Say what? Schools putting windows in gender-inclusive restrooms so teachers can watch students

A school district in south-central Pennsylvania is drawing much criticism for a plan to put windows in its gender-inclusive restrooms.

The board at South Western School District in Hanover approved the move after consultation with the Independence Law Center, a right-wing legal nonprofit affiliated with the equally right-wing Pennsylvania Family Institute. The legal group, based in Harrisburg, Pa., has been working to influence policy in several school districts in the state, Pennsylvania newspaperThe Patriot-News reports.

Board President Matthew Gelazela told the paper that the windows would allow a view only into the nonprivate areas of the restrooms, not the stalls. But critics still say it’s an invasion of students’ privacy and specifically targets transgender and nonbinary students.

“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,” Gelazela said in an emailed statement to The Patriot-News and its website, PennLive.com. “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,” he continued. “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.”

“There is no view into those private stall spaces from outside of the restrooms,” he added.

The Advocate has sought further comment from Gelazela after being referred to him by Superintendent Jay H. Burkhart but has yet to receive a response. It’s unclear how many restrooms will be affected or when the work will begin. The board has allocated $8,700 for the project.

“This has been a progression of policies that have been provided to the school district by the Independence Law Center,” Eric Stiles, executive director of the Rainbow Rose Center, an LGBTQ+ group in York, Pa., told The Patriot-News.

“They are providing all this input into how they need to address, for lack of a better term, the scare they are going through over LGBTQI+ folks,” Stiles said. “They’ve done book banning and not using pronouns and outing students to their parents, and now this latest attempt is these bathroom windows that really call into concern the safety of students.”

Indeed, the South Western board has adopted policies allowing parents to censor or ban books, allowing teachers to ignore students’ chosen pronouns, and requiring teachers to inform parents if a student wishes to be known by a different name or pronoun than those on their official records.

Placing windows in the restrooms “is going to have a silencing effect,” Stiles said. “It increases the danger for them in trying to use the bathroom. I know from reports that they are trying to increase oversight of the wash area. That’s what they are saying. What they really want is to ensure they have the right students in the right bathroom.”

“It’s kind of eeky,” Vic Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told The Patriot-News. “Let’s be clear, this isn’t into the stalls. It strikes me as kind of creepy, but I‘m not aware of any law. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one out there.”

An editorial in the York Dispatch called the window installation “creepy and weird” and part of a “quest to punish LGBTQ+ kids.” Some parents have complained about it and said it will make their children uncomfortable in the restrooms.

Several far-right members have recently been elected to the board, and Gelazela “was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower,” the Dispatch notes. He has been a proponent of book bans, among other things, the paper reports.

The book bans and other policies being enacted at South Western are “part of an attempt to erase LGBTQ+ people,” the editorial says. The window project, it concludes, “is an invasion of privacy and a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

As for the Independence Law Center and the Pennsylvania Family Institute, they claim they’re not anti-LGBTQ+ and are simply advocates for the First Amendment, including religious freedom, and are advising school boards only when asked. The groups have opposed the inclusion of transgender girls in girls’ sports, however, and have advocated for policies making it harder for students to use their preferred pronouns as well as restricting access to certain books. They’re also strongly against abortion rights.

“In some cases folks do try to couch it in that language, the language of fairness, but very often when you listen to the public comments of the people who support these polices, they’re pretty blatantly targeting certain communities of students,” Alex Domingos of the ACLU of Pennsylvania told The Patriot-News in an earlier story. The ACLU cofounded the Pennsylvanians for Welcoming and Inclusive Schools coalition to counter the religious right groups.

“We’re seeing how these policies are being replicated,” Domingos added. “It doesn’t appear as if this is based off things that are actually happening in schools, it’s the same policies being shopped around to districts with alarming speed.”