If your child is expressing an expansive gender identity (trans, non-binary, questioning) and you wish to connect with the school about it, please connect with Sasha Arnesen and Maho Oida, who work as a team to support families. They can share DOE policies, and support and act as guides for how PS 39 supports all students. Every family and child’s experience is unique to them and a school-family partnership is important to us to be responsive to your child in the most uplifting way for them at school.

You can also connect with a parents' group—Parents of Gender Expansive Kids (POGEK)—to more informally share experiences and talk with other parents. This welcoming parents’ group is an additional source of support. This is supplemental to formally connecting with our guidance and social work team, teachers, and school leaders.

Every student is welcome and supported at PS 39 and we create an environment where all kids can thrive. Our core values of Belonging, Resilience, Care, and Curiosity live in our words and actions.

PS 39 has a Parents of Gender Expansive Kids (POGEK) group that meets in person monthly for informal gatherings. These are social coffees to trade stories, questions, and resources, and get to know each other.

You can also find POGEK on ParentSquare to join the group, ask questions, or just listen in.

Both the members of POGEK and our guidance counselors may be able to offer additional programs outside the school that can meet you and your family on your gender journey.

It is important that all students are respected and affirmed in our school culture. Specifically, for trans, non-binary, or other gender-expansive kids:

• Teachers and staff will use the pronouns the student chooses to use.

• Teachers refer to students as "friends," "students," “first-graders,” “readers,” and “mathematicians.” They should not use "boys,” “girls,” or “guys,” and should not divide activities by gender.

• Throughout the year, all community members are invited to participate in activities that celebrate identity including gender identity—these are opportunities for those who choose to create and wear buttons with pronouns, among other activities.

• Parents can connect directly with classroom teachers on other ideas. Some students wish to avoid attention. Others may like to lift up their gender identity. You know your child best and can work with your teacher directly on how their gender identity comes to life in the classroom.

• In addition, the school celebrates and marks events throughout the year—including LGBTQ+ Pride in June—that are sometimes led by the admin and sometimes by the parent-led POGEK group.

• Finally, any substantive curricular questions are best addressed with classroom teachers, the school leaders, or through the School Leadership Team (SLT) made up of teachers, school leader, and parents.

The Talk’s Rachel Lotus is respectful of every person’s gender identity and uses the name and pronoun a person asks her to when talking to or about them. She avoids using gendered language to the greatest extent possible, works to address intersectional systems of oppression, and addresses hurtful language or behavior using restorative justice practices. All students are educated together. To be sensitive and responsive to the ways each child and family's journey, Rachel welcomes input from families before and during her work with students in an effort to be sensitive and responsive to each family and child’s individual needs and preferences.

Curriculum is both a window and a mirror, allowing students who are not LGBTQ+ to see the experiences of others and also providing a reflection for LGBTQ+ students. These efforts include incorporating LGBTQ+ history, reading books by LGBTQ+ authors, and ensuring sexual health curriculum is inclusive of all identities.

Our social worker, Maho Oida, and guidance counselor, Sasha Arnesen, have access to community resources to support families beyond the school. Our parent coordinator, Donna Gyurko, is another key person and resource in supporting families throughout their child’s elementary years. Our district is a source of support and resources as our students move on to middle school.

Over the past seven years, the staff at PS 39 from teachers to paraprofessionals to support staff have been engaging in professional learning that had everyone self-reflect, learn about, and put into practice anti-bias, anti-racist education and supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) students, families, and staff. These inform our pedagogy, our respect of students’ identities and how they want to be known and seen, our schoolwide Identity Week, and The Talk with Rachel Lotus, to name a few practices.

As lifelong learners, we continue to build our knowledge and skills through ongoing training with partnerships such as History UnErased, and Welcoming Schools. 

DOE policy requires that gendered bathrooms as well as a gender neutral bathroom be available for students to choose the bathroom that they feel comfortable with, whether it is a gendered bathroom in the school cafeteria on the garden level or a gender neutral bathroom on the second floor that any student may use. All kindergarten students use a single-occupant bathroom on the first floor where their classroom is. The bathrooms in Camp Friendship are gender neutral in the two-stall layout.

PS 39 is explicit with teachers and staff about respecting pronouns and a shared protocol for using a community members’ preferred pronouns. Within DOE policy, intentional misgendering is considered harassment. Accidental misgendering may happen and it is about how we diligently recover from our mistake as we retrain our brains from societal messaging. We are committed to our students feeling cared for, safe, and supported, which includes using their preferred gender pronouns. If you think or know that your child has been consistently misgendered we feel that it is best to have a conversation with your child's classroom teacher. Alternatively, you may talk with Sasha Arnesen, guidance counselor, Maho Oida, social worker, or with Sara, principal, or Claudia, assistant principal. They can offer more guidance on best practices as needed.

PS 39 recommends that parents reach out to District 15’s family support coordinator or family leadership coordinator and find out what schools have experience navigating students’ transition and ask whether the school has a GSA and have supportive staff.

Teachers will confirm ahead of the field trip if there are single user or family bathrooms at the institution. If there is no gender neutral bathroom, teachers will communicate that to parents and the child. They will talk through ahead of time on the best way to meet the child’s needs if there is not a single-use or family bathroom.