Pennsylvania School That Put Windows in Student Bathrooms Boards Them Up After Public Uproar

A Pennsylvania school has backpedaled on its decision to put windows into gender-neutral-designated bathrooms, boarding up the windows it just installed following backlash from the public.

In August, South Western School District's conservative-majority school board voted to install windows into Emory H. Markle Middle School's gender-neutral bathrooms. The board's president, Matthew A. Gelazela, cited concerns regarding potential misbehavior in the bathrooms as justification for the installation.

Two windows were subsequently installed, allowing people to see into the bathroom from the hallway of the middle school. No windows were installed in the school's gendered bathrooms.

On Thursday, in accordance with advice from conservative legal group Independence Law Center, the windows were boarded up with plywood.

"I believe that we have to protect all of our students," said Superintendent Jay Burkhart in a phone interview to KSTP. "Students are entitled to privacy and I don't want to violate that."

Kristina Moon, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Education Law Center, indicated that the board's decision to install windows into the bathroom is the latest in a string of efforts to target transgender and gender-neutral students unfairly.

"Now they've cut actual holes for windows into the student bathrooms — but only the bathrooms they expect trans and nonbinary children to use," wrote Moon in an email to KTSP. "This is a horrifying violation of children's privacy and cruel discrimination targeted against trans and nonbinary kids."

Some parents of children attending the Hanover middle school share Moon's sentiments.

"This has been a continuing agenda that they've had," said mother Jennifer Holahan, who brought attention to the windows by posting photos on social media, in a phone interview. "They've proved this more than once. I think this is the first time that the school board president has been shut down. And I just wonder what's to come from that."

When called and asked to comment on the situation, school board president Gelazela told a reporter that he considered the call to be criminal harassment before hanging up.

In a statement provided to the Evening Sun of Hanover, Gelazela stated 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."