BILLY SHILDS: The Chesterfield County School Board voted 3-2 in December to approve transgender guidelines, more in keeping with Governor Youngkin model policies handed down last year.

Lisa Hudgins voted for the new guidelines.

LISA HUDGINS: I recognize that this is a contentious topic.

We do know that Virginia law recognizes that, parents have a right to make decisions concerning the upbringing and education, care and care of their children.

BILLY SHIELDS: The marathon session lasted well into the following morning, as more than 130 people signed up to speak.

People like school counselor Christina Mejia.

CHRISTINA MEJIA: There are many, many secrets that we keep for our students and that we help facilitate that communication and that important emotional piece.

If you decide to strip us of that, we're going to have more suicide rates.

We're going to have more threat assessments done.

We're not going to have a safe person in the building.

And we have to remember, there's more than just rich kids in the school.

I've worked on one side of Chesterfield to the other.

Not everyone goes home to a safe home.

BILLY SHIELDS: At the center of the debate is whether to inform a parent if a student is going by another name, or identifying as another gender than the one they were born with.

Thank you for joining us for our Protect Every Kid press conference.

BILLY SHIELDS: And not only has this debate raged here since the summer, the draft policy has been revised in the past couple of months, angering some that think the new version didn't go far enough.

JASON SPOON: Involving parents in that conversation is going to be a lot more conducive to, you know, keeping the family element together and just, you know, doing right by the child, whatever the circumstances are.

Based upon the document that they had in November and the document that they put forward in December, it seems like a lot of discussion a lot of kind of changing course on what they think is right.

BILLY SHIELDS: The “no” votes came from Dominique Chatters, who said the policy could lead to increased suicide rates among transgender students.

DOMINIQUE CHATTERS: If it's not broken, we should not touch it.

BILLY SHIELDS: And Steve Paranto, who said it didn't involve parents enough.

STEVE PARANTO: To send your child to school and not knowing whether or not you have the support based upon a policy is what has people concerned.

BILLY SHIELDS: The three members who voted for the revised policy were Hudgins, Chair Dot Heffron, and Ann Coker.

The policy took effect as soon as the votes were cast.

Billy Shields, VPM News.