TUCKERTON, N.J. (AP) – For nine years, he was Mr. McBeth, a substitute teacher who kept things moving along in the classroom and filled in ably when the regular teacher was out sick.

And then one September, he was Miss McBeth.

The sex-change operation William McBeth underwent in 2005 roiled this rural, conservative area when she applied to be rehired as a substitute in Eagleswood Township. Parents packed a school board meeting last winter, some decrying what they termed an experiment, with their young children as guinea pigs; others supported her right to be who she is and work at what she does best.

But then a strange thing happened a few months later: When McBeth was up for a job at a different school in the area, no one protested. In fact, no one voiced an opinion at all when she was hired.

“There’s no doubt about it; they’ve calmed down,” said McBeth, a retired marketing executive and divorced father of three.

“There’s no reason I shouldn’t teach,” said McBeth, 72, who still has the deep voice and facial lines of a male, but has light blonde hair and physical features of a female. “Look at me as a person: Am I qualified to teach? Yes. Do I have experience? Yes. Do I have a good report card from the schools? Yes. I have nothing to hide, and I’m proud of who I am.”

McBeth had a sex change operation in May 2005 at a hospital in Wisconsin, after a long process of psychological evaluation, hormone therapy and electrolysis.

McBeth said she erred by not keeping her certification as a substitute teacher current while she was out of work during the surgery. That required her to reapply, and set the stage for a contentious school board meeting in Eagleswood in February. One parent, Mark Schnepp, took out a full-page ad in a local newspaper urging parents to oppose the hiring.

“This person taught as a man, left for a year, and came back as a woman,” Schnepp said. “My biggest problem is it’s very young children in the Eagleswood school. For the young ones, it could cause tremendous confusion.”

But Scott Rodas, whose son is a third-grader in Eagleswood, said McBeth’s hiring “should have been a no-brainer.”

“We should give enough credit to our children to know that someone like this isn’t going to hurt them,” he said.

Karina Mari, who has a transgender relative, recalled some of the comments at the meeting as hateful.

“Some of the statements were made as though they [transgender people] were monsters, not real, or perverted, which is really not true,” she said. “They’re just regular people who were born into the wrong body.”

The Eagleswood board voted 4-1 to rehire McBeth. She has subbed once there since then.

In September, McBeth was up for a substitute job with the Pinelands Regional school system in Tuckerton. This time, there was no opposition. No one at the meeting even spoke about her hiring.

“Make no mistake: Lily McBeth is one of the most important figures in New Jersey civil rights history over the past two decades,” said Steven Goldstein, president of Garden State Equality, a GLBT rights group.

The issue first arose in New Jersey in 1975 when a transgender teacher was fired from Bernards Township. The courts upheld the dismissal.

Goldstein and McBeth said there is currently one other transgender teacher working in New Jersey, who does not wish to be identified. Nationally, they said, there are about 20, although many more are “transitioning” and have not yet undergone the surgery.