After voting down a similar policy, Perkiomen Valley passes restroom rule based on ‘anatomy at birth’

The Perkiomen Valley School District has decided to bar transgender students from using restrooms aligned with their gender identities.

The school board on Monday approved a policy specifying that multi-user restrooms are for students “based on their sex” — a 5-4 vote that followed a month of heated debate sparked by a man who said his daughter was distressed after believing a boy was in a high school girls’ restroom.

The comments, first relayed on social media, touched off a firestorm of controversy: While administrators said transgender students have been allowed to use restrooms matching their gender identities without incident, some parents — and school board members — expressed anger that they weren’t aware of the district’s policy.

Hundreds of students walked out of the high school last month, holding signs that read “Respect girls’ rights” and “Stay in your bathroom.”

LGBTQ students and supporters, meanwhile, pleaded with the board to not enact a policy that they said would marginalize already vulnerable students.

While the board initially moved last month to adopt a policy that would have restricted restroom usage based on “biological sex,” one board member changed his mind, causing adoption of the policy to fail.

That board member, Don Fountain, instead suggested the district make some of its high school restrooms “nonbinary,” accommodating any student. The board’s policy committee last month directed administrators to consider that proposal.

But on Monday, the board instead put forward a policy similar to its original proposal — with Fountain’s agreement. Board members said the updated version would limit multi-user facilities based on sex, but allow for more single-use restrooms to be available to any student, including restrooms previously restricted to staff members.

“A lot of the students would be able to benefit from this, probably better than any other compromise we could come up with,” Fountain said Monday.

Advocates for LGBTQ students say that restricting any access to multi-user restrooms is discriminatory, because it doesn’t allow transgender students the same access as their peers.

In 2018, a federal appeals court upheld the nearby Boyertown Area School District’s policy allowing transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their gender identity, rejecting the appeal of six students who said they were uncomfortable after seeing transgender teens using the restrooms of their choice.

“There is no legal basis for a district to refuse students’ right to use the bathroom or locker room that aligns with their gender identity,” said Ashli Giles-Perkins, attorney for the Education Law Center. “We are appalled that districts like Perkiomen Valley have adopted discriminatory policies aimed squarely at trans and nonbinary students.”

Giles-Perkins called on the district to reverse its policy and also urged the Pennsylvania Department of Education to issue “long-overdue guidance that reflects federal guidelines to protect, not cause additional harm to, transgender and nonbinary youth.”

Superintendent Barbara Russell said administrators had been communicating with counselors Tuesday to support transgender students.

“For some, it’s not a big deal — they’ve been using single-user facilities,” said Russell, who has said about 1% of Perkiomen Valley High School’s 1,700 students are transgender. “For others, it will be a change.”

Russell, who had questioned the need for a new restroom policy — noting that the district has a policy prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity — said the district was sorting through other issues around implementation.

“What we expect is that our students will follow the rules, staff will uphold the rules and redirect students if necessary,” Russell said. She said that “at this point, our staff have not been assigned to monitor restroom use.”

The question of how the policy would be enforced provoked a heated argument during Monday’s board meeting, when one board member asked how teachers would assess a student’s sex — defined under the policy as “the biological sex classification based upon chromosomal structure and anatomy at birth.”

Rowan Keenan, a proponent of the policy, responded by criticizing an alternate policy put forward by Democrats that would have enabled students to use the restroom “that corresponds to the gender identity they consistently assert at school.” (That policy failed Monday, in a 5-4 vote.)

“I’ve been identifying as a woman for more than a year. I grew a beard,” Keenan said.

“Mr. Keenan, you’re being hateful,” board member Laura White interrupted, accusing Keenan of mocking transgender people. A man in the auditorium then began shouting at her.

Keenan said that he was “here to protect women,” to which White responded, “I am a woman.”

One girl, a 17-year-old senior, told the board its new policy wouldn’t prevent sexual harassment or abuse. She also urged the board to think about someone they loved who was a member of a minority.

“Think about going to school and work and having their safety threatened,” she said. “That’s how these kids in the school are feeling.”