Community members surrounding the White County High School of Cleveland, Georgia are standing up to those upset over the fact that students elected transgender student Willow Polangco-Kenney as their prom king last month. Polangco-Kenney herself has spoken out, noting that people’s hatred has overlooked the prom queen’s beauty and the student body’s love and support.
Junior and senior students at the school (which has approximately 1,140 students) elected the royal couple by vote at the end-of-year dance event. The attendees chose Polangco-Kenney, a trans-femme theatre arts student who was assigned a male gender at birth, as prom king and Katie Nanney, a cisgender Christian girl, as prom queen.
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After images of the royal couple began circulating online, White County School Superintendent Jonathan Stribling issued an April 20 letter addressed to the community in which he encouraged “open and respectful dialogue” but wrote, “Let me be clear: the actions and personal choices of an individual student at a school event do not represent a shift in the mission, values, or educational priorities of White County Schools.”
“School-sponsored events like prom are meant to be celebratory occasions for students and families,” Stribling wrote. “While we establish guidelines for conduct and attire, there are limits to how far schools can and should regulate individual expression,” he added, noting, “There was no violation of the code of conduct” at the prom.
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He said the district “is not promoting any political or social agenda” and remains focused on “student safety, academic excellence, character development, and preparing students for responsible citizenship.”
In an April 19 Instagram video, Polangco-Kenney said that people shouldn’t be mad at the school because its administrators have never supported her gender identity.
“At White County High School, I’m not supported. I am not safe,” she said. “I had to get special provisions to even let me use a restroom because there’s not an accessible restroom downstairs at the Performing Arts Center, which accessible restrooms are supposed to be a thing everywhere. And I get looked at like I’m crazy and told absolutely insane things just because I have to go pee, and there’s a whole procedure for me. There is so much that I have to deal with, and it’s all so that the school doesn’t have to acknowledge or support me.”
“But you know who does support me? [It’s] the student body,” she continued. “The other students are wonderful people, and a lot of them happen to love love and happen to love when people are able to express themselves and happen to believe in the American idea of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and none of that comes from the school. The school does not support that.”
I feel like, maybe, by the mere act of existing and being prom royalty with [the prom queen], I have taken away an amount of spotlight that is now being occupied entirely by people’s hatred, when really we should be celebrating how awesome [she] is.”
Willow Polangco-Kenney, trans prom queen of White County High School in Cleveland, Georgia
In a separate April 19 video, she said “I think that we need to acknowledge the real biggest takeaway of this situation, which is that people care way more about what they hate than what they love, because people are not talking nearly enough about how freaking awesome it is that Katie Nanney won prom queen!”
“Katie Nanney is a wonderful human being,” Polangco-Kenney continued. “She is so kind. She is so caring. She gives so many people so much joy, and she makes your day every time you talk to her, and she’s just great and she absolutely deserved it, and I’m so happy she got it and she was just like ecstatic about it.”
“And I want to apologize, honestly, because I feel like, maybe, by the mere act of existing and being prom royalty with her, I have taken away an amount of spotlight that is now being occupied entirely by people’s hatred, when really we should be celebrating how awesome Katie is.”
In response to the video, Nanney wrote to Polangco-Kenney, “You are truly the kindest human. I am so grateful to know you, thank you.”
Kara Zajac, a queer woman who lives near White County with her wife and daughter, wrote of Polangco-Kenney’s election, stating, “I had never been so proud of that student’s courage for being true to herself and not hiding, and of White County’s students for their inclusivity.”
“It seemed the students had adopted a live-and-let-live attitude, one of compassion, acceptance, and understanding, the opposite of the anti-trans hatred that has dominated news headlines for several years,” Zajac added.
She noted that a local pastor wrote a Facebook post criticizing the school for allowing Polangco-Kenney to win, lamenting society’s “woke agenda,” and expressing embarrassment for being an alum of the school. However, the pastor edited their post and stopped allowing comments after many commenters opposed his message.
“All I can hope is that maybe that experience opened the pastor’s mind a little, that it helped him see that this student could be his child, or sibling, or friend, who’s afraid to reveal their true self because of his rigid religious beliefs,” Zajac wrote.
White County, Georgia has about 29,800 residents, is 94.4% white, and voted for the current president by a margin of 84.02% in 2024, according to the U.S. Census and EnhancedVoting.com.
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