Before we start, check out the conclusion of my latest fiction series over at Glibertarians.

Now then:  The Matanuska-Susitna Borough school board has passed a resolution stating that school kids here will use the locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond with their birth sex (note:  Words have gender, people have sex.)  Excerpt:

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District School Board voted to suspend a policy that previously allowed transgender students to use the gendered bathroom which corresponds with their own gender identification.

The school board’s vote on the agenda item was 5-1. Board member Dwight Probasco was the lone no vote and Board President Ryan Ponder was not present at the meeting. Members Jim Hart, Ole Larson, Tom Bergey, Jeff Taylor, and Jubilee Underwood all voted in favor of rescinding the previous bathroom policy for transgender students.

In a letter sent to parents on Thursday, Superintendent Randy Trani noted that the agenda item was proposed by the school board’s policy committee. The statement provided by the policy committee noted that a decision by a federal judge triggered the policy revision.

“That Court action affords the Committee an opportunity to review its current policies regarding such matters, and for the District’s administration to review its guidelines regarding student use of communal bathrooms/locker rooms that match their gender identity,” the policy committee’s statement said. “The Committee believes that the District’s Guidelines should be placed on hold pending such reviews.”

The removal of the policy now means that any transgender students within Mat-Su schools must use bathrooms that correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth, but allow “to continue offering those students use of school bathrooms that provide individual locked access and privacy.”

This is how things are supposed to work – locally.  Here, one of the Borough’s few tasks are to manage the schools, and here in the deep-red Mat-Su, the Board seems to be responding to the parents.  And in the case of every school system, everywhere, it is the parents who should be seen as the customer; they are, after all, paying the bills.   Well, all of us who pay property taxes pay the bill, but if we could only privatize education, that would change – but that’s an argument for another day.

Local government is responsive to the voters.  This is just another illustration of that.  I can talk to our Borough rep.  I can talk to the Borough mayor.  I can talk to my state Representative.

But try to get an appointment with your Congressman, or one of your Senators.  Try to gain the ear of anyone in the Imperial City.  You can’t really do it.  They days when an Englishman could ‘Cry Harold!’ are long gone, at the Imperial level and, in plenty of more populous states, at the state level.