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Teen girls ‘uncomfortable’ with CCSD allowing male to change in their locker room

Updated January 23, 2018 - 11:12 pm

Teenage girls shouldn’t have to take their pants off in front of random teenage boys. The Clark County School District disagrees.

According to a concerned parent and student, the principal of a local high school is allowing a male student to use the girls’ locker room to change for physical education class.

“Last year, sometime during the year, he just started coming and changing in the locker room with us,” said a girl who was in PE class. “I felt uncomfortable and would try and hide and change somewhere else. Other people in my class told me that they felt uncomfortable, too, last year.”

The parent talked with a group of female students in the PE class about the situation. “They said we don’t want to see him dressing, and we don’t want him to see us dressing,” said the parent.

The student said she’s “glad I’m not in (that) class anymore,” but that the young man continues to change in the girls’ locker room. The student and the parent, who requested anonymity to avoid school district retaliation, said the boy didn’t even claim to be transgender.

“He doesn’t identify as a girl,” said the parent. “He’s gay and sometimes dresses as a girl. He prefers dressing with the girls and feels uncomfortable in the boys’ locker room.”

The parent’s attempts to get an explanation from school administrators went nowhere. The principal “made it sound like his hands are tied,” said the parent. “I said students have told me he doesn’t identify as female. He told me that was their opinion.”

The principal didn’t return phone calls, instead alerting the district’s communications team to the requests for comment.

“CCSD administrators work with students who are transitioning or questioning their gender on a case-by-case basis,” said district spokeswoman Kirsten Searer. “We work to meet the needs of students and guardians to ensure a safe, respectful and supportive environment.”

Memo to school district bureaucrats: Forcing a teenage girl to change in front of a young man — or try to find a place to hide so a boy can’t see her in her underwear — is neither safe nor respectful. If you don’t agree with that, you shouldn’t be working with children.

Asked about that, Searer suggested that students or parents “should address [concerns] to the school principal.” That’d be the same principal who blew off the parent’s questions and to whom district officials wouldn’t let me talk, despite persistent requests.

There’s a reason no one wants to take responsibility for this. It’s a mess.

Expect situations like this to multiply if the district decides to use feelings to determine gender instead of an objective biological standard. That’s what the CCSD is discussing right now.

Last year, the district created a secretive transgender working group stacked with advocates of radical transgender ideology. The radical left assumes that gender is assigned at birth, not revealed by biology. The group looked at policies from liberal bastions such as Los Angeles and Minnesota. Those policies included allowing a boy who identifies as a girl to share a hotel room with a biological girl on an overnight trip without her parents knowing. In November and December, the district held a series of public meetings on whether or not to implement a policy.

The CCSD will present its findings to the Board of Trustees next Monday at 6 p.m. at Valley High School. If you are a district parent, you should attend that meeting. Let the trustees know that a special-interest group of science deniers shouldn’t be allowed to determine school district policy and put boys in girls’ locker rooms.

There is an easy compromise. If students don’t feel comfortable in the locker room or restroom of their biological gender, allow them to use a single-occupancy facility. But most transgender advocates aren’t interested in compromises.

They’re demanding public acceptance of their belief that feelings trump biology, no matter how many teenage girls that makes feel “uncomfortable.”

Listen to Victor Joecks discuss his columns each Monday at 9 a.m. with Kevin Wall on 790 Talk Now. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.

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