Friday, January 17, 2025
Several parents in the Rockville Centre school district are voicing concerns about transgender students being given access to bathrooms and locker rooms based on the gender they feel most comfortable identifying with.
At the Board of Education meeting on Dec. 12 in the South Side High School auditorium, more than a dozen parents urged the district to reverse the policy, despite state and federal requirements that prohibit public school districts from denying a student use of a restroom due to gender identity.
Parents expressed fears that providing such access to students could potentially put others in harm’s way. They also expressed frustration over a lack of parental consultation about what they perceived to be a new policy on the issue.
William Cooney, a Rockville Centre resident, said that he was frustrated with the response by district administrators after the November school board meeting, at which he posed a series of questions on the subject.
“The answers provided were almost entirely deflections based on the clearly erroneous position that district policy permitting students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex is not a policy change,” Cooney said. “Superintendent (Matthew) Gaven said nothing about state law requiring this. If the board wishes to restore some measure of credibility it has lost, it will climb down from the position that there is no policy change, and that the district has had no choice but to permit students to use bathrooms and locker rooms for the opposite sex since 2019. That was not what the district policy was in 2023, and it is not how the district interpreted state law in 2023.”
Many parents expressed concerns about what they believed to be a new policy, but the district has stated that it has not implemented any new policies on genders and bathroom use, and has been following state law since 2019.
Rachel Ferrick, who has three children in the district, said that despite state law requirements, she intends to teach her children that “sex is binary.”
“This is not just an issue of bathrooms,” Ferrick said. “It is an issue of teaching our children, especially our daughters, to be compliant — to remain silent even when your instincts are screaming that something is not right. To be polite and just shut up and take it, lest we offend someone.”
The State Education Department, in a 2023 report on creating a safe, supportive and affirming school environment for transgender and gender-expansive students, stated that public schools can provide alternative single-stall “all gender” restrooms or private changing spaces on request. The department further stated, however, that the option must never be forced on students as the only alternative.
“Our district has long provided gender-neutral, single-occupancy bathroom options for any students or staff who wish to use them, which is in accordance with Education Law 409-m,” Gaven said in a statement. “This established practice is not a response to any recent policy changes. Pursuant to the New York State Human Rights Law, school districts in New York must allow students to use the bathroom that is consistent with their gender identity and to provide all students the option of choosing to utilize the single occupancy bathrooms for any reason.”
According to the state’s Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, public schools are not permitted to ask transgender or gender-expansive students to use a single-stall restroom because of someone else’s concerns, or require medical or any other documentation for the use of restrooms, locker rooms or residential facilities.
“I just want to make it clear that this was not a policy that this board implemented, and it’s not specific to Rockville Centre,” school board President Kelly Barry said after the public comment portion of last week’s meeting. “This board did not create a new policy in our manual addressing this issue.”
The district’s legal counselor, whose firm represents 195 districts across the state, said that all public schools are required to adhere to state law requirements for restroom accessibility.
