Commenters clash at SLO County school board meeting on transgender kids’ use of restrooms
More than 100 Templeton parents, students and residents turned out Tuesday night for an at-times contentious school board study session on transgender students’ use of restroom and locker room facilities within the district.
The meeting, which ran for five hours in the band room at Templeton Middle School, included over two and a half hours of public comment, often interrupted by loud outbursts and verbal disputes between audience members as tensions ran high throughout the meeting.
Attention on the session, which aimed to discuss ways to make restroom and locker room facilities safe and comfortable for all students, escalated in advance when board member Jennifer Grinager, the founder and previous president of San Luis Obispo County’s Moms for Liberty chapter, spoke at a SLO County Tea Party meeting and urged members to turn out at the meeting.
“We’ve got to be creative. The law does not require us to force anybody else to be in the facility at the same time,” Grinager said at the Tea Party meeting in reference to students sharing restrooms and locker rooms. She said she was speaking as a private citizen, not a school board member.
That move, in turn, activated members of the LGBTQ+ community, who showed up to fight what they saw as an attack on transgender youth.
Superintendent Aaron Asplund emphasized that the district did not want the issue to become divisive, while proposing a series of options as potential resolutions to the debate on restroom and locker room privacy concerns.
“There’s no reason our conversations need to be framed this way as two sets of values in conflict,” Asplund said. “Some folks might have come thinking this should be framed as a conservative versus progressive values showdown. That’s not what this is.”
Contentious public comment kicks off meeting
The meeting got off to a heated start before the district administration even got to present the issues and possible solutions up for consideration.
Religion and history were frequently mentioned in comments made from both sides, along with the role Moms for Liberty has staked out in public schools.
The group defines itself as a national, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization fighting for parents’ right over the education and health of their children.
But multiple meeting participants cited that the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, recently classified Moms for Liberty as a “far-right organization that engages in anti-student inclusion activities and self-identifies as part of the modern parental rights movement.”
Comments were kicked off by Willow Kawamoto, a resident of SLO County for the past seven years. Kawamoto identified herself as a lesbian and transgender woman and said she felt that the debate on transgender kids’ use of restrooms and locker rooms was dangerous.
“My status as a woman and as a human being are recognized by the state of California,” Kawamoto said.
Gary Lehrer, a member of Moms for Liberty and current director of public relations and communications for the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo County, likened the public’s response to Moms for Liberty as akin to the Nazis’ treatment of Jewish people.
“You know who doesn’t get treated decently and fairly? It’s Moms for Liberty. We have been dehumanized and villainized,” Lehrer said.
Multiple public outbursts occurred throughout Lehrer’s comments, causing board President Mendi Swan to call the room to order.
Another community member, Dr. Kim Andridge, a licensed psychologist who said she had a specialty working with queer and transgender youth and adults, said that access to affirming services, such as restrooms, is one of the most important factors in protecting the health of LGBTQ+ kids.
“The things being proposed by Mothers for Liberty is exactly what is causing these kids to die,” Andridge said.
Peter Byrne, a 40-year resident of SLO County, urged the school board to “stop trying to naturalize what is not normal.”
“The school board should be ashamed of themselves for allowing men to use girl’s locker rooms. ... The school board itself needs to man up,” Byrne said.
Legality of restroom and locker room use
The nearly two and a half hours of public comments was followed by a legal presentation by Shauna Cunningham of Cunningham Law Group.
Cunningham referenced multiple legal regulations that the school district is required to follow, including California Education code 221.5, which like AB 1266, mandates that students must be allowed to participate in school programs and activities based upon their gender identity.
Additionally, Cunningham referenced Templeton Administrative Regulation 5145.3, which allows students to use restrooms and locker room facilities and participate in programs and activities consistent with their gender identity.
The regulation requires that any student’s privacy concerns must be addressed, and specific groups of students cannot be singled out.
How Templeton district could refurbish facilities
When the meeting turned toward the discussion of possible solutions, the superintendent encouraged parents and community members to find common ground, while underscoring the sense of privacy, comfort and safety for all students.
“Everyone here has deeply held values. People are driven by their values. We should harness those towards common-ground solutions,” Asplund said.
The potential locker room solutions laid out by Asplund varied by extent and cost, including:
The option for students to no longer dress for PE classes
The option for individual students to request opting out from dressing for PE with no grade penalty
The installation of eight changing stalls per locker room with the ability for students to request single-use spaces if desired
The installation of 20 changing stalls per locker room
The board agreed that providing kids with the option to not dress for PE was unhygienic and might be taken advantage of. Their focus centered on the installation of eight changing stalls per locker room.
This option included models of how the locker room spaces could be retrofitted to fit new needs, while taking advantage of currently unused spaces.
The potential restroom solutions also varied by extent and cost, including:
The replacement of urinals with toilets and the installation of floor-to-ceiling partitions
The designation of single-use, gender-neutral restrooms
Retrofitting current group restrooms to create more private, gender-neutral and single-use restrooms
These options included potential added safety components such as:
Hiring monitors to stand outside restrooms throughout the school day
The installation of decibel-level sensors that would be activated by any loud noises within the restrooms
In response to the potential restroom solutions, board members discussed the possible cost of various options as well as logistical space concerns. Board members also considered the possibility of a new law that would require all California schools to provide at least one designated single-use restroom on every campus.
School board member Janel Armet also suggested that a larger investment might be made to improve the quality of the restrooms and locker rooms within the Templeton school district.
Final comments
The meeting concluded with some final comments made by Grinager and Armet.
“There seems to be an impression that Moms for Liberty directed this meeting, and we didn’t,” Grinager said, referring to a flyer from the Gala Pride and Diversity Center that was passed out ahead of the meeting.
“This was never a discussion to end protections for our LGBT students,” Grinager said. “Nobody in this community hates LGBT individuals to my knowledge. I myself dedicated years of my life to working with the HIV and AIDS population.”
Armet referenced the contention earlier in the meeting, especially throughout the public comment process.
“It was kind of hard to hear sometimes what people said tonight. I hope we can change that, and it’s going to take the whole community coming together,” Armet said.
