Sunday, February 12, 2023



Students protest after New Hampshire school district bans urinals

Students walked out of a New Hampshire school in protest of the district banning the use of urinals and shared spaces in locker rooms, according to a report.

On Friday, about 150 students walked out of Milford High School and middle school in protest of the new bathroom restrictions.

The protest came after a lengthy debate by the board of education over whether to separate school bathrooms and locker rooms at the school by the sex assigned at birth and not gender identity, The Boston Globe reported.

The students demonstrated for about 45 minutes, according to Superintendent Christi Michaud.

One student who participated in the walkout told a local television station that students were not consulted about the new policy.

“Nobody that I know – ask anyone here – no one requested this change,” student Jay Remella told WMUR during the walkout. “It was solely made by the school board and a parent complaint.”

Board of education member Noah Boudreault proposed the urinal prohibition as part of a “compromise,” that was accepted by a 4-1 vote on Monday.

The ban replaced an earlier proposal from vice chair Nathaniel Wheeler to separate bathrooms and locker rooms strictly on students’ gender assigned at birth — which was criticized by LQBTQ students, according to The Globe.

Wheeler’s proposal would have offered separate, gender-neutral single-stall restrooms, effectively ending the district’s current policy of allowing students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

At Monday’s board meeting, parents supportive of Wheeler’s proposal donned yellow smiley-face stickers that said “Support Parental Rights,” according to The Globe.

But a majority of the audience wore rainbow flags and condemned the policy as discriminatory during a public speaking portion of the meeting.

Nick Romeri, a 16-year-old transgender sophomore, said the policies could have a negative impact on the mental health of the district’s LGBTQ students. He said he and other queer students just want to be treated the same as cisgender high school students.

“I want my high school experience to be just like everyone else’s, like getting my license, taking biology class, and figuring my life out, not fighting for it,” he said.

Romeri urged concerned parents not to react out of fear.

“I see all these scared people on both sides not knowing what to do yet wanting to help their children in different ways,” he said. “The best way you can help your children is not discriminating against their peers, but listening and helping your child grow. That is all we want.”

He later told The Globe that he was happy that a compromise was reached, but felt the ban on urinals was unnecessary.

Under Boudreault’s proposal, students would be required to change for gym class inside stalls instead of in shared locker room spaces.

While changing, the capacity of each bathroom will be capped at the number of stalls it has — meaning only eight girls could change at a time in the girls’ high school locker room and only three boys at a time in their locker room.

Boudreault told The Globe that his main concern was safety and that his job as a board member is “to mitigate risk.”

He said he does not view LGBTQ students as dangerous, but said that something had to be done to address the concerns of both parties so the school could deal with other pressing issues it is facing, such as students vaping in the bathrooms.

“My proposed solution took care of a myriad of other issues that the school district is experiencing, so instead of fighting the gender fight, I decided to fight the larger fight,” he told the newspaper.

Superintendent Michaud raised concerns that the new directive could jam up bathrooms and take away from instructional time.

The school is reviewing if the policy is legal under New Hampshire’s plumbing code which demands schools offer one “water closet” per 30 students, according to The Globe. The school has about 1,200 students between middle school and high school.

The number of stalls is not evenly distributed between both schools and genders, with most stalls being in girls’ bathrooms.

Michaud said installing bathroom stalls in place of urinals throughout the school could potentially cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The bathroom discussions began last fall when a transgender girl began using the middle school girls’ locker room, Michaud told The Globe.

“Nobody asked for this,” student Autumn Diveley told WMUR during Friday’s walkout. “Nobody but the few parents who complained to the school board asked for this.”

According to The Globe, a similar contentious debate regarding bathrooms is ongoing in nearby Concord as New Hampshire state lawmakers consider bills that could affect transgender students.

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Radicalized sex-ed: A telling tale of how NYC educrats shut out parents, even on Community Education Councils

I recently listened to our school’s sex educator proudly exclaim that she teaches her entire puberty course without saying “boy or girl, man or woman once” because she was committed to “inclusivity.” I was mystified.

No one had told parents, even those on the Community Education Council, that this would be how such courses would be taught. But it’s all-too-typical of how the Department of Education treats these councils. And parents.

Five years ago, this same educator taught my eldest children in the same elementary school about puberty, explaining to the boys what would happen as they became men and to the girls what would happen on their journey to womanhood.

She did this in sex-segregated classrooms, because all the adults, including her, agreed 9- and 10-year-olds were most comfortable learning about the soon-to-happen changes to their bodies in sex-specific groups, where they’d be more likely to ask questions.

In fact, our parent coordinator, a DOE employee, wrote to fifth-grade parents in 2019 that “two [of four classes] will be with students separated by gender. This is more comfortable for the boys and girls when discussing certain topics and issues.”

Yet I was now listening to a parents-only Zoom presentation about the upcoming course — taught by the same sex educator at the same school — and the changes from just a few years ago made it unrecognizable.

Boys and girls are no longer segregated for sex-ed classes but all take the class together, for starters. And the educator told parents she follows DOE guidance on subject matter: “It is so important to them that we are discussing gender identity and sex assigned at birth at every opportunity so that no kid ever feels othered.”

She gave parents a “Gender & Sexuality Glossary for Parents & Caregivers,” which uses the word “gender” 27 times but never defines it other than to say that the “gender binary” is “the cultural concept that male (masculine) and female (feminine) are the only genders.”

Yet “gender-fluid” is defined; it’s a person who “identifies with multiple genders.” As is “gender identity”: “a person’s internal sense of their gender — who they are in their heart and mind relating to their gender.”

