A Texas school has quietly allowed transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice for years while telling other students who feel uncomfortable about the move to use a single-person restroom.
At a Nov. 14 meeting, parents for and against transgender students using bathrooms of their choice spoke at a Frisco Independent School District (FISD) board meeting. Trustees were scheduled to vote on a formal bathroom policy brought up by conservative board members Stephanie Elad and Marvin Lowe.
Trustees for the highly rated district north of Dallas passed a policy 7-0 that students would use the restrooms of their sex at birth, but allows transgender students a reasonable accommodation such as using a single unisex bathroom.
While that may have sounded like a victory for Frisco parents who opposed the practice, the district posted on its website that the new policy won’t stop transgender students from using any bathroom of their choice.
The policy passed by the board was modeled after the Grapevine-Colleyville district’s stance on the same subject, which prohibited transgender students from using a bathroom different from their biological sex.
But Frisco ISD is taking the stance that “reasonable accommodation” is a loophole that allows transgender students to attend the bathroom of their choice.
Frisco mom Alison Lambert Darrell told The Epoch Times it came to light at a September school board meeting that school administrators had secretly allowed transgender students to select their bathroom since 2015.
Darrell, whose son attends Frisco schools, is a member of the Mama Bears watchdog group who has vowed to fight the board policy.
During public comment at a board meeting, Darrell said a girl identifying as a boy was seen using a prosthetic device to stand at the urinal to relieve herself.
A father had attended his son’s after-school play and was in the restroom when the girl came to stand next to him to use the device.
Darrell told the board these silicone devices are called “STP packers,” or “Stand To Pee packers.” Afterward, the user of the prosthetic must rinse it off at the sink.
Darrell said girls would potentially need to expose themselves to use the device. Boys using the urinals would also potentially expose their private parts to the girl while she urinated.
“This administration and now certain trustees are facilitating this perverse psychiatric and emotional abuse of our children,” she said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
Darrell said she doesn’t think the ramifications have sunk in for most parents about what is happening behind the scenes with transgender students.
She said neither the board nor the public was alerted to the practice, which has led to uncomfortable bathroom encounters.
“That was shocking. It was a total breach of trust,” she said.
Darrell said Frisco is a family-oriented community with many church-goers and they trusted the school board and administration to educate their children while they were busy working and paying bills.
She does not think most Frisco’s citizens agree with the “left-wing” ideology injected into their schools.
“While we were busy doing life, the Left was hard at work entrenching their liberal programming into our schools and every sector of government and society,” she said.
Lowe, who sits on FISD’s policy committee, told The Epoch Times he is working on submitting an item for the agenda to clarify the meaning of the transgender bathroom policy. Still, he acknowledges it may be tough to pass.
“I’ve had to look into this stuff, and it’s just a sham,” he said. “What happened is the Biden administration is trying to rewrite some of the things associated with Title IX to include transgender, but it’s not codified yet.”
Lowe and Elad said there is no legal requirement forcing school districts to allow transgender students to use a different bathroom than their biological sex.
When the other more liberal board members voted for the policy, it became clear they interpreted it differently than the Colleyville school board did, Lowe said.
“Nothing has changed in our district,” Lowe said, adding that there are 50 or more transgender students in FISD.
“It bugs the heck out of me. We have less than 1 percent of the student population in our district who say they’re transgender, and we are going to set policy,” he said.
Lowe said the rights of the rest of the student population should be considered when making policy.
When he was campaigning for the school board earlier this year, Lowe said a mom said her son was using the bathroom at school when a girl came in, which made the student uneasy.
Lowe said the student’s mother went to the principal’s office to ask about the incident only to be told: “‘If your son’s uncomfortable, he can use the nurse’s bathroom or the unisex bathroom.’”
While parents have spoken about allowing transgender students to go into a bathroom of their choice, he thinks students are afraid of being shunned by their peers if they speak out.
Lowe said that the student who was told to use the nurse’s bathroom didn’t want to make a big deal about it because he didn’t want to be called transphobic.
“This is what happens when you don’t have a plumb line on right and wrong,” Lowe added.
Elad told The Epoch Times she attended a training this summer where the Texas American Civil Liberties Union acted as though Biden’s interpretation of Title IX extending to gender was a fact, which she feels is why so many boards are going along with it.
“I think you’re going to have a lawsuit on this somewhere,” she said. “So just pick a side.”
Although Frisco isn’t following its policy, the ACLU filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education on Nov. 21, saying FISD discriminates against transgender students based on Title IX.
In its legal analysis, the CCDF said that in Neese v. Becerra, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas determined that “Title IX does not protect ’sexual orientation‘ or ’gender identity status.'”
Tara Schulte, executive director of CCDF’s Collin County chapter, said the watchdog group is watching to see how the board handles the situation but wanted parents and board members to understand that the board’s policy doesn’t violate Title IX.
In response to an Epoch Times request for comment, FISD spokeswoman Megan Cone said via email that campus staff would work with individual students and their parents to find a solution if they are uncomfortable using a separate bathroom for any reason.
Cone didn’t respond to why the district relied on Title IX as a guide for their transgender bathroom policy in light of the Northern District of Texas ruling.
When asked about safeguards the district had in place, given the rape of a Loudoun County girl in the bathroom by a skirt-wearing boy, the district said bathrooms are monitored during passing periods.
“All schools have procedures in place to deter behavior in restrooms that would require disciplinary action,” Cone wrote.
