Who are the acceptable sacrifices?

By Faye Seidler

fayeseidler@gmail.com

In 2023, the Superintendent of Fargo Public Schools, Rupak Ghandi, gave a passionate plea to the Fargo School Board to follow federal law, because a recently passed state law would increase trans youth suicide. He spoke about being a survivor of the suicide loss of a trans child. And said that when there is a conflict between state and federal law, they would have to do what is best for kids.

In 2025, House Bill 1144 was created in response to that defiance of state law to impose penalties on any school that didn’t follow state law and further restrict transgender students’ bathroom use. The bill was also amended to include a ban on all gender neutral restrooms that include a communal sink. The amendment resulted in Rep. Jim Jonas voting “no” on the bill because it would likely cost his school district millions to renovate. And because of that amendment, schools decided to get involved.

During the committee hearing, Levi Bachmeier, a business manager of West Fargo Public Schools, provided testimony in opposition. The first thing he said in the 30 minutes of testimony was a plea to not punish the rest of the schools for the “unfortunate comments” of one superintendent before talking about modern bathroom design and cost.

Following him was North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders’ Aimee Copas, who further drove the school bus over Ghandi, clarifying he was solely to blame for his “unfortunate comments” and it wasn’t right to metaphorically punish the whole classroom. While also iterating cost and how single occupancy bathrooms with shared sinks were the encouraged modern design for reasons not solely related to benefiting trans youth.

The next educational professional after her was Superintendent of Devils Lake, Ned Clooten. He was there to clarify a situation that happened with Devil’s Lake schools, where a parent seemed to falsely believe gender-neutral restrooms were co-ed spaces with flimsy stalls separating students rather than single-occupancy restrooms. He also clarified a story where he went to great efforts to stop trans kids from using the bathrooms of the gender they identified.

Collectively, these education leaders provided a convincing argument that any benefit trans kids obtain from the modern bathroom design is not their primary intent. Each clarified that original restrictions for trans kids, the ones that Gandhi expressed concern would increase suicidality, were completely fine, even welcomed in Clooten’s case.

According to a Data Brief published by ND Hopes in October of 2024, “the percentage of transgender middle school students who ever tried to kill themselves increased from 35.9% in 2021 to 45.0% in 2023. Similarly, the percentage of LGB middle school students who ever tried to kill themselves increased from 25.6% in 2021 to 34.9% in 2023.”

If these school professionals are attempting to do anything to reduce suicide for these kids, it is not landing. And too often, trans youth are seen as an acceptable sacrifice by organizations in healthcare, education and non-profit fields where they know if they’re open about being LGBTQ+ accepting, they’ll have donors threatening to cut funding or lawmakers bullying them in the next session, like with HB 1144.

What the educational leaders did was sensible and practical, as convincing lawmakers that modern bathroom design was good for all students meant the benefit to trans kids would continue to trickle down and no kid or school would experience harm. And getting mired in culture war issues wasn’t a benefit to anyone. Except the trans kids who get no choice in the bullying and abuse they suffer while their lives become too inconvenient to protect.

On April 3, the White House released a proclamation about preventing child abuse with a threat that the administration sees accepting trans kids as child abuse. Earlier this year it also cut 68 grants that have a focus on LGBTQ+ questions and froze 175 million in funding to a school that supported trans athletes, while also cutting or freezing funding from any entity that engages in DEI work.

Each instance of these cuts, whether they target trans kids, religious minorities, BIPOC or immigrant populations, begs the question of what is an acceptable sacrifice for an organization to make? And each time any organization concedes ground, it is selling its own soul in increments until all that is left is a place that helps the powerful, not the powerless.

Gandhi was the only superintendent in the state brave enough to make a stand. His “unfortunate comments” were the only hope so many kids had. He did not break the law nor did he get any official complaint despite the outrage two years ago. And instead of any support, he was an acceptable sacrifice; an instructive lesson for any other school leader about the crime of empathy and submission to the lawmaking body that education degrees and student safety will not impede law.

Faye Seidler operates Faye Seidler Consulting, which specializes in suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ population. She also serves as the Community Uplift Program Manager at Harbor Health Initiative. Learn more at www.fayeseidlerconsulting.com.