HANOVER, Pa. — South Western School District parents are raising concerns over the district's bathroom policy, after noticeable renovations were made to the gender-neutral bathrooms at Emory H. Markel Middle School.
Jennifer Holahan said her son sent her pictures showing a window that was cut into the wall of the bathroom a week and a half ago.
“It didn’t register to him that that was what he was using, because he’s assigned to use a restroom per where his classroom is," said Holahan. "But he was alarmed that windows were put in.”
Holahan posted the pictures on Facebook, which she said garnered a lot of reaction from parents and some teachers. She said several parents told her that their kids were scared to use that bathroom.
“There’s no barriers in there, so you can hear everything that goes on, which is pretty troublesome for kids," said Holahan. "You feel like even though you’re not being watched, you do feel watched.”
In August 2023, the South Western School Board voted to adopt a new bathroom policy for its students. The new policy gives students three sets of bathrooms to use based on a student's sex assigned at birth, gender identity, or single-use gender-neutral bathroom.
FOX43 reached out to the South Western School District for comment about the windows in the gender-neutral bathroom.
School Board President Matthew Gelazela released the following statement:
As Southwestern School District engages in renovating multiuser restroom facilities, it has an interest in opening a view into the nonprivate area of those facilities in a similar fashion to what has existed for years in our elementary schools. In making the area outside of stalls more viewable, we are better able to monitor for a multitude of prohibited activities such as any possible vaping, drug use, bullying or absenteeism.
Our students should not consider the space outside of our stalls as private within the multiuser restrooms. Our current policy states "In any facility in a District school that is for use based on Gender Identity, in which a person may be in a state of undress in the presence of others, school personnel shall provide private changing areas for use." Areas between our stalls and sinks in multiuser restrooms are not private changing areas under that policy.
The current gender identity bathrooms are undergoing construction to add additional privacy to the stalls from within the restroom and there is no view into those private stall spaces from outside of the restrooms.
Holahan believes the school board needs to revisit its policy, so that all students are able to have equal access to the bathroom.
“Anything that makes another human feel unsafe, or like they can’t use a restroom, that is not the answer," she said.