This Pa. school district has reversed course after installing surveillance windows in its gender inclusive bathrooms

A Pennsylvania school district has boarded up surveillance windows it installed in gender-neutral student bathrooms earlier this year, an action that one group called “a grotesque and hateful effort” to embarrass transgender students.

The South Western School District, in Hanover, York County, earlier this school year installed windows in two gender-inclusive bathrooms at Emory H. Markle Middle School. The bathroom stalls remained private, but the windows allowed those standing or walking in the hallway to see inside the rest of the bathroom.

The school board president has said the windows, which cost the district $8,700 to purchase and install, were intended to discourage prohibited behavior, such as vaping, drug use, bullying, or cutting class. No such windows were placed in any other bathrooms.

After a York Dispatch report drew attention to the surveillance windows, the matter drew international attention. Late last week, the district boarded up the windows.

The school board ordered the surveillance windows at an August meeting “to comply with Independence Law Center guidance,” according to board documents.

But the Independence Law Center, a conservative legal group that’s an outgrowth of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which lobbies for “family values” at the state level, has disavowed the policy; it advised district officials to cover up the windows.

The law center, which in the past advised the Central Bucks School District on policies restricting books and transgender athletes, said in a statement that it “supports the goal of parents and school districts to see that everyone is treated with respect, and that the privacy rights of all students are protected. Independence Law Center always recommends privacy, including increasing privacy within existing facilities. We never suggest putting a window into restrooms with stalls.”

Privacy in multi-user bathrooms “starts at the door of the room, not the door of stalls, which have gaps and spaces all around. In such facilities, there should be no direct line of sight into multi-user bathrooms from public areas like hallways,” the law center said.

Matthew A. Gelazela, the school board president, did not return a request for comment.

South Western Superintendent Jay Burkhart said he believed the district must protect all children.

“Students are entitled to privacy and I don’t want to violate that,” Burkhart said.

Kristina A. Moon, a lawyer with the Education Law Center, said the policy was a “harmful and illegal practice,” but not surprising, given the South Western board’s prior actions, including giving teachers the right to refuse to use a student’s preferred pronouns, and requiring educators to inform parents if children ask to be called by a different name or pronoun.

South Western’s board has also enacted a policy allowing parents to opt their children out of reading teacher-chosen books the parents find objectionable.

“This is a horrifying violation of children’s privacy and cruel discrimination targeted against trans and nonbinary kids,” Moon said in a statement, of the bathroom surveillance windows. “All children have the right to use an easily accessible bathroom convenient to their classes that affords them true privacy and does not discriminate based on sex and gender identity.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said the district’s decision to install the windows was “a grotesque and hateful effort to humiliate transgender youth in front of their peers.”

A group called Citizens for Central York School District also blasted the policy.

“School board members should make all of our children feel welcome at school, not carve a hole in the bathroom wall in order to watch them during a private moment,” the group’s statement said. “That’s sick. It’s wrong. It’s inappropriate. It’s unacceptable.”

Jennifer Holahan, parent of a child at Markle Middle School, said she was relieved the bathroom windows have been covered up, and aghast at what she says is the board’s “real big anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. I would never have guessed that it would go as far as putting windows in a bathroom, though. I just can’t even wrap my brain around that.”

This article contains information from the Associated Press.