N.J. schools adjust
to transgender teacher
By WAYNE PARRY, AP
pressofatlanticcity.com October 22, 2006
TUCKERTON, N.J. Oct. 21 -- For
nine years, he was Mr. McBeth, a substitute teacher who kept things moving along
in the classroom and filled in ably when the regular teacher was out sick.
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The Associated Press
Lily
McBeth, a transgender female teacher, sits in her home in Tuckerton. |
And then one September, he was Miss McBeth.
The sex-change operation William McBeth underwent in 2005 roiled this rural,
conservative area when she applied to be rehired as a substitute in Eagleswood
Township. Parents packed a school board meeting last winter, some decrying
what they termed an experiment, with their young children as guinea pigs; others
supported her right to be who she is and work at what she does best.
But then a strange thing happened a few months later: When McBeth was up
for a job at a different school in the area, no one protested. In fact, no
one voiced an opinion at all when she was hired.
"There's no doubt about it; they've calmed down," said McBeth, a retired
marketing executive and divorced father of three.
"There's no reason I shouldn't teach," said McBeth, 72, who still has the deep
voice and facial lines of a male, but has light blond hair and physical features
of a female. "Look at me as a person: Am I qualified to teach?
Yes. Do I have experience? Yes. Do I have a good report card
from the schools? Yes. I have nothing to hide, and I'm proud of who
I am."
From the age of 7, William McBeth had the feeling he was different.
Growing up in Atlantic City, he would sneak into the closet to try on his
mother's and aunt's clothes when no one was around, but wasn't quite sure why.
"You had these feelings that you didn't clearly recognize," she said. "You
knew you were different, and you knew these were thoughts you couldn't bring up
to anybody. I lived that life in fear. I did everything I could:
I was a Boy Scout, a surfer, I was in the military. I ran a ski lodge in
Alaska. I had a magnificent life.
"But you're living under the fear that someone would find out about you," McBeth
said. "You know they wouldn't understand; I didn't understand it. It
wasn't until middle age that I knew there were other people like me."
McBeth won't discuss his family out of respect for their privacy, but said he
was greatly upset by the divorce, which occurred before his surgery. But
in retrospect, he said, the breakup freed him from the responsibility and
pressure of being a husband and father, and cleared the way for a change.
In 2003, while hospitalized for a heart condition for eight days, he did some
soul-searching.
"I said to myself, 'What is the one thing you've always wanted to do in your
life?' " McBeth said. "On your deathbed, you regret not the things you
did, but the things you didn't do. I said, 'Well, let's do it.' "
He had a sex change operation in May 2005 at a hospital in Wisconsin, after a
long process of psychological evaluation, hormone therapy and electrolysis.
A ukulele player and avid carver of wooden decoy ducks, McBeth chose the name
Lily in honor of one of his grandmother's sisters who died in Ireland at the age
of 11.
"I decided to give life to her through me, as she was denied that in her own
time," McBeth said.
After selling his physical therapy marketing company, William McBeth moved from
Bucks County, Pa. to New Jersey, where he got a substitute teaching job in
Eagleswood, a community about 17 miles north of Atlantic City.
Ryan Smith, a high school student who had William McBeth as an elementary school
sub in Eagleswood, recalled him as capable, even if he wouldn't let kids go to
the bathroom during a lesson.
"He was pretty good," Smith said. "He wasn't mean or anything. He
didn't yell like some subs do."
Another former student, Laura Marinello, said, "I always thought he was a really
nice guy. He was a good substitute teacher."
McBeth said she erred by not keeping her certification as a substitute teacher
current while she was out of work during the surgery. That required her to
reapply, and set the stage for a contentious school board meeting in Eagleswood
in February. One parent, Mark Schnepp, took out a full-page ad in a local
newspaper urging parents to oppose the hiring.
"This person taught as a man, left for a year, and came back as a woman,"
Schnepp said. "My biggest problem is it's very young children in the
Eagleswood school. For the young ones, it could cause tremendous
confusion."
But Scott Rodas, whose son is a third-grader in Eagleswood, said McBeth's hiring
"should have been a no-brainer."
"We should give enough credit to our children to know that someone like this
isn't going to hurt them," he said.
Karina Mari, who has a transgender relative, recalled some of the comments at
the meeting as hateful.
"Some of the statements were made as though they (transgender people) were
monsters, not real, or perverted, which is really not true," she said.
"They're just regular people who were born into the wrong body."
The Eagleswood board voted 4-1 to rehire McBeth. He has subbed once there
since then.
In September, McBeth was up for a substitute job with the Pinelands Regional
school system in Tuckerton. This time, there was no opposition. No
one at the meeting even spoke about her hiring.
"Make no mistake: Lily McBeth is one of the most important figures in New
Jersey civil rights history over the past two decades,' said Steven Goldstein,
president of Garden State Equality, a gay and transgender rights group.
The issue first arose in New Jersey in 1975 when a transgender teacher was fired
from Bernards Township. The courts upheld the dismissal.
Goldstein and McBeth said there is currently one other transgender teacher
working in New Jersey, who does not wish to be identified. Nationally,
they said, there are about 20, although many more are "transitioning" and have
not yet undergone the surgery.
Students at Pinelands Regional took McBeth's hiring in stride.
"I personally don't think there's anything wrong with it," said Katie MacPhee.
"I can see where some people might have concerns, but people just need to get
over it."
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