How, I wondered, did a sensible, reasonable puberty course transform itself into a radical gender-ideology indoctrination session? One thing I knew for sure: Kids are the losers.

In 2019, when my daughter had this very puberty-education program, she loved it. She was separated into a girls-only classroom for half the sessions. The girls could ask questions, and did. Recently I asked her if she thought anyone would have asked questions if there were boys in the room. “I doubt it,” she replied.

Bizarrely, DOE’s sex-segregation rules only apply to health classes. My son’s high school currently offers a financial literacy club open only to girls and non-binary students. Boys need not apply.

No one has suggested kids have changed. Or that girls now feel comfortable asking about tampons or bras in front of boys, or that boys won’t be embarrassed hearing about erections in front of girls.

The NYC DOE Guidelines on Gender would shock most parents if they knew about them. Yet despite one of the most expansive (and expensive) elected parent-leader systems in the country, parents were never given an opportunity to weigh in on the Gender Guidelines, which also allow boys who identify as girls full and mandatory access to girls bathrooms and sports teams and prohibit educators from saying things like a “boy’s penis.”

The guidelines were created by DOE’s first “LGBTQ liaison,” Jared Fox, an unelected man from Iowa with no kids and apparently no need to consult with city parents before radically changing how our kids are taught.

DOE is now holding biannual elections for its Community Education Councils. It pays great lip service to “elevating parent voice” and pays millions to advertise these elections in many languages. But why should parents run and devote hours away from their families to influence school policy when the agency adopts enormous changes, like the Gender Guidelines, without ever mentioning the proposed changes to elected parent leaders?

I can’t say I’d be surprised by low interest in these elections. I served as president of Manhattan’s largest school district’s Community Education Council, 2017-2021. I was also a member of my kids’ elementary School Leadership Team, 2016-2022. Despite both positions overlapping with the development of the Gender Guidelines, never once did anyone from DOE, my school principal or district superintendent ever inform us about these guidelines or solicit feedback from parents.

If DOE wants parents to run and serve as parent leaders, it should commit to a real partnership with parents, and that starts with a real seat at the table and a real opportunity to be heard.

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‘Undeniable trend’: Australian boys’ schools feel the pressure to go co-ed

Next year Knox Grammar – one of the state’s largest schools – will have educated boys at its upper north shore campus for a century.

In that time, the private school has expanded from a single Federation-era house to vast and manicured grounds spanning almost 10 hectares. But the school’s motto “virile agitur” – a Latin phrase that translates to “do the manly thing” – has stayed the same.

Founded as a Presbyterian boys’ school with about two dozen students, it now has more than 3120 enrolments. Knox’s major expansion gathered pace in the early 2000s when it overhauled its boarding centre, “great hall”, 500-seat aquatic centre and the senior school.

But even under the weight of its all-boys history, principal Scott James acknowledges Knox “cannot be a standalone institution”, and “must provide opportunities for boys and girls to socialise and integrate”.

“Single-sex schools compared with co-educational schooling is an important educational conversation we have at Knox,” James said. “There is an abundance of research showing both pros and cons for each type of educational model.”

Establishing relationships with nearby girls’ private schools – Ravenswood, Pymble Ladies College and Abbotsleigh – has been key in allowing the school “to provide supervised activities that offer co-educational learning experiences”.

“We are now looking at shared study sessions with Abbotsleigh,” he said.

Eight years ago, The Armidale School famously became the first of the elite Athletic Association of Great Public Schools (GPS) to open their doors to girls. A former principal described the move as part of “an almost unstoppable wave”, after seeing a shift from single-sex to co-ed in all but the oldest schools in Britain.

Britain’s Winchester College, the 640-year-old alma mater of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has now joined the pack. Girls can enrol at the $78,000-a-year Hampshire school in sixth form, and Queenwood’s principal Elizabeth Stone will become head of the school this year, the first woman to lead the college.

Across Sydney, the pressure for boys’ private schools to look to admit girls is rising, and parents and alumni are making their voices heard.

A push by tech billionaire Scott Farquhar for Cranbrook to go co-ed was heavily backed by a group of former students who said private boys’ schools foster attitudes and behaviours that are no longer acceptable in broader society.

While that school’s final decision to admit girls by 2026 was not achieved without pain, one school council member believes will be the first of many eastern suburbs schools that will eventually make the co-ed leap.

Scandal hasn’t helped the case for private boys’ schools. Prominent Sydney schools such as Knox, Trinity and The King’s School all featured in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Knox – which charges fees up to $37,600 – most recently hit headlines after 20 students were expelled or suspended after sharing racist and homophobic videos, messages and rantings on violent misogyny via an online chat group.

In the past year alone, Waverley College expelled six students over bullying that involved “assault and humiliation-type behaviours”, the incident sparking an external investigation and calls for a cultural audit at the school; while Cranbrook was forced to undertake a detailed internal review after reports of anti-Semitic bullying.

At Newington College, a possible shift to co-ed is also on the table, with the school putting the idea to its community last February. In a message to parents in November, the school’s chairman Tony McDonald said no decisions had been made.

“Council has delved into research and looked further at other schools both here and overseas,” McDonald said. “We have commissioned independent experts to distil strategic opportunities ... and we are also deep in the process of interrogating foundational operational questions.”

The debate is unfolding against a backdrop of decline in single-sex schools: the number of private single-sex schools fell in the past decade even as the number of independent schools rose. There are now 68 private single-sex schools, down from 79 in 2012.

Data from the Association of Independent Schools NSW shows all-boys schools made up 7 per cent of the 511 private schools across the state last year.

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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