Should a high school teacher be dismissed for making an unusual but perfectly legal personal decision that may be unsettling, or even repugnant to some students and their families? What if the teacher is highly popular, award winning, and extremely competent? These issues are being played out in Antelope, California, where a school board voted to place such a teacher on administrative leave awaiting dismissal. What was the decision that appears to have caused the teacher to be dismissed? She is having a gender altering operation.

If, as is suggested, the board is dismissing Dana Rivers because she is no longer David Warfield, they are behaving unfairly and may ultimately be harming their students. In addition to losing an excellent teacher, the school is losing a good opportunity to teach many positive lessons, ranging from biology to tolerance. Having a teacher who leaves for summer vacation as a man and returns as a woman may be unsettling to students, but it does not have to be traumatic.

The notion that teenagers will be harmed merely by being exposed to Ms. Rivers' decision, or by talking with her about it, seems farfetched. It's unlikely that children will rush in droves to the nearest doctor for a similar operation. And for those rare students who feel, as David Warfield did, that their bodies do not reflect their actual gender, it is probably enormously helpful to have a role model who is successfully dealing with that issue.

Should the school board have let the teacher go?
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