A Pennsylvania school board has come under fire for cutting windows into gender-inclusive restrooms that would allow the public to peer into them from the hallway.

In August, a new right-wing school board for the South Western School District, in Hanover, Pennsylvania, passed the policy to “increase oversight of the wash area.” School Board President Matthew Gelazela said that the district would be adding additional privacy measures, including taller stalls, for the toilets in the restroom, according to the York Dispatch.

The bathrooms targeted explicitly for these new renovations were those where students may use facilities based on their gender identity.

Prior to the 2023 local elections, a different school board, in response to anonymous complaints about the presence of transgender students using facilities matching their gender identity, passed a policy that divided restrooms into three separate categories.

Some restrooms would be designated for use based only on a person’s assigned sex at birth. Some would be designated “gender-inclusive” for use based on a person’s gender identity, which transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals would be able to use (in addition to any cisgender students). And some would be single-stall restrooms for individuals seeking an extra degree of privacy.

The renovations cost $8,700 to complete and were finished last month.

But the installment of the windows drew a negative reaction from students and parents alike, with students saying they felt uncomfortable using the restrooms and parents questioning the logic of allowing people to peer into a restroom — even just the sink or communal areas of the facility.

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The local newspaper’s editorial board weighed in against the renovations, dubbing them “a new level of weird.“

Gelazela released a statement saying the district “has an interest in opening a view into the nonprivate area of those facilities,” noting that it would allow adults to better monitor the restrooms for “prohibited activities such as any possible vaping, drug use, bullying, or absenteeism.”

“Our students should not consider the space outside of our stalls as private within the multiuser restrooms,” Gelazela said. “Our current policy states: ‘In any facility in a District school that is for use based on Gender Identity, in which a person may be in a state of undress in the presence of others, school personnel shall provide private changing areas for use.’ Areas between our stalls and sinks in multiuser restrooms are not private changing areas under that policy.”

Jennifer Holahan, the mother of a 13-year-old son who uses the restroom at Emory H. Markel Middle School, said she only learned of the windows, which had been in place for a while, after her son complained of them and showed her pictures.

She said it didn’t register with her son that he was using one of the gender-inclusive facilities, as he was simply assigned to use a restroom closest to his classroom. But he was alarmed when the windows were installed.

Holahan was also disturbed by the presence of a window in the restroom and posted the pictures on Facebook, which garnered a reaction from community members, parents, and educators alike. She said some parents told her that their children are reticent to use the bathroom because there’s significantly less privacy.

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“There’s no barriers in there, so you can hear everything that goes on, which is pretty troublesome for kids,” Holahan told York-based FOX affiliate WPMT. “You feel like even though you’re not being watched, you do feel watched.”

Holahan told the York Dispatch that her son was disturbed by the fact that noises from the restroom — such as bowel movements — echo down the hallway, potentially creating another source of embarrassment for students.

She also raised the idea that menstruating students, especially those with heavy periods, who might have messy hands after changing a tampon, might be embarrassed if people are allowed to peer into the restroom’s sink area.

“The whole thing feels wrong and gross for lots of reasons,” she said.

When she contacted school officials, they appeared sympathetic to her concerns but largely said their hands were tied by school board policy.

“I feel like the whole thing is just a deterrent to keep kids who might want to use those restrooms from using them,” Holahan said. “These are actions of a school board that have their own agenda, politically fueled and using our children as pawns. That’s not caring for them.”

Since taking over, the conservative South Western School Board has adopted several new policies that appear to target LGBTQ youth in particular.

One requires parental notification before a student can be called any name that does not appear on their birth certificate. It’s aimed at trans students primarily but would apply to any cisgender student using a nickname or shortened version of their legal name.

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Another policy requires parental approval for students to use pronouns that don’t match their assigned sex at birth — but also allows school officials to refuse, presumably for religious or ideological reasons, to honor those very same parental requests.

A third restricts transgender students from participating on sports teams that don’t match their assigned sex at birth, while a fourth allows parents to refuse a teacher’s reading list if they believe the books in question deal with age-inappropriate topics or issues.

Those policies — as well as the installation of windows into the gender-inclusive restrooms — were adopted at the suggestion of the Independence Law Center, a Harrisburg-based right-wing, Christian law firm that opposes LGBTQ rights and advocates for exemptions for individuals with sincerely held religious beliefs.

On October 3, after a week-and-a-half of negative press, the windows in the gender-inclusive restrooms were boarded up, reports The Evening Sun, a York County-based newspaper.

Additionally, the Sun notes that School Board member Amanda Weaver, one of three members to vote against the renovations, has claimed that the demolition of the front wall in middle school restrooms had begun even before the board approving the renovations.

If true, Weaver’s statements may point to a potential violation of Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act, which requires school boards and state agencies to deliberate and approve policies in public — and requires them to allow public comment on proposals — before moving to implement them. 

In a Facebook post, the group Citizens for South Western’s Future, a self-described “bipartisan group of concerned taxpayers who care about our students,” noted that the boarding up of the windows happened within 48 hours after national media outlets picked up the story, which previously had only been reported at the local level.

Noting that the windows had been in place since the beginning of the school year, the group wrote that the school board had initially claimed the windows were installed for “safety” reasons.

“After the immense pressure, they boarded it up,” the group added. “Looks like the current school board can’t stand behind their own reasoning. It is time for change that will respect student privacy and respect the taxpayer’s dollar!”