A Pennsylvania school board voted earlier this month against a policy that would have made boys and girls use bathrooms that match their biological sex. Parents and students both spoke out against the 5-4 vote, and students called for walkouts to protest.
The Perkiomen Valley School Board in Montgomery County made a stunning U-turn this week when it approved the policy. It covers all 5,000 students and 760 staff members of the district’s elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as single K–12 academy locations when it comes to using the restroom and locker room facilities.
What’s going on?
TheBlaze said earlier that the board decided on September 11 against the measure.
Don Fountain, a Republican on the school board, broke the tie vote in favor of LGBT campaigners.
The measure was first put forward when a parent found out that his daughter was scared to use the girls’ bathroom because she had seen a transvestite in there.
After hearing that his daughter was uncomfortable, Tim Jagger, the girl’s father, informed the Delaware Valley Journal that he called the school board and they told him that kids could use any bathroom that fit their “gender identity.”
Jagger says that managers used a nondiscrimination policy from 2018 that applied to gender identity after the fact.
Anger quickly grew, leading to a revolt among the students.
About 400 students at Perkiomen High School walked out of school on September 15.
Brandon Corner, a 17-year-old student protester, said there was reason to think the transgender bathroom policy would put students in danger. He was referring to the rapes that happened in the girls’ bathrooms at two separate Loudoun County schools in Virginia in 2021.
People from all over the world joined the student protests and supported the suggested common-sense policy.
September 20, the New York Post editorial board emphasized that “it is insulting and harmful to force minors, especially young women, to share intensely intimate settings with people of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, it can lead to horrible events like the sexual attack of a high school student by a skirted male in a Loudoun County, Virginia, bathroom in 2021. This makes kids feel like their safety and privacy do not matter.”
Win in the valley
This week, Policy 720 was approved by the board with a vote of 5-4.
Matthew Dorr, Kim Mares, Jason Saylor, Don Fountain, and bearded guy Rowan Keenan were among the board members who voted in support of the policy. During the discussion, Keenan made fun of his previous experiences as a woman, which infuriated his leftist colleagues.
As of now, the district has to “allow students to have access to multi-user facilities depending on their gender. This means that bathrooms, dressing rooms, and showers that are set aside for one gender must only be used by people of that gender. No one can go into a bathroom, changing room, or shower that is only for people of the opposite sex.”
Just a few weeks after walking out of school in protest, Perkiomen Valley Schools passed the policy keeping boys out of the girl’s bathrooms.pic.twitter.com/HfSPvXRmxs
— 1776 Project PAC (@1776ProjectPac) October 3, 2023
The policy says that sex is “the biological sex classification determined by chromosome structure as well as anatomy at birth.”
The policy says that single-user bathrooms, even ones that were only for teachers before, will be open to students who don’t want to face reality and reject their biological sex.
