Far-Right School Board Says It Is Installing Windows In Gender-Inclusive Bathrooms

A Pennsylvania middle school is installing windows in its gender-inclusive restrooms that will allow teachers and students to look into the wash areas from the hallways.

The far-right South Western School District board approved the construction project at Hanover’s Emory H Markle Middle School this summer.

The school board president, Matt Gelazela, cited student safety for the decision. In a statement released to the media, he wrote that “in making the area outside of stalls more viewable, we are better able to monitor for a multitude of prohibited activities such as any possible vaping, drug use, bullying or absenteeism.”

The board said that it would “create openings” to add “privacy in the toilet area” and “increase oversight of the wash area.” Gelazela added that these changes put the restrooms in line with facilities in the local elementary schools.

Gelazela, a libertarian and former police officer, became politically active with the South Western School District board in 2021, fighting COVID-19 mask mandates and railing against schools teaching students about “sexual identity.”

The new restroom windows at Markle Middle School are being built only into the gender-inclusive bathrooms and are set to cost the district roughly $8,700. The school currently has five bathroom options. The Hanover Evening Sun wrote that these include “male, female, male gender identifying, female gender identifying, and single-stall private bathrooms.”

Gelazela did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

The construction of the bathroom windows has outraged parents and LGBTQ+ advocates alike, who see it as a privacy infringement for students and a specific targeting of LGBTQ+ youth.

Jennifer Holahan, a parent of a student in the school district, said her son, who is not part of the LGBTQ+ community, was told he had to use a gender-inclusive bathroom because it was closest to his classes.

She told WGAL-TV in Lancaster that the window construction “just raised a ton of concerns for me — privacy concerns, safety concerns. … I felt like it was a deterrent to keep them [students] from using them.”

She added: “I can understand needing to have supervision over middle school and high school kids, especially in the bathroom. … But I also think windows aren’t the solution. I think if it was a real issue, it wouldn’t just be the gender-inclusive restrooms.”

The board approved the construction in August after seeking guidance from the Independence Law Center, a Christian law firm contracted by the board.

The law firm has contracted with other school boards in the state to push forward various anti-LGBTQ+ policies, such as restricting transgender students’ participation on school sports teams that align with their gender and allowing school administrators to avoid using a trans student’s correct name and pronouns.

The construction of bathroom windows is one of the latest targeting moves by the South Western School District, which in the last two years has sought to roll back protections for LGBTQ+ students.

Gelazela was appointed school board president in December 2023 after serving as a regular member. Five Republican newcomers, who organized under the group We the Parents of South Western School District, were also elected to the board that year. The new members ran on a platform in support of “traditional education” and removing “political agendas” and critical race theory from school curricula.

As president, one of Gelazela’s first actions was to put forth a set of policies to erase gender identity from the district’s sexual harassment policy and establish a narrow definition of sex that excluded the existence of trans and intersex people.

At the time, another member of the board had advised Gelazela not to stray from state and federal guidelines — including the Biden administration’s recent Title IX guidance that explicitly bars discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation — out of fear of inviting litigation.

But in March 2024, Gelazela entered the board into a contract with Independence Law Center, which so far has helped the board carry out these policy goals.

Earlier this year, the school board adopted a dizzying set of policies around how transgender students could update their names and pronouns in the school records, often creating exceptions for school officials to not be compelled to comply based on their religious beliefs.

The board allowed school personnel to refuse to use a student’s name or set of pronouns that use “language inconsistent with their beliefs.”

Students who want to correct their name and pronouns in the school records can do so only if they submit a written “accommodation request” from their parents. But still the board would not allow students to change their sex on their school records and would allow school personally to not address a student by the “unwanted first name.” Instead, school administrators can choose to refer to students as “you” or “they.”

Since 2020, several members of the far-right activist group Moms for Liberty, have been elected to school boards at more Pennsylvania school districts, helping to introduce policies banning discussions of LGBTQ+ issues or racial justice.