San Francisco elementary school removes boys' and girls' bathrooms and makes them gender neutral
- The elementary school is trying to accommodate young students who don't fit into gender norms
- Ari Braverman, 6, likes to dress like a girl and is happy about the gender neutral bathrooms
- School principal says parents have been supportive
One elementary school had decided to do away with boys' and girls' bathrooms. There will now just be bathrooms.
Miraloma Elementary in San Francisco, California is busy doing away with its gender assigned bathrooms and making them gender neutral for their young students.
Principal Sam Bass said the change was in part due to eight students who do not fit into traditional gender norms - and range from tomboys to transgender.
The school began removing the circles, triangles and stick-figure signs from restrooms at the start of this school year, according to SF Gate.
California law says that students can use whichever gender bathroom they identify with
Miraloma Elementary (above) has begun removing its signs and stick figures from bathroom doors
The bathrooms in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms at Miraloma, as well as a centralized bathroom, are gender-neutral.
The school will phase in the other restrooms used by older children over the next few years, including outside bathrooms with multiple stalls.
'There’s no need to make them gender-specific anymore,' said the principal, adding that the parents of the students have been supportive.
He said one parent told him, 'So you're making it like it is at home.'
Miraloma Elementary has begun neutralizing its gender based bathrooms
A 2013 California law requires schools to allow students to use the bathroom consistent with the gender the child identifies with, a policy San Francisco passed 10 years ago.
'I think most people don’t think about how difficult it can be, going to the bathroom for someone like my son,' said a woman named Jae, who refused to give her last name to protect her son.
Her son, a first-grader, is a boy who identifies as a boy but prefers to dress and style his hair like a girl.
'He was just struggling with it quietly,' the mom added. '[Now] he can just use the restroom without thinking about it.'
Lila Perry, 17, identifies as a girl and wants to use the girls' restroom at Hillsboro High School in Missouri
Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about the bathroom change since he likes to dress like a girl and doesn't discriminate between boys' and girls' toys.
'I think it’s nice because then people don’t have to be separated just to go into bathrooms,' Ari said. 'It’s just easier to go to the bathroom if there’s just a bathroom.'
Ari's dad, Gedalia Braverman, agreed, saying, 'As parents, you eventually realize it’s not your job to change your child’s personality. It’s not my job to identify and pigeonhole my children’s genders, and certainly it’s not the school’s.'
Kevin Gogan, the district’s director of safety and wellness, said that one percent of the district's children identify as transgender, meaning about 300 students.
He said gender neutral bathrooms are a way of accommodating and protecting them.
But bathroom neutrality isn't welcomed everywhere.
On Monday, almost 200 high school students walked out of class in Hillsboro High School outside of St. Louis, Missouri to protest the use of the girls’ restrooms and locker room by Lila Perry, a transgender teen, according to the New York Times.
Not just for kids: Even Caitlyn Jenner (above) was thrown for a loop over which bathroom to use at her country club
For transgenders, issue of which bathroom to use isn't relegated to schools.
In a recent episode of I Am Cait, the most famous transgender woman in the country, Caitlyn Jenner, 65, revealed she is stressed out about which locker room to use at her country club, and put the her former name, Bruce, on her application to avoid the issue.
'I'll worry about the locker rooms later on down the line,' she said.
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