School district, Queer Spectrum Alliance create timeline for all-gender bathrooms

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Come January, Vashon High School will have more gender-neutral bathrooms, and outreach will begin in December to educate parents, teachers and students about the addition.

At last Thursday’s school board meeting, members of Vashon High School’s Queer Spectrum Alliance (QSA) — which is spearheading an effort to bring more gender-neutral bathrooms to the school — presented a timeline for the project that will turn the school’s upstairs restrooms into gender neutral facilities. The downstairs bathrooms will remain gendered.

Currently, the island’s public high school has one gender-neutral bathroom that requires a key for use. QSA members say that 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.”

According to the alliance’s timeline, the conversion of the bathroom from gendered to all-gender will come after educational talks with author, gender specialist and LGBTQ activist Aidan Key in early December. He will be responsible for educating teachers and parents on the reasoning behind the change and the process. Students will then be educated by QSA members. It is all in effort to “create ongoing dialogue and build conversation about gender,” QSA member Amelia Prince said Thursday.

The bathroom will be converted in December and open in early January — the goal is Jan. 2, when students return from break.

The Vashon Island School District board approved the initial proposal for more gender-neutral bathrooms in June and allocated $25,000 to the effort.

After the Thursday QSA presentation, board member Zabette Macomber commended the students for their work in taking the project from proposal to implementation.

“This is great, really well thought out,” she said