District weighing policy on gendered use of bathrooms, locker rooms
Officials in the Western Beaver County School District are weighing a policy on the gendered use of bathrooms and locker rooms in the rural Beaver County school.
School directors during a Wednesday board meeting approved the first reading of the policy, titled “Use of Restroom and Locker Room Facilities,” which states that students, staff and visitors must use facilities aligning with their birth sex rather than gender identity.
The policy aims to “respect the rights of students and staff” by providing sexseparated facilities that offer “privacy, modesty and personal space as it relates to members of the opposite sex,” while preventing “sexually inappropriate” behaviors, the policy reads.
The goal, Superintendent Robert Postupac said, is to have a policy that protects the “health, safety and welfare of our students, staff and visitors to our district.”
“What we’re attempting to present to you this evening is a policy that outlines the use of facilities in our district regardless of during school, after school, at activities,” Mr. Postupac said. “We do not want a guest to come in and feel uncomfortable, we wouldn’t want a guest to use a bathroom and make our people uncomfortable. Nor would we want a student to make other students uncomfortable, nor would we want a staff member in an uncomfortable type of situation.”
The policy states that the district, which educates 726 students, will provide access to multi-user and single-user facilities — which can be used without advanced notice, permission or explanation — that are separated by sex, which the policy defines as “the biological sex classification based upon chromosomal structure and anatomy at birth.” That means, Mr. Postupac said, that “if you are identifying as a sex that’s opposite of what your birth sex was, basically you need to use the bathroom of your birth sex or use an individual bathroom.”
The policy does state that parents and guardians will register their child’s sex when enrolling them in school and present the original birth certificate. If a student has a gender identity different from their sex the student or a parent can inform the district. Gender identity is defined in the policy as someone’s “sincere and deeply held belief of identifying in good faith with their sex, the opposite sex, some aspect of both or
neither of these.” It states that “a student’s assertion of gender identity will be accepted unless District staff have a credible basis for believing that the student is asserting a particular gender identity for an improper use.”
If requested by the parent, the district will maintain record of the student’s identity “in like manner as any accompanying accommodation requests for students based on religion or disability or any other need.”
“We do have facilities that are designated by sex, male-female,” Mr. Postupac said. “And that’s who uses the bathroom. We also have single-use facilities that you can go in and lock the door, use it and be comfortable. That is available to all students, staff and visitors.”
Mr. Postupac added that having the policy will allow staff to run buildings in the evenings “knowing that we have a locker room that is designated male-female. We have a bathroom outside of the gym that is designated male-female.”
If a student violates the policy they could receive counseling, have a parent conference, lose school privileges, be excluded from school-sponsored activities, receive detention, be suspended or expelled, or be referred to police.
Discussions around bathroom and locker room use at Western Beaver comes months after the South Side Area School District, also in Beaver County, passed three policies, including one around privacy facilities, which reads similarly to the Western Beaver policy by stating that students must use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their sex at birth. Other policies passed at South Side center around students’ preferred names and pronouns as well as creating sex-based distinctions in athletics.
“These things are not new, it’s just how you deal with them, and we deal with them for the safety and comfort and convenience and modesty of our students and staff,” Mr. Postupac said.
A final reading will take place during the May 15 meeting.