School District Refuses To Cave, Enforces Policy To Keep Bathrooms and Locker Rooms Separated by Biological Sex
As some schools across the country have begun to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex based on how a person may identify their own gender, Eastern Lancaster County School District in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, refused to do so.
Despite threats of legal action from left-wing groups, board members at ELANCO school district instead stood firm to protect students from encountering the opposite sex in locker rooms and bathrooms.
In the face of legal threats, the board members at ELANCO School District chose instead to protect students’ bodily privacy from members of the opposite sex by voting to continue to separate multi-user facilities based on biological sex rather than what a student believes about his or her gender, Lancaster Online reported.
In the spring of 2019, the school board passed a written policy to keep all multi-user bathrooms and locker rooms separated based on biological sex. The policy went into effect at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, as per a board statement.
This means that in any privacy facility (like a bathroom, shower or locker room) where more than one person is permitted to be at the same time, members of the opposite sex may not enter.
Instead, the policy will provide single-user spaces that will be simply labeled “bathroom,” or “changing room,” and can be used one-at-a-time by either sex, like the bathroom in residential homes.
For students who may not want to use the multi-user bathroom based on biological sex, the school says that as of the beginning of the school year, there will be 13 single-user restrooms available to all students for any reason — no special permission required.
And the school just voted to dramatically increase the number of single-user privacy facilities, by eliminating multi-user locker rooms where students change all-together.
Gone are the group showers and changing areas, replaced with completely private changing rooms.
“ELANCO prides itself in not simply providing reasonable accommodations to those who need them, but going above and beyond to provide extraordinary accommodations for all its students,” the board wrote.
And that might be an understatement because the cost estimates for removing locker rooms and replacing them with private changing rooms amounts somewhere to the tune of $2.4 million, Lancaster Online reported.
“To be absolutely clear, we seek to accommodate any student in need of an accommodation because we believe accommodations can help all students to thrive,” the board wrote its most recent statement.
“We also want to preserve bodily privacy in spaces that exist to provide privacy from those with the opposite anatomy. Some might say it’s an impossible task to balance all those interests. But it is one we’re working to implement.”
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