BILOXI – When nine young adults tossed their mortarboards into the air at the Little Biloxi Theatre on June 20, it wasn’t their first time graduating from high school. After an emotional celebration that honored the transgender and LGBTQ+ students’ resilience, it became their first graduation without gender-based dress codes or stipulations on how they present themselves.
Surrounded by friends, local allies and in some cases, family, each student walked across the stage, shook the hand of LGBTQ+ advocate Jensen Luke Matar, and received a “Pride! Graduation” certificate. With their names printed under the intersex-inclusive Progress Pride flag, each student was celebrated for graduating with “courage, authenticity and pride.”
“We love and appreciate our students, and we care to uplift and serve them always,” said Matar, director of the nonprofit organization Transgender Resources, Advocacy, Networking and Services Program, or TRANS Program, which was a sponsor of the event.
Students at the event told Mississippi Today that school policies like Harrison County’s restricting gender expression are harmful to their mental health and physical safety. The Harrison County School District is unique among Gulf Coast counties for requiring students to dress according to their “biological sex that is stated in the student’s cumulative folder and permanent record.”
In contrast, student handbooks for school districts in Hancock County, Ocean Springs, Gulfport, Jackson County, Pascagoula-Gautier, Pass Christian, Long Beach and Biloxi do not include language that restricts students’ clothing choices to their sex assigned at birth.
Lana Brown in the dress she wore to a Trans Joy event, in lieu of high school graduation. Credit: Photo courtesy of Lana BrownFor 2023 Harrison Central High School graduate Lana Brown, the June celebration was the first time she walked a graduation stage. Three years ago Harrison Central leaders told Brown, a transgender woman, that she could not wear a dress to her graduation ceremony. She chose not to attend, and filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that the dress code policy, enforced based on gender stereotypes, violated her rights. Although Brown lost the case, she knew at the time that it was a long shot, she told Mississippi Today. Both of her parents were fully supportive, and her dad told her that regardless of the outcome, it was a win to have the incident recorded.
This year, Brown was the first speaker at Pride Graduation, thrown by several local nonprofit programs. Wearing a formal black dress and in full glam, she addressed her fellow students, who had graduated high school since 2023.
“Three years ago I was, too, ripped from my graduation,” she said. “I was told that I could not walk across the stage unless I dressed like a boy.”
Out of her own experience, Brown said, she learned the importance of self-respect.
“You must respect yourself, and you have to not tolerate the disrespect of others,” she said to the graduates. “It won’t always be easy, but you have to stand up or you will be knocked down.”
Nearly two months ago, a Facebook post by D’Iberville High School drew public attention to the school’s policies around gender nonconforming students. School officials, including then-Principal Cheryl Broadus and Harrison County schools Superintendent William Bentz have not responded to repeated requests for comment from Mississippi Today.
Brown said she doesn’t know what to say to Harrison County school officials, who in the years after her graduation have doubled down on the dress code. She said they know their policies hurt students.
“What do you say to one who already knows?” she said. “You’re turning a blind eye. You won’t listen to me.”
Advocates question district’s gender-based dress codes
This was the first year of Pride Graduation, organized by advocates after Harrison County schools students faced gender-norm-based dress codes for senior portraits and the graduation ceremony. Due to the policies, several transgender and gender nonconforming students weren’t able to participate in graduation activities while affirming their identity.
A letter from the school district that a parent shared on social media, which Mississippi Today reviewed, outlined that male students had to wear a white button-down shirt and black pants, while female students could wear a dress or black slacks.
A group of parents and advocates are sharing their concerns about restrictive policies at school board meetings.
At the June 1 Harrison County school board meeting, the first after high school graduation, Noelle Nolan-Rider shared that in the 1960s, when Mississippi was undergoing forced integration, Black students were omitted from multiple yearbooks. Nolan-Rider was one of at least three people working with the TRANS Program who attended the meeting.
Nolan-Rider shared that the first Black woman to graduate from South Natchez High School was her 10th-grade English teacher.
“She is not in the yearbook,” Nolan-Rider said. “Her name is Patricia West, and it is discrimination when you do that. It was discrimination then. It is discrimination now.”
D’Iberville High School in Harrison County, Miss., on Friday, May 22, 2026. Credit: Jonathan BlueA school board member who remained off-camera responded to Nolan-Rider, saying students knew they had to adhere to the dress code for their senior portraits, and that in most cases, students get a second chance to take their photo.
“I want you to understand they are well aware ahead of time, and there’s a second round,” the board member said.
A Harrison County parent posted on social media a screenshot of the Harrison County School District’s guidelines for senior portraits.
“Female portraits published in the yearbook will be photographed using the traditional drape. Male portraits published in the yearbook will be photographed using the traditional tuxedo,” the guidelines read.
Advocates said students told them they were not given a second chance to take their senior portraits.
