Vashon High School could have more gender neutral bathrooms if the island’s school board approves a proposal brought by Vashon High School’s Queer Spectrum Alliance.

Students from the alliance brought a report to the Vashon Island School District (VISD) board last month that calls for a three-week trial period at the beginning of the next school year. During the trial, the school’s upstairs restrooms would become gender neutral. The downstairs bathrooms would remain gendered.

According to the alliance’s proposal, “in stopping the gendering of a set of school bathrooms, we aim to support and protect the gender expansive and queer students who are often ignored.”

Vashon High School (VHS) currently has one gender neutral bathroom, but it can only be accessed with a key. Queer Spectrum Alliance (QSA) members indicate in their report that the action of obtaining the key “feels very othering” and causes students to “feel like they have to out themselves to get a key in the first place.”

VHS principal Danny Rock said the decision to lock the bathroom, which was provided for transitioning students, and distribute keys was due to vandalism. He said the restroom is single-use, with only one stall and was egregiously vandalized roughly two and a half years ago when a student used a sink as a toilet.

“We had to weigh access and security and determined it was better to give access only to students who want access,” he said. “We distributed keys to everyone who wanted one and anyone could get a key. It’s been two and a half year years with no vandalism. But now the issue has become access, which I totally understand.”

He said he understands that bathroom access via key is a barrier, so the QSA’s solution of having the trial period by converting an existing bathroom with multiple stalls is “really a much more sensible way to provide access.”

“There’s always the possibility for vandalism in bathrooms, but I do believe that if the bathroom has no assigned gender to it that any vandalism that occurs there will not be so closely connected to our transitioning students,” he said.

VISD board chair Steve Ellison said last week that board members are “in discussions” about the idea and are working to determine exactly what would need to be done to take the restrooms from gendered to gender neutral.

“Normal bathrooms don’t have the privacy necessary for gender neutral bathrooms,” he said. “We’re investigating what a trial would look like with the intent of moving forward.”

The concept has been tried at other local high schools, including West Seattle High School and Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School. According to a May 2016 article in The Seattle Times, a student-led initiative by West Seattle High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance that took more than one year, led to the creation of a gender neutral bathroom.

“The alliance members had to work harder to get some fellow students to embrace it. Some thought the new bathroom would be only for students who identify as transgender. Others didn’t know what transgender meant, or why someone might feel uncomfortable using a restroom designated for women or men,” the article indicates.

This student education is crucial, according to the VHS proposal which also calls for extensive outreach and education to be done by QSA. The alliance’s proposal recognizes the “understandable amount of opposition” to the idea of non-gendered bathrooms and addresses the common concerns of the potential for sexual harassment and assault, as well as parental concerns.

“Before we start this trial period, it is especially important to educate the student body on the reasoning behind and the nature of gender neutral bathrooms for all,” Vashon’s QSA proposal states. “One important thing that we want to address and make clear is that these bathrooms would not be ‘special’ bathrooms, only available to transgender or nonbinary students, but bathrooms for anyone who wants to use them.”

As for the sexual assault concerns, multiple news organizations including The Huffington Post, TIME and ABC News have interviewed sexual assault and domestic violence experts who say that people who are looking to sexually assault someone will go into a bathroom regardless if it corresponds to their gender.

“It’s problematic to conflate in examples when a person, who is not transgender identified, is trespassing in a restroom exploiting that position to harm others,” Laura Palumbo, communications director at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center said in an April 2016 ABC News story.

Meanwhile, some states such as Texas and North Carolina continue to push legislation aiming to bar people from using restrooms that don’t match the gender on their birth certificates.

Vashon’s proposal states “transgender people are often the victims of abuse and attacks when using a bathroom that the people around them deem as wrong.”

Rock acknowledged that there will be challenges, but if there is a place open to the idea, “it’s here,” he said.

“It’ll be great just to see how the community responds,” he said. “For myself and those who are older, this is a world that we can’t relate to. The breakdown of gender was not a part of our youth, but it’s a big part of this generation.”

VISD board member Zabette Macomber called the students’ presentation “well researched, articulated, and presented” and said the board was impressed and “looks forward to working with the superintendent and principal on this.”

Board member Bob Hennessey seconded Macomber’s feelings and said the board’s interest “is strong.”

“We have to involve the entire high school community,” he said. “We want to talk about it and do our homework. There does have to be a true community involvement process before moving forward. We need a plan.”

The school board will meet at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, at the district conference room at Chautauqua Elementary School. According to the meeting agenda, VISD Superintendent Michael Soltman is scheduled to give a follow-up report on the topic.