No Apology From School District for Unjust Transgender Firing

District Refusing to Apologize for its Roll in Anti-Transgender Bigotry

More Than a Year Passes After Proclamation Proposal 

The Emery School District’s Board of Trustees this week is remaining steadfast in their disapproval to acknowledge the District’s past bigotry against its former employee, Steve Dain, a Teacher of the Year fired for being a transgender man in the 1970s.  The Board President failed to forward a proposal for the Trustees to vote on Wednesday, a public apology, proclaiming the District unjustly fired the former Emery gym teacher, a proposal brought by Board member Susan Donaldson back in May.  Instead, President Brynnda Collins, feeling no urgency, has bumped the issue down to a sub committee to ruminate on for an indefinite amount of time.  The District, more than a year ago indicated in the abstract it would make an acknowledgment that the firing of Mr Dain was wrong but there has not been a majority of Board members interested in actually following through despite Ms Donaldson’s proposal.

The Board majority has not felt impelled to make amends for the District's firing of Mr Dain, however, they did feel a sense of urgency about the Dain issue in June of 2019 when then President Barbara Inch proposed her colleagues name the newly remodeled gym at the high school, Steve Dain Gymnasium by fiat, to acknowledge the fired Emery gym teacher.  Board members Collins and Cruz Vargas moved quickly and led a successful drive to stop the Steve Dain Gym proposal, settling on a different, non-transgender former gym teacher to name the gym after.  Ms Inch resigned the Board in protest shortly after the Vargas/Collins caper.  Board member Susan Donaldson, who joined with President Inch in voting to name the gym after Mr Dain,  consequently asked for and received assurances from the entire Board (including Collins and Vargas) they would make some other gesture to acknowledge the District’s culpability in the bigoted firing, an idea that has languished now for more than a year.  Wednesday’s Board meeting was to be the vote to apologize by official proclamation.

Emery Teacher of the Year
Steve Dain
After his surgery, Emery trespassed him off 
school property and then fired him
for being who he was.

The City Council, exasperated by the District’s failure to acknowledge its mistake and take responsibility for correcting the hurt the firing inflicted on Mr Dain and the community, took the issue on for itself when they announced they will officially change the name of 47th Street to Steve Dain Drive.  In a turn of karmic restitution, the same gymnasium where Mr Dain worked won’t be named after him but it will have a Steve Dain Drive address.  

Steve Dain, who died in 2007, never received an apology from Emery Unified School District after they fired him following his surgical transformation to a man in 1977.  The official reason for Mr Dain's termination was given as "immoral conduct", a charge that stands today in the absence of an official apology from the District.  

Mr Dain has living relatives still residing in the Bay Area. 

 Board President Brynnda Collins, who helped the Board sink the vote to name the gym after Mr Dain, has called the proposal for acknowledging Mr Dain, "political".  She did not return calls for this story.