With San Francisco’s public school system set to begin on August 18, the city’s administrators and teachers are preparing for the first full school year under a White House determined to rollback diversity initiatives, undo accommodations made for LGBTQ+ students, and disrupt the lives of immigrants and their kids. The usual back-to-school jitters many students and school employees feel this time of year are only made worse by the stream of Presidential declarations-by-social media and the headlines overtaking all of our newsfeeds.
Trans students, in particular, will walk through the doors of their schools with a sense of uncertainty about what the Trump administration may have in store for them. Under federal rules issued last year, trans students were forced to choose names and gender markers that match official identification.
Another related executive order declares it is now US policy to only recognize two sexes, male and female. “These sexes are not changeable, and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” it claims.
For trans students in their senior year applying for student aid as part of college applications, or students of any age who need a passport or visa to travel, the executive orders have had the effect of forcing them to misgender themselves or erase their identities.
Interviews with educators, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak on behalf of San Francisco Unified School District, revealed worry as well as resolve.
“Before this new administration, kids could go to college and use a preferred name or a preferred gender, and it didn’t need to match their government documents, but now it does,” said a principal at a public high school with a significant number of LGBTQ+ students. “I know that's really hard for trans and non-binary kids right now.”
SFUSD can use a student’s chosen name in the district’s internal system, but under the new rules, if administrators file documents such as transcripts to the state system, they must use students’ legal names, the principal said.
One example: Diplomas, which the schools were forced to inscribe with students’ legal names even in cases where trans students have entirely different names. “We would usually put whatever name on their diploma they choose, because it didn’t need to follow a specific rule,” the principal said. “It could really be an expression of who they are, and now it can’t.”
Complying with the Trump administration’s policies here doesn’t feel like much of a choice: The president and his allies (as well as his supporters on social media and IRL) haven’t been subtle about retaliating against organizations that don’t fall in line. As the threats of defunding numerous universities have shown, educational institutions are a major front in Trump’s Project 2025-inspired war against DEI and other policies aimed at historically underrepresented groups.
Some employees of SFUSD are counting on the California Department of Education to fight the administration’s freezing of federal dollars for the state’s public schools. While the US Department of Education recently relented by releasing a fraction of the nearly $1 billion California schools are waiting on, the state is suing for the remainder.
While just five percent of SFUSD’s $1.2 billion budget comes from federal funding, that’s still a significant sum for a district that, as of last spring, teetered on the brink of insolvency. If the president chooses to hold that money back to push through rules clamping down on LGBTQ+ visibility or acceptance, it will put schools in an impossible bind: Protect all their students or lose much-needed funding.
“We are committed to supporting our students, families, and staff, including our immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities,” the district said in the statement. “We understand that the change in federal administration has surfaced a number of concerns in these communities.” SFUSD’s website features a list of resources for immigrant and LGBTQ+ students.
The district has also filed a lawsuit against the federal government. Under an executive order in February, Americorps withheld funds for tutoring and other programs for economically disadvantaged and LGBTQ+ students, unless SFUSD certified that the programs paid for by the funds do not promote diversity, equity and inclusion. SFUSD sued in March, and in June won a court order preventing Americorps from revoking or conditioning its grant funding based on the school district’s DEI programs.
In its statement to Gazetteer SF, SFUSD also pointed to a school board requirement that every district school provide gender-neutral restrooms. But Yick Wo Alternative Elementary School in North Beach is one example of a school where the district, at least so far, isn’t following the board’s rule. According to a teacher who works there, there’s no dedicated, gender-neutral restroom for LGBTQ+ students. There are two restrooms for adults that are not gender-specific but none for kids, the teacher said. (This teacher was granted anonymity since they were not authorized to speak about school policy.)
The teacher said last year free menstrual pad dispensers were installed in boys’ and girls’ restrooms, which offered some “gender fluidity to them” and sent “a nice message.” It proved chaotic at first, the teacher said, because younger students collected the pads and stuck them to their heads during recess.
“The bathrooms are labeled boys and girls, however students are quite flexible about who uses them,” the teacher said. “We have a Rainbow Club at the school that celebrates and supports LGBTQ students, and right now that club seems more important than ever.”
SFUSD said in a separate statement that all of its schools have at least one restroom that is all-gender, though, it acknowledged, some of those are located in staff-only areas. The district said it is working with schools to ensure students have access to those restrooms, and that as required by state law, will provide all-gender restrooms designated for students by July, 2026.
Mimi Demmissew, executive director of Our Family Coalition, which helps schools build programs for LGBTQ+ families and kids, said her organization is keeping a close eye on the Trump administration’s executive orders. Its threat to withhold federal funding from schools as leverage to rollback DEI programs or prevent trans kids from playing in sports presents schools with a difficult choice: Should they concede in order to get the money, or take a stand by refusing to participate in open discrimination?
“These executive orders are being used to weaponize and divide communities, and pit people against each other,” Demmissew said in an interview. “As far as LGBTQ families are concerned, there’s a serious concern about our identities being weaponized against us.”
Our Family Coalition is concerned the White House will push harder, threatening trans parents’ control and custody of their children, Demmissew said, but added that the Civil Rights Act offers protections against discrimination, and can be used to combat executive orders.
“We have to remember that they’re not laws yet,” Demmissew said, referring to the executive orders. “And we need to think about why these schools, and organizations like mine, are in place. We need to think about, Are we here to just save our organizations, or are we here to serve the communities that we said that we’re going to serve?”
Another factor keeping teachers and administrators up at night is ICE. Confrontations with the federal government are certain to grow more serious given reports from students at the end of last year that their classmates from immigrant families were staying home from school out of fear that they or their family members could be detained and deported.
The high school principal noted ICE raids at public schools in Los Angeles, and said SFUSD has provided training on how to protect students and district buildings from the agency’s actions.
Both LGBTQ+ and immigrant students are “definitely looking towards the adults around them to show, and prove, how we’re going to show up for them,” the administrator said. The growing confrontations raise the frightening possibility that teachers and other school employees may have to put themselves in harm’s way to protect their students, the principal added.
“The more general concern at the federal level is the government being antagonistic towards trans and non-binary, non-gender conforming kids,” the principal said. “We sort of live in a bubble in some ways, but it feels like the bubble keeps getting poked.”
SFUSD’s response is “OK for today,” the principal added. “I don't know if it’s going to be okay for tomorrow.”
