How do you feel about genderless restrooms in schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The things that go on in bathrooms at schools are disturbing. All bathrooms should be singular. That way, gender does not matter but it is also safe and private.

This. It was disturbing what was going on in school bathrooms when I was a kid in the 80s. I am amazed that schools have not gone to individual bathrooms.

Perhaps the cost and space to makes dozens of individual bathrooms is a reason they don't do that. And there is nothing to keep multiple people from going to an individual bathroom to get stoned if they want to. The idea just has no value.

The kids can get stoned or have sex, and no one else has to see them or be afraid to go into an open bathroom.

It won't cost a whole lot to have a few individual bathrooms in each school. You don't need "dozens" just a few to go along with the regular bathrooms, like any shopping mall or most retail stores in the country already have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why was this even posted on the private school forum without any context? Maybe the thread should moved to general education posts since much of the commentary seems to relate to bathroom issues and public schools.

Because a couple of local privates have implemented this.

Good for them. They know their audience and can respond more quickly. Why would you want to pay huge prices to send your kid to private school and have them have to deal with bullies in the restroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post reads as yet another attempt to lob a culture war bomb into the room and watch people run in terror as it explodes. I don't know of a single independent school in the area that has multi-stall gender-neutral bathrooms. All of them are single-stall bathrooms. As posters have mentioned, bad stuff happens in whatever type of bathroom you have. Given the nature of the business you do in there, it's one of the few places in a school that offers any semblance of privacy, which means some kids will take advantage of it.

Our k-8 has multi-stall (something like 3 or 4) gender neutral bathrooms. Another poster mentioned theirs did too.

I mentioned ours but only one student goes in at a time, hence the “occupied” sign on the door. It’s a total non-issue.

"
Sounds good. Hopefully nobody abuses the "occupied" sign to keep others out -- i.e. if two kids went in at the same time to hook up etc.

I see the pros and cons of both sides of the argument for genderless facility, but if any abuse ever happens as a result of this, it will be a grave mistake.

Our school is small (less than 100 in grades 6-8) and the bathrooms are right outside the classrooms so pretty well monitored. A sexual assault is no more likely in a single-use than a multi-stall bathroom but nice try with your fear no getting.

Interesting. Where's your data for this?

Extensive study linked in this article. Feel free to share countering data and reports, if such exists.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna911106

There is no evidence that letting transgender people use public facilities that align with their gender identity increases safety risks, according to a new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. The study is the first of its kind to rigorously test the relationship between nondiscrimination laws in public accommodations and reports of crime in public restrooms and other gender-segregated facilities.

“Opponents of public accommodations laws that include gender identity protections often claim that the laws leave women and children vulnerable to attack in public restrooms,” said lead author Amira Hasenbush. “But this study provides evidence that these incidents are rare and unrelated to the laws.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The things that go on in bathrooms at schools are disturbing. All bathrooms should be singular. That way, gender does not matter but it is also safe and private.

This. It was disturbing what was going on in school bathrooms when I was a kid in the 80s. I am amazed that schools have not gone to individual bathrooms.

Perhaps the cost and space to makes dozens of individual bathrooms is a reason they don't do that. And there is nothing to keep multiple people from going to an individual bathroom to get stoned if they want to. The idea just has no value.

The kids can get stoned or have sex, and no one else has to see them or be afraid to go into an open bathroom.

It won't cost a whole lot to have a few individual bathrooms in each school. You don't need "dozens" just a few to go along with the regular bathrooms, like any shopping mall or most retail stores in the country already have.

It absolutely will cost a lot to build individual bathrooms where none exist. Think about what it would cost to add one to your house and designing where it would go. If the problem is behavior, then address the problem of behavior.

[Anonymous]

I'd be fine with multi stall unisex bathrooms. We had them at my college, and it was fine.

[Anonymous]

My kid's ECE and even grades 1-3 classrooms have these. Maybe that's because it is just a bathroom off the (Montessori) classroom. There are two stalls, one with a toilet and one with a urinal.

I get that there are other issues as kids get older. But perhaps people should be explicit about what precisely they think those issues are. Fights/assaults/drugs/etc seem like a call for all restrooms being single-stall, single bathrooms. But OP doesn't seem to be worried about those things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd be fine with multi stall unisex bathrooms. We had them at my college, and it was fine.

Hell, we had multi stall unisex SHOWERS at my college and it was fine.

But MS and HS kids don't know how to act.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post reads as yet another attempt to lob a culture war bomb into the room and watch people run in terror as it explodes. I don't know of a single independent school in the area that has multi-stall gender-neutral bathrooms. All of them are single-stall bathrooms. As posters have mentioned, bad stuff happens in whatever type of bathroom you have. Given the nature of the business you do in there, it's one of the few places in a school that offers any semblance of privacy, which means some kids will take advantage of it.

Our k-8 has multi-stall (something like 3 or 4) gender neutral bathrooms. Another poster mentioned theirs did too.

I mentioned ours but only one student goes in at a time, hence the “occupied” sign on the door. It’s a total non-issue.

"
Sounds good. Hopefully nobody abuses the "occupied" sign to keep others out -- i.e. if two kids went in at the same time to hook up etc.

I see the pros and cons of both sides of the argument for genderless facility, but if any abuse ever happens as a result of this, it will be a grave mistake.

Our school is small (less than 100 in grades 6-8) and the bathrooms are right outside the classrooms so pretty well monitored. A sexual assault is no more likely in a single-use than a multi-stall bathroom but nice try with your fear no getting.

Interesting. Where's your data for this?

Extensive study linked in this article. Feel free to share countering data and reports, if such exists.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna911106

There is no evidence that letting transgender people use public facilities that align with their gender identity increases safety risks, according to a new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. The study is the first of its kind to rigorously test the relationship between nondiscrimination laws in public accommodations and reports of crime in public restrooms and other gender-segregated facilities.

“Opponents of public accommodations laws that include gender identity protections often claim that the laws leave women and children vulnerable to attack in public restrooms,” said lead author Amira Hasenbush. “But this study provides evidence that these incidents are rare and unrelated to the laws.”

That's really where the concern is for me. It's more that any boy and any girl across multiple grades can now use the multi-stall toilets at the same time. This opens up the opportunity for an older boy to assault a younger girl, or vice versa, I suppose. I would have never wanted to share a bathroom with boys back then.

[Anonymous]

The only way I would be okay with this is if the stalls were the kind that go all the way to the ground like the ones they have in Whole Foods. I had flooding periods in middle and high school and I would have to change pads and tampons multiple times during the day. I can’t imagine taking away a girl’s privacy in a situation like that.