Coventry School Committee approves 2025–26 handbooks after debate over transgender-student accommodations

The Coventry School Committee approved updated handbooks for pre-K, elementary, middle and high school and an athletics handbook for the 2025–26 school year after discussion about how the district handles accommodations for transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

The committee voted to approve the pre-K, elementary and middle-school handbooks unanimously, and approved the high-school handbook by a 3–1 vote. The athletics handbook also passed 3–1.

Why it matters: Committee members said the handbook updates were mostly minor edits (names, dates, hyperlinks) but focused attention on language related to gender-nonconforming students and the district’s process for accommodations. One member said he thought parts of the handbook conflicted with the dress-code’s definition of “modest” and raised concerns about privacy in shared locker-room spaces. Committee leadership and staff said the district’s policy gives school administrators a process to limit parent participation in sensitive accommodation discussions if they determine a safety risk, but they said that authority has not been used.

At the meeting, Assistant Superintendent Don Cowart described the handbook review as largely non-controversial and recommended approval. John Cambio, a school committee member, pressed the issue during the high-school handbook vote, saying the handbook allows “transgender and gender nonconforming students [to] use facilities aligned with their gender identity” and that the policy may permit meetings about accommodations to exclude parents if administrators judge parental involvement a risk. Cambio said, “This is outrageous” and questioned how that language aligns with a dress code that requires clothing to be “modest.”

Superintendent (Dom) and other staff responded that the relevant policies (dress code and non-gender-conforming student accommodations) appear on the district website as policy JICA (dress code) and policy JBB (non-gender-conforming accommodations). Staff said those policies can be referred back to the policy subcommittee for revision and that the superintendent’s authority to restrict parent participation is written in policy but has not been invoked in Coventry. Staff also noted available private dressing areas in school locker rooms (stalls with curtains and rooms with doors) and that most accommodation discussions have included parents, guidance counselors and multidisciplinary teams.

What passed and next steps: The committee approved the pre-K, elementary and middle-school handbooks by voice votes (all in favor). The high-school handbook passed on a roll call 3–1. The athletics handbook passed 3–1 after separate consideration. Committee members said any policy-specific changes (for example, to JICA or JBB) can be referred to the policy subcommittee, and members asked staff to post clear agenda notices for future policy-subcommittee meetings so interested committee members and community members can participate.

The committee’s approval allows the district to distribute the handbooks to families ahead of the start of school. The policy subcommittee will consider revisiting the dress-code and non-gender-conforming-student policies if members request it.

Ending: Committee members who wanted to pursue changes were advised that the policy-subcommittee process can be used to reopen policies for discussion; one committee member asked to be added to the subcommittee or to be informed in advance of meetings about these policies.