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Loudoun Schools To Make Bathrooms Co-Ed To Accommodate Trans Students

   DailyWire.com
All-gender restroom
Photo by Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images

Loudoun County, Virginia’s public schools are spending nearly $11 million to renovate the bathrooms at two high schools to make them co-ed in an attempt to stop transgender students from feeling left out — two years after a boy wearing a skirt brutally raped a ninth-grade girl in a bathroom.

One of the high schools is Broad Run High School, where the boy abducted and sexually assaulted a girl in a classroom after Loudoun County Public Schools quietly transferred him there after he was arrested for the bathroom rape at another school.

The $10.9 million renovation in two schools is a pilot for a change that the school board is considering making at all of its schools, WJLA reported.

In order to make teenage girls more comfortable sharing a bathroom with boys, the stalls would be floor to ceiling, preventing anyone from seeing who is in the bathroom or what they are doing. Documents from the March 14 school board meeting show what it could look like.

Co-ed bathrooms

Loudoun County School Board

A grand jury investigating the school system’s handling of the rape — and which indicted the superintendent for allegedly lying when he said the school system had no record of bathroom sexual assaults — found that during the rape in Stone Bridge High School’s girls bathroom, a staff member walked in and the gap under the stall door allowed her to see that multiple people were in it.

However, the teacher did nothing, despite coming into the stall while the girl was lying on the floor with the boy on top of her, and realizing that there were two people in there, the grand jury report said. “She testified that this was not an uncommon occurrence, because ‘somebody could have their period. They might need a tampon. Or somebody had a boyfriend they had a fight with,'” the grand jury said.

The rapist himself suggested that LCPS officials routinely turned a blind eye to multiple people in a stall, saying “They usually don’t do anything” about it, according to the grand jury.

Virginians for Common Sense tweeted that the design that far-left school board member Atoosa Reaser boasted would offer “complete privacy” would also provide complete opportunity for misconduct. It “enables assault and drug use” and provides “no escape route,” the tweet said. It is also less sanitary, it said — there would be no urinals, leaving teenage girls to share a toilet used by boys.

It also provides “slower detection/response to unconscious patrons,” the group said.

This year just across the Potomac River from Loudoun in Montgomery County, Maryland, two girls were found passed out in a high school bathroom, while a third girl overdosed on fentanyl and was revived with Narcan after being discovered. Spanish-language media quoted a student at the school who said of drugs in the bathroom, “You will see that every day basically, in every bathroom.”

Beth Barts, who was the school board’s most far-left member during the rape and resigned in its aftermath, criticized the move being pushed by her Democratic former colleagues.

“The first time a child dies in one of those floor to ceiling rooms, the community will revolt. No one actually uses the bathrooms for their purpose in high schools unless they absolutely have to,” she wrote on Facebook, according to screenshots obtained by the Daily Wire. “Principals are already dealing with kids who use the bathrooms to get high, vape, skip, have sex or just meet up. Floor to ceiling ‘private rooms’ are simply going to add to the ease of doing these things without getting caught,” she wrote. “Some things that sound good in a think tank are just a bad idea when implemented in real life.”

In a statement, Gov. Glenn Youngkin told The Daily Wire that “The governor was clear in his 2022 draft model policies that he expects Virginia schools to separate their bathrooms by sex. Loudoun County public schools’ foremost concern should be protecting students after a sexual assault occurred in their bathrooms… In the event that students require additional accommodations, a single-use bathroom should be made available.”

Phyllis Randall, the chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, did not return a request for comment. The supervisors and school board met Monday to discuss school safety, including questions raised by the handling of the rape, in which the school system falsely claimed that the federal Title IX prevented it from disciplining the student.

The doubling down on restrooms that could provide room for sexual assaults–between students of any gender identity — comes as Loudoun is raising eyebrows by refusing to turn over an internal report it commissioned on its handling of the rape, despite both a subpoena from the attorney general’s office and a lawsuit.

On Twitter, the Virginia Project said that “This brings us back to the ‘independent’ report LCPS refuses to release. What’s in it?,” the group said. “It stands to reason that one thing it contains is the confession that ‘let kids have sex in bathrooms’ is the de facto policy well known to staff. This will bankrupt them in court.”

“The purpose of this bathroom design change is perfectly clear: to lessen LCPS’ liability for future rapes in the bathrooms,” it opined. “Not to prevent any rapes; this design clearly increases the risk. This is purely a defensive legal maneuver to protect admins.”

The $10.9 million on transgender-affirming bathrooms comes even amidst a pressing need for special education, one teacher told the school board, according to WJLA.

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