School volleyball coach suspended for allowing her trans daughter to play on girls’ team accuses investigators of destroying her child’s life

A Florida public school employee who is fired for allowing her transgender daughter to play girls volleyball in high school hit out at investigators who exposed her child, claiming they destroyed her life.

Jessica Norton said her daughter was doing well at Monarch High School in Fort Lauderdale before an anonymous tipster notified a Broward County school board member in November that the 16-year-old was playing on the girls volleyball team, in an apparent violation with state law.

That tip led to a widespread investigation, which resulted in Norton being suspended from her job as an information management specialist at Monarch High School. She is now also facing possible dismissal for allowing her child to play on the girls’ team.

She stood before school district officials Tuesday to plead her case, claiming the investigation had destroyed her child’s life.

Norton described how her daughter was elected president of the freshman and sophomore classes, was elected director of philanthropy for the student body and was even a homecoming princess.

That all ended when the investigation began and her daughter was forced to leave Monarch.

“They destroyed her high school career and her lifelong memories,” Norton said.

“I saw the light shining in my daughter’s eyes of future plans to organize and attend prom, participate and lead in upperclassmen traditions, speak at graduation, and go to college go with the confidence and joy that any student like her would after a successful and successful study. encouraging high school experience. And 203 days ago I watched that life snuffed out.”

The girl now goes to school online.

None of the board’s nine members responded to Norton, a seven-year district employee who also served as a volunteer coach and received excellent evaluations before the November tip-off.

Under Florida Fairness in Women’s Sports Act: It is illegal for biological males to participate in women’s sports.

It adds that ‘a statement of a student’s biological sex on the student’s official birth certificate is deemed to have correctly stated the student’s biological sex at birth.’

The Nortons now serve as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit seeking to block the law. A federal judge upheld the ban on November 7, but allowed the family to refile.

Around the same time, school board member Daniel Foganholi contacted district police after receiving the tip, according to the district’s investigative report.

Broward schools then assigned two officers to investigate the tip, and the state education department also appointed an investigator.

They retrieved Norton’s daughter’s school records and locked them in a safe.

They also interviewed officials at Monarch and at the daughter’s middle and elementary schools to find out who knew the girl was transgender and when and how her information was changed.

And they interviewed Norton and three Monarch volleyball players.

Foganholi did not respond to emails last week and requested comment on Monday.

As part of the investigation, Norton, who has two older children, told police she enrolled her youngest child in preschool as a boy in 2013, four years before she started working for the district.

The child then transferred to a girl in first grade. She said other parents and children knew, so it was never a complete secret.

By the time the child was in second grade, Norton said she asked a school employee to change the child’s gender on her school records.

She said then-Superintendent Robert Runcie told her that was the procedure.

But the district says such changes are only allowed if the parent first has the child’s birth certificate changed, and the child’s birth certificate is not changed until 2021 — after Norton begins working with the district.

After learning of the policy, district officials allege, Norton should have requested in 2017 that her child’s gender be changed back to male in her records.

But Norton told investigators that wasn’t the case because the changed data is accurate: her child is a girl.

She noted that her child started taking puberty blockers at age 11 and is taking estrogen, but has not had gender confirmation surgery.

Norton also admitted that she knew the new state law banned transgender girls from playing girls’ sports when her daughter entered high school in 2022.

When detectives asked her why she then let her daughter play volleyball and why she had marked “female” on a consent form that asked for the child’s “sex at birth.”

“Because she’s my kid and she wanted to play,” Norton told them, emphasizing that her child had no athletic advantage over the other girls on the team.

Investigators also interviewed then-Monarch director James Cecil and asked him to describe the child, to which he responded, “She looks like a girl.” … she looks very small, very thin.’

And when investigators interviewed the Monarch volleyball players, they noted that the team did not change clothes or shower together, so they were never undressed with Norton’s daughter.

All three said they knew or suspected that Norton’s daughter is transgender, but it didn’t bother them that she was on the team.

“I didn’t really have a problem with it because I didn’t think she was a threat or anything like that to anyone else,” one girl told researchers.

The investigation has since cleared Cecil, assistant principal Kenneth May and athletics director Dione Hester of any wrongdoing.

Alex Burgess, a volleyball coach who was not considered a district employee, was also cleared, as were three current or former employees of the high school the child attended. reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The state athletic commission, meanwhile, has fined the school $16,500.

But while investigators have cleared Norton of changing her child’s gender in the school’s computers — instead asking another staff member to do so — they say she used her position as an information specialist to change her child’s name into the system to change.

The Broward County School District was scheduled to vote Tuesday on Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s recommendation to fire Norton, but that decision has been postponed for at least a month.

A district committee recommended Norton be given a 10-day suspension, but Hepburn ignored it and refused to say why. The board can fire Norton, suspend her or do nothing.