Area public high schools are not foreseeing major changes as a result of President Barack Obama’s letter Friday.
The directive from the Obama administration states schools must accommodate transgender students, including allowing them access to the bathroom or locker room that matches their gender identity.
Amy Thompson, a college and career counselor at York High School in Elmhurst who is co-sponsor of the school’s 15-year-old Accepting Sexual Orientation in School, or As.Is, organization, said she believes Obama’s directive is a positive step.
“It helps give very clear guidelines to leaders,” she said. “Schools need guidance. People will still have to make local decisions. This is a very delicate issue for a lot of people.”
Thompson said her experiences with transgender students at York have allowed her to conclude that they don’t want going to the restroom to be an issue.
“They just want to be comfortable when they have to go,” she said. “It’s interesting that they have no issues when they go to the mall because they look like the gender they identify with. At school, though, they’re with kids they have known since kindergarten.”
Hinsdale High School District 86 Superintendent Bruce Law said in an email the president’s letter would not change anything at Hinsdale South or Hinsdale Central, because gender identity is already protected under a board policy adopted in March 2014.
“Although the policy does not specifically reference washrooms or locker rooms, I think it would be a stretch to exclude access to those facilities in interpreting this policy,” Law wrote.
Maria Rohloff, sponsor of PRISM, the gay-straight alliance at Lyons Township High School, said she is thrilled with the directive.
“President Obama continues to uphold the constitution of the United States with equal treatment for all Americans. It will not change things at Lyons Township High School because Lyons Township has been ahead of the curve on such issues.”
At York, three restrooms have been converted for gender-neutral use, and another two are in the process of being converted. Those restrooms are for use by one person at a time.
“We have converted some restrooms because we want to have a facility that allows for privacy; that’s really what we’ve tried to do,” said York Principal Diana Smith.
Smith said she is unaware of situations in which someone who identifies as transgender has used a specific-gender restroom of the gender with which they identify, rather than of the gender they were born.
“I haven’t heard anything, specifically, about that, but it probably has happened, and we’re fine with it,” she said.
Officials with the departments of Education and Justice say public schools are obligated to treat transgender students in a manner that’s in-line with their gender identity and grant them equal access, even in cases where it makes others uncomfortable. Schools cannot require transgender students to provide a medical diagnosis, undergo any kind of treatment or produce a birth certificate or other identification to be treated according to their gender identity, the directive says.
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While the White House’s guidance Friday doesn’t impose any new legal requirements, federal officials say it does clarify the government’s expectations of school districts that receive federal funding.
In Illinois, roughly 80 percent of adults who described themselves as transgender or gender nonconforming say they were harassed and 33 percent said they were physically assaulted in school, according the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Ten percent of those who responded to the survey said harassment was so bad they dropped out of a K-12 school or higher education.
Angie Leventis Lourgos of the baiduhai contributed to this article.