis Schooling Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos to step in amid allegations that members of the council have been manipulating quorum to forestall votes on resolutions pertaining to transgender points.
