Running for his local school board was not tops on Joe Quigley’s list of tasks. Far from it.
“It was about the last thing I wanted to do,” Quigley said.
But when the New Albany-Plain Local School Board sent out an e-mail last year announcing a new policy requiring parental consent for students to use the name or pronoun of their choice, Quigley’s investment in local politics suddenly shot up.
As a practicing attorney for over 30 years and the father of a trans son, he began asking questions and was told that the new policy was based on “changes in state and federal legislation.”
“The more I asked questions, the less it made sense,” Quigley said because the Board could not point to any new legislation that required any changes to existing policies or administrative guidelines.
In an effort to put the emphasis of the board back on supporting children and improving communication between the board and local families, Quigley is running for a seat on the school board on a joint ticket with Jenn Fuller, a neonatal nurse practitioner.
The Buckeye Flame spoke with Quigley about his experiences with the board, how his role as a father to a trans youth informs his perspective and about the irony of having to get more political to make your local school board less political. Click play directly below to listen to our interview or read our conversation underneath.
First, what can you tell our readers about New Albany? How long have you been there? How do you describe it to folks who have never visited?
I’ve been in New Albany since 2011. I moved here from the East Coast when I took a job at L Brands.
New Albany is a pretty unique place. It’s a very planned community and it’s all Georgian architecture. People like it because it’s clean, it’s safe and they have a great school system and great infrastructure. It’s a community that started around 1990, has continued to grow and has been in the news a lot lately because of Intel planning to build a huge manufacturing facility nearby.
New Albany has also been in the news a bit lately because it would seem that the school board is not solely focused on education. Is that fair to say?
I can honestly say that in the time that I lived there, I was not very involved in either the school board or the city council or anything. Both of my kids are active in band and theater, and my wife and I spend a lot of time volunteering in various ways, with her handling the bulk of the volunteering.
Our oldest son is trans and was a student in New Albany. Last year we received an email that essentially set forth a new policy where children who were going to use a name or pronoun other than their “sex at birth” would require parental consent in order to have that name or pronoun used.
They said it was based on recent “changes in state and federal legislation.” I had been doing some pro bono work with name changes and helping kids out, especially in the trans community. And I wasn’t aware of any legal changes, either state or federal legislative changes.
So I was confused, wrote to the board, and then quickly realized that this was just something they had done on their own. This was a Republican conservative activist board at the forefront of what we’re now seeing as a national campaign to target transgender children.
So I started getting involved in trying to talk to the board members, trying to understand why they did what they said they did. And the more I asked questions, the less it made sense. It just became very clear that not only was this something that they just wanted to do on their own, it was also actually against the advice that they had received from their own [legal] counsel.
Rather than staying angry and continuing to keep yelling, I thought, “Alright, I have to do something about this.” And so I decided to throw my hat in the ring for a seat on the board.
What is your hope to accomplish with a seat on the board?
This period of being a child and being a student is such a short season in life and I just feel like we should be focusing on what’s the best outcome for every kid, regardless of where they find themselves. We have to meet their needs and not make them political pawns in a larger cultural war.
That [cultural war] just does not make sense to me. I just don’t get it. I don’t know how a kid’s choice of a pronoun harms anyone else. It affirms that child. It reduces the risk of self-harm. If you care about kids, I think you have got to meet them where they are and try to figure out what’s best for them.
When our son transferred into New Albany from his previous school, it wasn’t an issue. We had maybe one discussion about a bathroom incident. And that was it and he was fine. Then, based on the changes that they made, he ended up attending OSU as a high school senior under the College Credit Plus program, because he really did not feel safe at high school, which is just a horrible thing for a kid to have to deal with.
It almost feels like there’s a little bit of irony that you have to get political in order to get on a school board to make the school board less political.
It’s crazy, right? And if I’m being honest, [running for school board] is about the last thing I wanted to do, but somebody’s got to do it. And so I think we just have to push back on [these efforts to] find an issue that they feel that they can divide people on and demonize folks who are just trying to live their life and not harming anyone else.
To the extent that people feel like schools are interfering where parents should be, nothing a school does prevents a child and a parent from having a conversation. And if you’re worried about your kid or you’re worried about how your child might be living their life, you can talk to them. Nobody’s stopping you. This idea that there’s some sort of conspiracy among educators to push kids is just ridiculous.
I’m running with a running mate, Jenn Fuller. She’s a neonatal intensive care nurse, so her care about children, especially children in crisis, cannot be questioned.
Let’s put the focus on the kids. Let’s help them feel like they belong, let them live their lives and just stop the noise.
It seems like that’s the other big irony right now. On the one hand, we have folks yelling, “Parental rights! Parental rights!” and that there is indeed something nefarious is going on with teachers and school counselors that we need to out LGBTQ+ youth to their parents. And then on the flip side, parental rights seem to be go out the window when it comes to the legislature allowing parents to have the right to help determine the healthcare of their trans children.
It’s insane, right? You’re saying that, above all, parents’ rights are paramount, and yet I’m not able to make a decision about my child’s own healthcare? That’s the other thing that makes me crazy. These folks have always railed about wanting less government and less intrusion into the home, and yet they’re more than happy to jump all over rights and trample rights when I’m just trying to get my kid the care that they need.
I had a conversation with someone a couple weeks ago and they were saying, “This doesn’t affect me because I don’t have trans kids and so I don’t see any need that I should care.” I asked him how old his kids were and he said they were nine and ten. I said, “Well, when my kids were were nine and ten, I didn’t think had a trans kid either.” You don’t know, right?
So even folks who want to oppose what we’re doing or what we’re advocating, I want them to know that I’m advocating for your kids the same way. Whatever they need, I would push for. And you don’t know where you’re going to end up or where your kids are going to end up. It just makes no sense that you would argue that parents should have greater rights unless you don’t approve of those rights and then you’re going to take those rights away. It really is crazy. 🔥
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