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Despite the air of confidence he typically wore through the halls, 17-year-old Kadence Carter suffered through most days at Mayde Creek High School in Katy. 

Several of his classmates constantly bullied and misgendered Kadence, a transgender male. He wore multiple chest binders every day to school, which dug aching craters into his shoulders and stained his skin with bruises. He avoided drinking water the entire eight-hour school day so he wouldn’t need to use the boys’ bathroom, where he worried about getting beaten up. 

The unrelenting struggles Kadence faced came to a head in August 2023, when the Katy Independent School District board of trustees passed a controversial gender identity policy opposed by many LGBTQ+ students and advocates. One day after the policy went into effect, a teacher held up the attendance roster in front of Kadence, pointed to his deadname and said, “We’re going back to this one now,” he recalled.

Two weeks later, Kadence walked out of Mayde Creek High for the last time.

“I feel like I’ve missed out on a big part of growing up,” Kadence said. “I’m not gonna graduate. I’m not gonna get my cap and gown. I’m not gonna go to prom. … I keep telling myself that I don’t care. But at the end of the day, I’m missing out on something that most kids get.”

Kadence and his former school district sit at the center of a national, politically-infused divide over how schools should support children as more young people than ever come out as transgender. 

Earlier this school year, Katy’s conservative school board became one of the first in Greater Houston to pass a policy that requires staff to disclose students’ gender identity to parents and allow employees to reject students’ requests to use different pronouns, among other protocols. 

But for opponents of the policy and LGBTQ+ advocates, Kadence’s story embodies one of the worst fears about the impact of such guidelines: that they can drive transgender children out of school systems entirely. As of mid-January, district officials had contacted the parents of 23 children to notify them of name or pronoun changes, records obtained by the Houston Landing show.

Katy board members narrowly passed their policy, 4-3, during a seven-hour meeting, where the overwhelming majority of nearly 100 community members testified against it. Katy’s board president, Victor Perez, said in an interview that it’s “not the school’s business to be keeping secrets from parents.”

“The policy wasn’t intended to be hostile at all, to any group,” Perez said. “The last thing a teacher would want to do is be hostile.”

But that wasn’t the case for Kadence, who described an even-more hostile school environment immediately after the policy went into effect, leading him to drop out.

“They haven’t been through the experience of feeling alienated,” Kadence said. “When someone’s telling you every day that you aren’t who you say you are, you start to question yourself. You start to believe the things that they tell you, that you’re inherently a bad person because you were born a certain way.”

Acceptance, then defeat 

Kadence began questioning his identity when he was in sixth grade. Over the next few years, he came out as bisexual, and then nonbinary. Something still didn’t feel right. Then, when he was 14, the realization came swiftly: I’m transgender. 

It scared him into a short spell of secrecy. 

“There was a time where I felt like I physically couldn’t say it. I would try and find a good time to tell my parents and when that time finally came, I couldn’t get the words out,” Kadence said. “Not because I thought my dad wouldn’t support me, but because I was afraid of what that would mean for me, if I stopped denying it.”

Nowadays, when his grandpa sends him cards with “Mr. Kadence” scrawled across the envelope, it feels like everything has finally clicked into place. “Mr. Kadence” is who he was always meant to be.

William Carter has supported his son from the second he found the courage to come out. Their bond is strengthened through the small things — the long drives they take together, the at-home Pride celebrations William throws, the way William uses his hand to sign “I love you” when Kadence is overwhelmed. Nothing is more important to Kadence than his dad. 

At school, several of Kadence’s peers routinely bullied him, but teachers were generally more supportive. He sent an email about his identity to all of his teachers at the beginning of each semester, asking them to call him Kadence, not the name listed on the attendance sheet. The extra step protected him from being deadnamed, and also helped him identify which teachers were most accepting of him.

But that changed when Katy trustees introduced their gender policy last August.

Kadence planned to spend the evening of August 28, 2023, like he does most others: playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends, watching TV with his dad or working on an art project. Instead, he stood outside Katy’s at-capacity boardroom, furiously typing a scathing, last-minute speech in his iPhone Notes app.

Like the nearly 100 people before him, he approached the podium to warn trustees of the policy’s potential harmful impact. He projected confidence while anxiety swelled inside. He’d never advocated for something so publicly. It was both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. 

Trustees engaged in a heated debate about the policy, a few eager to delay its adoption due to questions surrounding how it would impact students and teachers. Trustee Rebecca Fox said board members were wasting time better spent on other academic issues, and she worried it could open the district up to legal risk. (In November 2023, a local advocacy group filed a federal civil rights complaint against the district, citing a Houston Landing report about how often the policy had been employed.) 

The dispute gave a brief feeling of hope to critics.

“It was surreal. For a moment, I felt like I was actually heard,” Kadence said. “I felt like my voice was actually going to mean something. But it didn’t do anything.”

Ultimately, the policy passed by the slimmest possible margin.

‘There’s no hunting’

When Kadence returned to school and one of his teachers pointed to his deadname, he made a beeline for the library, where he often took refuge. As he calmed himself by sorting a pile of books, he decided: I can’t do this anymore. 