The next meeting on June 15, Jonathan Blue, a transgender woman and parent of Harrison County students, attended the meeting. She expressed concerns about D’Iberville High School deadnaming and allegedly digitally altering the photo of a transgender student on social media. School board president Steven Ramsey thanked her for presenting the comment and did not further discuss the comment, according to Blue and corroborated by a recording she shared with Mississippi Today. Harrison County School District policy does not require the board to engage with public comments at the meeting.
Blue said the board would not allow her to speak at the June 29 meeting. She said she arrived at 5:29 p.m., one minute before the meeting was scheduled to begin, and the employee who had badge access to open the locked door to the meeting waited until it was 5:30 to let her in. The board meeting was underway when she entered, and the sign up sheet had been removed. Because she was not signed up to speak, the board did not allow Blue to give a comment.
Mississippi Today has reached out to school board members and Bentz, the superintendent, five times since July 10 to verify this sequence of events, and has not gotten a response.
School boards have wide discretion in how they address public comments, said Jonathan Collins, who researches education policy and teaches political science at Columbia University. While the Harrison County school board’s policies are not unusual, he said they represent a concerning lack of attention to public opinion.
“Parliamentary procedure is meant to ensure that there is standardization across meetings,” he said. “But it also becomes one of the biggest weapons that school boards can use to keep the public out of the public meeting.”
Collins’ research shows that when a school board is responsive and engaged in public comments, it deepens public trust in their elected officials. Conversely, a lack of engagement tends to reduce trust.
At the July 13 school board meeting, Blue arrived 30 minutes in advance and was allowed to address the board. She alleged that the district was in violation of federal Title IX policy, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education-related activities.
In this meeting, Blue estimated that over 20 people showed up who supported the school district’s current dress code policies. Three individuals told the board they didn’t think there were Title IX violations, and they supported the district’s language about students needing to dress as their biological sex.
“I just wanna tell you that I appreciate the work that you are doing,” one speaker said. “We ask that you continue to hold the line for us.”
Blue said she has received a slew of negative comments on social media, and some positive ones. Several commenters, including some anonymous accounts, have labelled her as mentally ill and threatened her with racist and homophobic slurs. Blue said other comments threatened her and her family, including direct threats of violence.
Blue, who attended the meetings alone, said she left after the public comment period due to concerns about her safety.
‘I wanted to see myself happy’
The challenges high school students and graduates along the Gulf Coast face extend beyond school photos and board meetings. At the Pride Graduation, recent high school graduates told Mississippi Today about challenges they encountered after “coming out,” or sharing their gender and sexuality identities publicly.
O.K., identified by initials for her safety, is a transgender college student who graduated high school in 2024. As someone who has struggled with depression, speakers’ comments about the resilience of the transgender community resonated with her.
“It takes so much pushing through and remembering that one day it might be better,” she said.
O.K.’s parents were not present. She said they’re good people but not supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, so she’s sought support elsewhere. Finding the TRANS Program was an important step in that journey, she said. O.K. remembers dressing as a woman for the first time at one of their events. Not only was it accepted, but people cheered her on, she told Mississippi Today.
Now, she’s grateful she was able to keep going during the days she felt numb.
“I wanted to see myself happy,” O.K. said. “I never want to see myself let the end of the story be, I died sad.”
The entrance table at Pride! Graduation featured community resources, pronouns pins, and props for a photo booth. June 20, 2026. Credit: Anna Hu / Mississippi TodayT.G., another student at the event who asked to be identified by his initials for fear of retaliation, said supportive events like the ones TRANS Program holds are crucial to let people know they’re not alone. In the area of central Mississippi where he’s from, T.G. said there’s little to no public community for LGBTQ+ people.
A friend of O.K.’s, T.G. has guarded her when she uses the men’s bathroom in states that require people to use the bathroom consistent with the gender they were assigned at birth.
All the students who spoke to Mississippi Today expressed their love for Mississippi, and their feeling that it would always be home. But many are trying to leave as soon as possible because they don’t feel safe.
“I’m nine months on (testosterone) now, and I’m still scared to use the bathroom,” said J.W., a transgender student identified by his initials for safety concerns. “It’s pretty much 50/50. I get sir’ed a lot, I get ma’am’ed a lot. I get hit on by old people.”
Others, like Brown, know they may not settle in Mississippi, but are trying to make the most of their time here by educating others about the LGBTQ+ community.
“Hate is taught. They were taught to hate those who aren’t like them,” she said. “So we’re gonna teach others to accept, to understand, to learn before we judge or push away.”
This story was produced with support from the Sarah Yelena Haselhorst Fund for Health Journalism.
Hence then, the article about in a mississippi school district with strict gender rules trans students and families push to be heard was published today ( ) and is available on Mississippi Today ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( In a Mississippi school district with strict gender rules, trans students and families push to be heard )
Also on site :
- I’m quitting teaching aged 40 but I’m still set for a £750,000 pension pot
- Amazon Has a 'Beautiful' Rustic Mid-Century Nightstand With 'Functional' Storage on Sale for Just $34
- ‘Without our money, people will struggle’: Muangthai Capital’s new CEO Parithad Petampai defends the role of microfinance in Thailand