A Florida public school employee who faces termination because she allowed her transgender daughter to play girls’ volleyball in high school has criticized investigators who discovered her daughter, claiming they destroyed her life.
Jessica Norton said her daughter was thriving 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 varsity girls’ volleyball team. in apparent violation of state law.
That tip launched a widespread investigation, which resulted in Norton’s suspension from his job as an information management specialist at Monarch High School. She now also faces possible firing for allowing her daughter to play on the women’s team.
On Tuesday, she appeared before school district officials to plead her case, claiming the investigation had ruined her son’s life.
Jessica Norton attacked school district investigators who she says ruined her trans daughter’s life at a school board meeting Tuesday.
Norton described how her daughter had been elected freshman and sophomore class president, was elected student body philanthropy director and was even a prom princess.
That all ended when the investigation began and her daughter was forced to leave Monarch.
“They destroyed his high school career and his lifelong memories,” Norton said.
‘I saw the light shine in my daughter’s eyes with future plans to organize and attend prom, participate in and lead senior class traditions, speak at graduation, and go to college with confidence and joy that any student like her would have after a successful and successful career. Foster the high school experience. And 203 days ago I saw how that life was extinguished.”
The girl now attends school online.
None of the nine board members responded to Norton, a seven-year district employee who received stellar evaluations before the board in November.
Norton’s 16-year-old daughter played on Monarch High School’s varsity girls’ volleyball team, in apparent violation of Florida state law.
Lower Florida Under the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, it is illegal for biological males to compete in women’s sports.
Add that ‘A statement of a student’s biological sex on the student’s official birth certificate is considered to correctly indicate the student’s biological sex at birth.’
The Nortons are now acting as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit attempting to block the law. A federal judge upheld the ban on Nov. 7 but allowed the family to resubmit the request.
Around the same time, school board member Daniel Foganholi contacted the district’s police department after receiving the information, 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 took Norton’s daughter’s school records and locked them in a vault.
They also interviewed officials at Monarch and the daughter’s middle and elementary schools, trying to find out who knew the girl was transgender and when and how her records were changed.
And they interviewed Norton and three Monarch volleyball players.
Foganholi did not respond to emails last week or Monday seeking comment.
Norton claimed his son was thriving at Monarch High School before the investigation.
As part of the investigation, Norton, who has two older children, told police that he enrolled his youngest son in kindergarten as a child in 2013, four years before he began working for the district.
Then the girl became a girl in the first grade. She said other parents and children knew, so she’s never been a complete secret.
When the boy was in second grade, Norton said he asked a school employee to change the boy’s gender in his school records.
He said then-Superintendent Robert Runcie told him that was the procedure.
But the district says such changes are only allowed if the parent first modifies the child’s birth certificate, and the child’s birth certificate was not amended until 2021, after Norton began working with the district.
After learning of the policy, district officials argue, Norton should have requested in 2017 to have her son’s gender changed back to male in her records.
But Norton told investigators he didn’t do it because the amended records are accurate: His daughter is a girl.
She noted that her son started taking puberty blockers at age 11 and takes estrogen, but has not had gender-affirming surgery.
She admitted that she knew state law prohibited transgender girls from playing girls’ sports, but insisted that her daughter is a woman.
Norton also admitted that she knew the new state law prohibited transgender girls from playing girls’ sports when her daughter entered high school in 2022.
When detectives asked her why she let her daughter play volleyball and why she checked “female” on a permission form that asked the girl’s “sex at birth.”
“Because she’s my daughter and she wanted to play,” Norton told them, insisting that her daughter had no athletic advantage over the other girls on the team.
Investigators also questioned Monarch’s then-director James Cecil and asked him to describe the girl, to which he responded, “She looks like a girl to me.” …she looks very small, very thin.’
And when investigators interviewed the Monarch volleyball players, they noticed that the team did not change clothes or shower together, so they never got naked with Norton’s daughter.
All three said they knew or suspected Norton’s daughter was 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 to anyone else,” one girl told investigators.
A Broward County investigation cleared former Director James Cecil of any wrongdoing.
Monarch High School vice principal Kenneth May (left) and teacher and athletic director Dione Hester (right) were also acquitted.
The investigation has since cleared Cecil, assistant principal Kenneth May and athletic director Dione Hester of any wrongdoing.
Alex Burgess, a volleyball coach who was not considered a district employee, was also acquitted, as were three current or former employees of the high school the boy attended. reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Meanwhile, the state athletic commission fined the school $16,500.
But although investigators have cleared Norton of changing her son’s gender on school computers (and instead asking another staff member to do it), they say she used her position as an information specialist to change the your child’s name in the system.
The Broward County School District was scheduled to vote Tuesday on Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s recommendation that Norton be fired, but that decision was delayed by at least a month.
A district committee recommended that Norton receive a 10-day suspension, but Hepburn overturned it and refused to say why. The board could fire Norton, suspend her or do nothing.
