To the Editor,

At a time when Alpena High School students are asking for real leadership — to raise test scores and improve their education — certain members of the APS Board are instead fixated on where students use the bathroom.

Let’s be honest: the proposed bathroom policy isn’t about privacy. It’s about controlling, shaming, and targeting transgender students. It’s a manufactured crisis. The students themselves have told the board there are no issues. Yet board members like Monica Dziesinski continue to push solutions to problems that don’t exist, while ignoring the ones that do.

The ACLU has already warned the board: discrimination against transgender students violates Title IX, which is still federal law. No executive order can change that. Courts across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have upheld these protections. Ignoring this reality is not just heartless — it’s reckless. It puts our schools and our taxpayers at serious legal and financial risk.

Instead of standing with students, some board members are determined to fight federal law, defy basic decency, and waste public money searching for legal opinions they like.

We deserve better. Our students deserve better. Alpena deserves leaders who listen to facts, respect the law, and treat all students with dignity — not leaders who import bad ideas from other districts and stir up fear where none is needed.

The board has a choice: focus on real educational challenges or keep playing politics with our children’s lives.

The community is watching. The law is watching. And history will not be kind to those who chose cruelty over courage.

Sincerely,

MOLLY STEPANSKI,

Posen