It all had gotten to be too much. The constant bullying, the intolerance, the physical and mental energy it took to make it through each day. Kadence couldn’t envision a world in which school got easier — it only seemed to be getting worse, and fast. 

That night, Kadence and his father made plans to enroll him in online classes. He left Mayde Creek High in mid-September. 

Perez, the Katy board president, said the policy boils down to one key priority: informing parents about what their kids are going through. Perez said he isn’t aware of any issues with unaccepting parents. 

“It’s not like, ‘OK, I think that this person is transgender, so I’m gonna call their parents.’ … There’s no hunting,” Perez said. “If the student decides to keep that a secret, nothing happens. It’s not like an outing. … We have to assume that most parents are good, loving parents and are gonna do what’s best for the child.”

Perez said the policy also protects teachers from making uncomfortable decisions regarding students’ gender identity, such as keeping it a secret from parents.

“What does the teacher do if you have a parent-teacher conference or you run into them at the grocery store?” Perez said. “Is the teacher then supposed to engage in deceiving the parent?”

Perez added that teachers in other districts have been “threatened to lose their job if they don’t abide by the request of a name change.” Public school administrators in Florida, Ohio and Virginia have disciplined teachers who refused — often on religious grounds — to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns, though such cases are rare.

But while Perez said the policy isn’t meant to persecute students for being transgender, Kadence and his father argue it’s done just that. William said the policy stating teachers don’t need to obey a child’s pronoun or name change gave Kadence’s teacher permission to reject his identity in a malicious manner.

“(The policy) just empowered people to be cruel,” William said. “It’s basically saying, ‘I don’t have to respect anything about you if I don’t want to, and I’m not going to, because I don’t agree with your identity (and) who you are.’ That’s wrong.”

Trial and error

After dropping out, Kadence enrolled in an online school. But when his bedroom became his classroom, he floundered. 

Kadence’s mental health suffered for several months. He spent many of his days at home from dawn to dusk. He stayed awake until the early morning hours and slept for much of the day. At the end of the day, he felt numbness toward nearly everything. 

“The routine of actually getting up to go to the school, interacting with people more frequently and things like that — it’s pretty much gone out the window,” William said. 

Online school became so overwhelming it felt pointless to even try. At Mayde Creek High, his individualized education plan, or IEP, ensured teachers gave him extra reminders and kept him on track. At home, his mind never stopped wandering from his laptop screen — until hours passed and his assignment sat untouched. As the weeks went on, his incomplete work piled up insurmountably.

“Personally, I need in-person learning,” Kadence said. “And unfortunately, I can’t have that.”

So in December, for the second time that year, he submitted un-enrollment forms. William knows his son needs more structure and accountability, so they are now exploring GED programs. What comes after that, however, is unclear. 

“I was originally planning on going to college, but I don’t know if I’m gonna do that anymore because I haven’t had a good experience with the school system in general,” Kadence said. “I don’t want to put myself through that again.”

Still, William breathes easier knowing Kadence is at home. He no longer worries about Kadence’s safety every day. He’d rather his son take an unconventional path to his future than be unsafe or unhealthy in the present. 

Mayde Creek High English teacher Anita Wadwha believes her former student will succeed no matter what route he takes, because he is strong-willed and well-supported. 

But Kadence’s vacant desk in the back of her seventh-period class was dispiriting for bigger reasons, Wadwha said. 

“This school district has failed him,” Wadwha said. “I think it’s a shame that this policy throws out one of my most promising students. … This is now yet another way to push those (transgender) students out of the school district.”

Cautiously optimistic 

For now, Kadence is focused on finding contentment in the little things that make up each day — not the overwhelming bigger picture. 

Kadence and William moved in February to League City, the Galveston County suburb where Kadence spent his early childhood, aiming for a fresh start. The change ignited Kadence’s artistic inspiration. As he wanders through the house in mid-February, he announces his vision for its decor: a line of candles along the sill of a tall arched window, a little nook with a desk tucked inside of his bedroom closet.

He’s also taking better care of himself. He said he’s trying to get more comfortable going out in public without binding his chest “to an unsafe point,” like he did every day at school.  

“Since coming to the conclusion that (online school) wasn’t working and making the change there, things have gotten better,” William said of his son. “He’s less stressed out. I think his mental health is a bit better. He seems, I’ll guardedly say, optimistic about the future.”

Still, Kadence longs for some parts of his old life in Katy — before the gender policy, before that teacher delivered the final blow. He wishes things didn’t end up the way they did. 

“In a perfect world, my story would be the last of its kind,” Kadence said. 

He knows that’s not likely. School boards and education leaders are starting to implement similar policies across the nation. Kadence fears for transgender kids with unsupportive parents. For kids who haven’t figured out who they’re meant to be. For those now scared to try.

“There are kids in my position who are being affected by this policy who can’t speak out about it,” Kadence said. “It affects those I care about. And it affects people that I don’t even know that I care about, because they’ve been through similar things. 

“That’s something that I wish people would feel more often — even if something doesn’t affect you directly, still care.”

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