Orange Street News
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Grove Students Uncomfortable with Transgender People in B-rooms told to Use “Single User” Rooms
3/5/2017
By Hilde Kate Lysiak
Students who don’t feel comfortable sharing the bathroom with transgender people have been told they can use the private restrooms, according to a letter sent by Selinsgrove Superintendent Chad Cohrs obtained by the Orange Street News.
The letter, which was sent in January in response to parents who signed a petition saying they were upset with the new policy, read: “As per your request, below is a listing of the private(single user) restrooms that are available in each school building. The building principal will show your child(ren) where these are located in the building they are enrolled in. Please note that the district will not govern which restrooms your child(ren) utilize, please inform your child(ren) of your desire.”
However, a parent, who asked to remain anonymous because of high passions over the issue, said that asking “hundreds” of students to use the small private bathrooms doesn’t make sense.
“It (the letter) says that basically if we feel our kids privacy was being violated by the new policy then our kids could use the private bathrooms, the very same bathrooms that were originally designated for the transgender students and later deemed not good enough is now conveniently good enough for our kids. Makes no sense.”
The Selinsgrove School board had earlier said that they were simply following federal guidelines when they changed the policy to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.
Last month the Trump administration announced it would withdraw President Obama guidelines that schools must allow transgender students to use any bathroom they want to use. President Trump’s guidelines state that local schools are allowed to decide the issue themselves. But Selinsgrove says there will be no change in policy, at least for now.
“The district will continue to study information as it becomes available as well as wait to see what the Supreme Court decides on the issue,” Selinsgrove Superintendent Chad Cohrs told the Orange Street News in an email.
The board said that it has three transgender students in the Selinsgrove School district at a public hearing on the issue in November.
At the same meeting, many parents spoke out in support of the previous rule allowing transgendered people to use the private bathroom located by the nurses office.
“Comfort and safety can be two different things. And I believe that (transgender people) can be comfortable if they have a bathroom that they know you can use any time and any place. In changing the place, you have given a the majority a place where they are no longer comfortable,” said one speaker.
But a parent of a transgender student contested the idea that allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice should make any one uncomfortable.
“This practice that Selinsgrove has now implemented is used by hundreds and hundreds of schools, without incident and without difficulty,” the father told the board.
Orange Street News 
What a great article!
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Sounds nuts to me. Why would any school cater to just three kids?
Back in the day things made sense and usually the majority ruled.
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Back in the day things made sense huh? So then I’m guessing you’re not African American or Jewish, am I right?
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this make perfectly good sense to me, as the amount of people who are typically uncomfortable with Trans persons in bathrooms are about on par with the number of Trans people in a given populace. Most kids don’t care and support their Trans peers..Its only the few kids, bullies really, that speak out about them…and most of them are just parroting the bigotry of their parents.
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My wife, her friends, and all their daughters are NOT comfortable sharing bathrooms or gym showers with males. They are “holding it in” and risking urinary track infections to give “rights” to males who have zero concern for women’s rights.
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Your wife and her friends opinions don’t matter. How many of their daughters did you actually speak to because unless you spoke to everyone individually you’re nothing but a gossip with no facts. Your closed mindedness is whats wrong with the world today.
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We should never let others tell us what the issue is ! If any reasonable number of people see an “issue” that in itself is enough to create one.
Some are saying, why should the majority of students be inconvenienced because there are three not quite normal in some way ? That is a legitimate point. Those who disagree should explain exactly why they disagree.
The question of who has the right to decide, or who should be deciding, is a separate issue that requires full and complete debate. If a school board defers to the clearly expressed Will of most parents with an official decision, that should settle the matter.
If any then answer, “THAT WOULD BE AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT IN WASHINGTON SAYS SO!” the obligation is upon them to make a clear-cut and logical case, one which will explain in detail who and what “transgendered” students are and how it would harm them (in an objective way, not merely in terms of personal emotion) to require them to use the bathroom intended for persons of the same physical biology.
The human race could not survive without both men and women. Social separation in some areas of life’s activities have seemed right and proper over hundreds of generations. Where does the supposed “new wisdom” that this is not really needed come from ? And just who are the people who say they believe it is wisdom ? Might they perhaps have motives other than those they are declaring ?
And when did it become a norm to take a person’s word whether he was male or female? The traditional way of doctors and judges was to look below the waist .. .. ..
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