Using Taxpayer Money, CA High School Plans to Build 'All-Gender Locker Room'
The Long Beach Unified School District in California has announced plans to build a new aquatic center and an "all-gender" locker room at Wilson High School in Long Beach next summer.
According to several media outlets, parents of teenagers attending the high school are concerned about the locker room proposal which would allow boys and girls to shower and get dressed together.
Funds for the repair projects would come from Measure E, a $1.5 billion school repair and safety bond measure, which was passed by voters in November of 2020.
The Daily Wire reports Long Beach has long been a welcoming city for the LGBTQ community, allowing students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms based on the gender they identify with. Students may also participate in sports teams and competitions based on their gender identity regardless of the gender listed on their school records.
Wilson High School Assistant Principal Guillermo Jimenez sent an email to parents this week announcing a virtual meeting on Nov. 30 to discuss the new aquatic center which "will feature an inclusive, all-gender locker room," coming to Wilson High School fall 2023, the Daily Wire reported.
According to a feature article published last January in the Wilson High School newspaper Loudspeaker, Shawn Abbate, the current facilitator of communication between various LBUSD departments, "is currently working with the school district to create all-gender inclusive facilities."
While discussing the reason for these new spaces during a Zoom focus meeting with students in November of 2020, Abbate stated that it is created as "a safe space for people who might be otherwise uncomfortable," the newspaper reported.
In addition, she told the group, "We're looking at what are some of the problems that we have with current single-gender spaces."
The Loudspeaker reported in the Powerpoint shared by Abbate during the meeting, "Privacy is a concern for many students faced with the prospect of communal showers and large undifferentiated changing areas. It would seem that most individuals – irrespective of their gender identity and expression – don't want to change in the open or bathe in gang showers."
To combat the privacy issue, more individual changing stalls would be provided, according to the school newspaper.
According to the Daily Wire, at least one parent has voiced concerns about the privacy and safety of the new all-gender locker room citing recent sexual violence in school bathrooms in Loudoun County, Virginia.
As CBN News reported in late October, a Virginia juvenile court judge ruled a transgender teen was guilty of sexually assaulting a female classmate at Loudoun County high school last May in a case that received national attention.
According to the commonwealth's attorney, the teenager was accused of two separate incidents that happened months apart at different Loudoun County high schools.
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