The issue of gender-inclusive school bathrooms has in recent years bedeviled many school districts, but a York County school district took a controversial approach that critics are saying violates privacy rights. The South Western School District is drawing scrutiny for its plan to install windows in gender-inclusive bathrooms, allowing teachers and other students to look inside. The school board ordered district officials to cut holes in the bathroom walls in order to be able to surveil students while they use the restrooms.
So-called gender-inclusive bathrooms are generally offered for the use of transgender, nonbinary and other gender-expansive students. In an email statement sent to PennLive, board president Matthew Gelazela, said the renovations would impact only public areas of the bathrooms. “As Southwestern School District engages in renovating multiuser restroom facilities, it has an interest in opening a view into the non private area of those facilities in similar fashion to what has existed for years in our elementary schools,” he wrote.
“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.” PennLive requested an interview with the superintendent but calls were not immediately returned. Gelazela distinguished the boundaries of the space inside bathrooms.
“Our students should not consider the space outside of our stalls as .
