Virginia's Loudoun County schools unveil $11M plan to install co-ed bathrooms
Michael Rivera, Loudoun County, Virginia father of two, criticizes the local school district's $11 million push to eliminate sex-based bathrooms.
Sex-specific bathrooms are out, and gender-neutral spaces are being forced in. The eradication of women’s privacy is no longer theoretical — and Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) continues to trailblaze the implementation of woke policies at the expense of student safety.
LCPS recently confirmed plans to construct new, gender-neutral bathrooms in two high schools next fall, all at the low cost of $11 million tax-payer dollars. Floor-to-ceiling bathroom stalls will be attached to a shared sink corridor in place of sex-specific restrooms. The district is also considering similar changes for locker room facilities.
Loudoun County parents should be alarmed — not only by the price of such changes, but also because of the privacy concerns of floor-to-ceiling bathroom stalls, and lastly, because of the principles behind these policy changes. LCPS is willing to exchange separated spaces for a solution that endangers students.
Loudoun County consistently ranks as one of the wealthiest counties in the nation. Unsurprisingly, because school funding is largely based on local property taxes, the Loudoun County Public School district has a hefty annual budget. If approved, the total budget for FY24 at LCPS will be nearly $1.6 billion dollars.
According to LCPS, only .1 percent of the annual budget is allocated for the cost of capital projects, and 10% for maintenance. Alongside the five percent pay bump that teachers will receive and the $3 million dollars that will be given to Teachers Unions, LCPS has announced that $11 million dollars will be spent renovating only two of its 16 high schools’ restrooms.
While some Loudounite parents have announced their support of this change via social media, others have taken to Twitter to complain about the blatant disregard for taxpayer’s wishes.
$11 million dollars may be a small percentage of LCPS’s bloated budget, but the dollar amount is nothing compared to the price students’ health and safety will pay after new shared bathrooms are installed.
Studies show that women tend to avoid bathroom usage for unhealthy amounts of time when away from the home (can’t we all relate?). Whether it be because of safety or privacy concerns, or just because of personal hygiene preferences, women avoid public spaces to take care of their private business. Teenage girls, who have a heightened sense of insecurity, follow the same pattern. One need not think very long about the implications of gender-neutral bathrooms on young high schoolers. Although floor-to-ceiling stalls are more private than partitioned toilets, girls will have to walk through a group of both male and female peers to reach the restroom. It is reasonable to assume that many girls will feel deeply uncomfortable and will avoid using toilets at school altogether.
While floor-to-ceiling bathroom stalls are the norm in some European countries, Americans opt for partitioned restrooms for a few reasons. Safety is one major factor. In case of a medical emergency — such as drug overdose, which has been a persistent problem in DC metro area high schools — first responders have quick access to individuals in need of medical assistance. Although partitioned bathrooms are less private than the floor-to-ceiling stalls proposed by LCPS, the new facade of privacy invites room for sexual abuse and rape — another set of problems not foreign to LCPS.
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Signs in favor of Policy 8040 outside Loudoun County Public Schools. (Fox News Digital)
Lockable stalls in spaces shared by men and women will exacerbate problems that already exist in Loudoun County. Rather than create shared restroom spaces where all students will be forced to congregate, the district should consider the enforcement of sex-separated bathrooms where women will not only feel safe, but actually be protected from sexual predators.
Students and children continue to be the unconsenting experiment subjects of progressive policies. The creation of gender-neutral bathrooms, where girls are asked to silence their discomfort and share spaces with men (who are in some cases four or five years older than themselves), is unreasonable and unsafe.
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Transgender and non-binary students already have special accommodations at LCPS — all 16 high schools are required to allow transgender students to use preferred bathrooms — which has proven severely problematic in the last few years since the policy change took place. How far must the students bend for the wishes of a few, at the expense of student safety?
Girls should not be asked to sacrifice their actual safety to appease the progressive school board members of Loudoun County. If adults are unwilling to share bathroom spaces with the opposite sex, why are we forcing our children — the most vulnerable of our population — to do so? This is a social experiment with destructive outcomes; a social experiment that will have disastrous consequences if carried through.
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