Britton Middle School in Fayette County is currently under construction and scheduled to be completed next summer. The new building’s restrooms include individual private stalls with toilets, but also a communal space with sinks that is open to the hallways.
Nicholasville Republican Rep. Matt Lockett said that several parents raised concerns to him about the bathrooms being gender-neutral, and said similar bathroom designs were being used in all-access restrooms in states like California, Michigan, New York and Minnesota.
“While I'm assuming this is an effort to be all inclusive, this design puts all students at risk,” Lockett said.
But Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Demetrus Liggins told lawmakers on Tuesday that the bathrooms in the Britton plan will be designated by sex.
“The principal has determined that there will be a set of restrooms that are for boys, [and] there's a set of restrooms that are for girls,” Liggins said. “There's nothing that has stated that these restrooms are gender-neutral, if you will. They are simply for privacy purposes, and they are for supervision purposes.”
Liggins told lawmakers that his school district had over 1,400 “behavior events” – incidents like tobacco use and possession, fighting and drug possession – in restrooms during the 2022-23 school year. He said that the layout is meant to make bathrooms safer.
“It allows for much more supervision. Our number one goal is to ensure that our students are able to use the restroom in private. Use the restroom in peace, if you will, not fear of being harassed, without fear of being bullied,” he said.
However, some lawmakers suggested that these types of bathrooms – if people of any gender are allowed to use them – could circumvent the purpose of Senate Bill 150, a bill passed last year that in part requires students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms that match their assigned sex at birth.
Lockett discussed draft legislation that would require most of Kentucky’s public schools to have at least 90% of their restrooms designated by gender, and allow up to 10% to be all-access bathrooms.
“It's about protecting our innocent children, keeping them safe, allowing them to be boys and allowing them to be girls, and providing a facility for learning where they won't feel threatened, embarrassed or be afraid to use the restroom,” Lockett said.
Louisville Democratic Rep. Tina Bojanowski is also an elementary school teacher in Jefferson County Public Schools. She praised the new Lexington middle school’s bathroom design and said it would make supervising her students easier.
“You can have a teacher or an adult standing watching, sending the kids into the area one at a time to use the restroom in the enclosed stalls, and then they wash their hands and they come out and you have their eyes on them every minute, except for when they understandably have their own privacy,” she said.
However, Smithfield Republican Sen. Lindsey Tichenor argued that the design doesn’t allow for complete privacy because the sinks are still open to the hallway.
“If you have a girl in her cycle that goes in there and has issues, she has to come out of there covered in blood, no privacy to wash her hands. I mean, it is humiliating to think that a middle school girl would have to go through that with the hall open and people passing through,” Tichenor said.
The full Interim Joint Committee on Education meeting can be streamed on YouTube.
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