MONTPELIER, Vt. – The Vermont Agency of Education is spending $23,000 in tax money to find out if students as young as 10 years old identify as transgender.

The question – What is your gender? – is part of a pilot “school climate survey” conducted in a dozen schools by the state education department this year in anticipation of a full rollout to all schools in the 2015-16 school year, Vermont Watchdog reports.

Students are provided with four options for the gender question: male, female, transgender, or don’t want to say. The question is one of 50 sent to students in hopes of gathering data on bullying, sexual identities, race, and guns and drugs in school, according to the news site.

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“Students have opportunity to indicate how many times in the past 30 days they have harassed others, or been harassed, based on skin color, sexual identity and other variables,” Watchdog reports.

“Some questions ask students to report the prevalence of guns and knives at schools. Others ask about use of marijuana, LSD, cocaine, mushrooms, heroin, prescription drugs and glue sniffing.”

Secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Education, Rebecca Holcombe, wrote to all Vermont superintendents in December that a renewed focus on bullying is important because of racial tensions in the high-profile cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner – two black criminals who were killed by white police officers while committing crimes.

“Several incidents this past week have put school climate and culture at the front of our minds. I have been thinking of you and your students in the context of recent decisions in Ferguson and New York, and am mindful of the changing demographics of Vermont and the digital interconnectedness of our state and world,” the letter read.

“While the Brown and Garner incidents have national coverage, locally we are also working to address injustice in the form of bullying.”

Agency of Education survey coordinator Stephen Tavella told Watchdog the goal isn’t to draw any conclusions from student responses this year, but rather to test the system and create buy-in for a full scale survey of students, parents and school employees next year.

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“Tavella said the student portion of the survey is complete. Parent and faculty versions, which also gather data on transgender, are due by the end of the month,” according to the news site.

“We must be very careful about any conclusions we draw from the pilot,” he said. “This survey is a preparation for the larger survey we plan to undertake in the 2015-16 school year.”

“Our expectation for this pilot is not to necessarily have definitive, reliable results,” Tavella said.

Watchdog reports the survey costs more than $23,000 and comes amid a $113 million state budget shortfall.

None of the parents or taxpayers who learned about the survey online thought it was a good idea.

“Just when you thought things couldn’t get any nuttier in the Green Mountains,” Brooke Paige posted. “How on earth does it make any sense whatsoever to spend $100, let alone $24,000 to get children ‘as young as 10’ to identify themselves as (or possibly coax them into believing that they are) transgendered?”

“Clearly it’s time to send Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe back to the iry town from which she came,” Paige wrote.

“This is ridiculous!” Peter commented. “That notion that a person’s maleness or femaleness is different than what nature assigned to them biologically is absurd.”