Written by Peyton De Winter & Aakanksha Sinha
In fall 2012, Aragon opened all-gender bathrooms on campus for students to use. A year later, Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown approved Assembly Bill 1266, an addition to the state’s nondiscriminatory laws that ensure that transgender students have the right to use facilities that are consistent with their gender identity regardless of the gender listed on the students’ record.
“In an attempt to be ahead of the state laws, we’ve done things like [bringing] the all-gender bathrooms to campus,” said Vince Bravo, English teacher and Gender and Sexuality Awareness club adviser. “We’ve worked to create an authentic digital identity for students with the help of Assistant Principal Nicole Elenz-Martin.”
Currently, students who prefer an all-gender changing area have to communicate their preferences with administration and their physical education teachers.
“If the students come up and say they want a name change, for example, that’s when [administration] starts the process of saying ‘where would you like to change [and] in what locker room,’” said Physical Education department co-head Annette Trimble-Gennaro. “It depends on the comfortability of the student at the time. Unfortunately, sometimes students won’t come to us and we don’t necessarily know how to support them.”
“I think this is the next frontier for civil rights”
Gennaro explains what this current system entails for students who request an alternative changing area.
“Right now they are using the bathrooms that are locked [near] the [team room] and they’ve also put some lockers out,” Gennaro said. “For one of my students, they’re using the outside showers just to rinse off, which is pretty much what they do [in the locker room].”
Across the district, several gymnasiums are being renovated this summer, which includes the locker room areas at Burlingame High School and San Mateo High School. These renovations are planned to include all-gender locker rooms for students, in addition to the gendered spaces.
“Over the last couple of years, bond money has been spent to update athletic facilities across the district, and the district has had an eye toward all-gender spaces in these athletic centers,” Bravo said. “The struggle though is because things move so slowly in a school system and the funding [is always tentative,] not all seven schools have had this sort of remodeling at the same time.”
In fall 2021, Aragon Student Equity Council was created and brought up the lack of a dedicated all-gender inclusive locker room for students to use, which Bravo followed up on later in the semester. Near the beginning of spring 2023, Bravo suggested that a team room near the all-gender restroom could be an appropriate space to convert. Principal Valerie Arbizu began discussing possible plans with athletic director Steve Sell and the district facilities team. Currently, the team room, currently used for storage and a space for the JV football team in the fall, is being investigated as a feasible location for an all-gender locker room.
“When I was asked what would be a good room for an all-gender locker room, I thought this would work,” Sell said. “The space is good and it’s [already] a locker room. It honors and respects the kids’ gender identity, [as] they’re going into a locker room just like all the other students are going into a locker room.”
As summer construction approaches, it is unlikely that this new plan will be finished by the beginning of the 2023-24 school year. However, Arbizu hopes to have a concrete plan with additional clarity on the funding before the end of the month.
“With a lot of the other big construction projects going on, everything has been ordered and is ready to go,” Arbizu said. “That’s why I don’t think we’re going to start the school year with the all-gender changing area ready to go, but I know it’s something we want to get done at some point. I would like to get it done by December.”
Showers are unlikely to be included in these suggested locker room renovations as funding decisions from the district are pending, and the required plumbing would increase the costs. Last year, ASEC proposed to the Aragon administration to provide a space for showers to students using the all-gender bathrooms.
“The equity council presented to me and we walked around [to look at a few locations],” Arbizu said. “Where the equity council and I landed was [in] the [all-gender] bathroom … I brought it to the attention of our facilities folks in the district office [but] that has not gone anywhere … We hit pause for a little bit because we had all of this other stuff going on.”
“Should a school district with the resources we have still have students changing in a restroom?”
While providing showers to the students using these spaces is optimal, the showers are not used often throughout the course of the year by P.E. students.
“The only time people really take showers is after they swim,” Sell said. “Typically, they all shower in their suits, and [they] shower … to take chlorine off. In theory, there is a door connecting that room, so there would still be a place for kids to use the [all-gender] locker room to change.”
There is uncertainty regarding the internal construction of the all-gender locker room, but there are some proposals in mind.
“If you ever go to a college campus and they have co-ed bathrooms, you can see that the showers and stalls go from [the floor to the ceiling],” Sell said. “Part of the discussion of that room is that you would have lockers, and then you would need some floor to ceiling places to change.”
However, the tentative funding will likely impact the extent to which the room can be renovated for its new use.
“I was almost wondering whether that was something that might make sense for [the proposed locker room] as well,” Arbizu said. “It’s more sturdy than a partition, it offers privacy, if there are curtains in that space, you can close a door [instead] so you don’t have to worry about someone just moving a curtain. So that’s another potential idea. I just need to know how much money [we have] and what makes the most sense.”
Expanding access to facilities is a step toward equal accommodations for all students.
“I think this is the next frontier for civil rights,” Sell said. “We’re talking about transgender athletics and … these states under the guise of protecting women’s athletics are trying to ban transgender kids from participating in athletics. In reality, those states are the same ones [that hated it] when Title IX started for equal women’s athletics.”
Bringing an all-gender locker room to campus can be a way to increase inclusivity within Aragon’s P.E. and athletics departments.
“The question is should a school district with the resources we have still have students changing in a restroom,” Sell said.
Despite the current uncertainty, Aragon’s administration does plan on integrating an all-gender space for students to change in regardless of what the end plan becomes.
“Something will happen,” Arbizu said. “The question is what is the timeline and how much money is [the district] going to let me spend. There’s different ways to do it [and] we’re trying to find what’s the most cost-effective but also timely.”
