ESCANABA — Despite a number of executive orders from President Donald Trump that aim to limit the acceptance of gender expression from transgender and gender-nonconforming Americans, there are no major plans to change how transgender students are served by Delta County school districts.

“I do not see anything immediately urgent — or applicable — here locally. Of course, it will be very interesting to watch as this evolves, and has the potential to hit closer to home. Right now, there will be nothing different about how we handle ourselves and our students at the local level. We will continue to follow our policies and professional practices, and take care of all of our staff and students, as we have in the past,” Gladstone and Rapid River Area Schools Superintendent Jay Kulbertis told the Daily Press not long after Trump signed the “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” executive order late last month.

The Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling order covers a broad range of topics from reinstating the 1776 Commission — an advisory committee Trump created in his first term to develop criteria for “patriotic education” and that identified “progressivism” and “identity politics” as “challenges to America’s principles” in a 2021 report — to a plan for bi-weekly lectures “grounded in patriotic education principles” that would be broadcast to Americans throughout the 2026 calendar year.

Most of the order, however, is focused on ending federal funding for the promotion or support of “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology” in K-12 schools. The White House has defined gender ideology as “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.” Discriminatory equity ideology has a much longer, multi-part definition, but includes a number of ideas related to the concept of systemic racism, the promotion of “guilt” for “actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin,” and the idea that “the United States is fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.”

Escanaba Schools Superintendent Coby Fletcher was quick to point out that the order does not end funding itself. Rather, it directs certain government officials to develop a plan on how to restrict federal funding in specific areas.

“The EO gives a general outline of where the administration intends to go, but it really only assigns work to various directors. We’d need to see what they eventually come up with before we can evaluate it,” said Fletcher.

By Tuesday, April 29 — 90 days from the signing of the order — the secretary of education, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of health and human services, in consultation with the attorney general, must provide Trump’s administration with an “Ending Indoctrination Strategy.” That plan has to look at ways to restrict federal funds from supporting, directly or indirectly, gender or equity ideology.

Most of the target areas for the plan are related to curriculum, instruction, programming, activities or teacher certification, licensing, employment or training. However, the plan must also include each agency’s process to prevent or rescind federal funds, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, from being used by a school or educational agency “to directly or indirectly support or subsidize the social transition of a minor student, including through school staff or teachers or through deliberately concealing the minor’s social transition from the minor’s parents.”

The order includes a number of actions that can be part of a social transition process, such as changing pronouns or names, counseling, allowing students to used bathrooms or locker rooms that are not designated for the sex they were assigned at birth, or “participating in school or athletic competitions or other extracurricular activities specifically designated for persons of the opposite sex.”

It’s not yet clear how far the plan would go in targeting funding for things like using a student’s preferred pronoun at an individual school, but transgender and gender nonconforming Michigan students may be uniquely protected from educational discrimination.

“An EO can’t supersede state law, and Michigan has the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. As a Michigan school, we’re still obligated to follow this law,” said Fletcher.

Nearly two years ago, on March 16, 2023, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation expanding the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act to include protections for LGBTQ+ Michiganders. That expansion means it is illegal for a school to “discriminate against an individual in the full utilization of or benefit from the (school), or the services, activities, or programs provided by the (school)” due to their gender identity or expression.

Trump doubled down on transgender students participating in sports last week with a separate executive order, “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.” A key aspect of this order is a plan to prioritize Title IX enforcement enforcement actions against educational institutions, including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions, that require girls who were assigned female at birth to compete against or to be unclothed in front of transgender girls or biologically male boys.

Last week, the Michigan High School Athletic Association told The Bridge that it would continue with its policy until there was more clarification on how the order would interact with state law. Currently, there are no prohibitions on female-to-male trans athletes participating on boys teams — just as there are no rules prohibiting cisgender girls from participating on boys teams. Male-to-female student athletes must apply for a waiver and are approved on a case-by-case-basis. Only two such waivers are currently active.