Committee wanted to suspend the mother of a transgender student

A committee felt compelled to take disciplinary action against a Monarch High School employee who is also the mother of a transgender athlete, but did not want her fired, newly released district documents show.

The district’s Professional Standards Committee, made up of principals and administrators, on March 20 recommended a 10-day suspension for Jessica Norton, an information specialist and volleyball coach for the Coconut Creek school’s junior varsity team.

But this recommendation has been suspended – at least temporarily.

Then-Superintendent Peter Licata and Human Resources Director David Azzarito decided to recommend the dismissal on March 26. Current Superintendent Howard Hepburn affirmed the recommendation.

The school board is expected to decide on June 18 whether to accept Hepburn’s recommendation. The board could instead opt for a more lenient disciplinary measure or no disciplinary action at all.

Norton is accused of violating the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, passed in 2021, which prohibits students born male from competing on women’s sports teams in public schools. While Norton was a district employee, her daughter played volleyball for two seasons at Monarch and played volleyball and soccer at Lyons Creek Middle in Coconut Creek.

The investigation documents do not indicate the specific reasons why the Committee on Professional Standards recommended suspension, nor do they explain why Licata and Hepburn wanted the harsher punishment.

“Each case is independently reviewed and evaluated,” district spokesman John Sullivan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

But documents released Wednesday about the investigation into Norton reveal findings by the district’s Special Investigations Unit that likely led to the recommendation that there was “just cause” for disciplinary action.

The district’s allegations include:

— Norton had asked to have her child’s gender changed on district records in 2017, before she was hired, which investigators said was a violation of policy. When she was hired, she did not tell the district that the gender information was inaccurate, the report said.

— Norton “admitted that she had provided false documents to Lyons Creek,” listing her daughter as female on a sports form, even though the child’s birth certificate at the time listed a male boy. The birth certificate was officially changed to female several months later.