District 3 board member Alicia Farrant speaks during Orange County Public Schools’ board meeting on Jan. 10. (Screenshot from YouTube)
Orange County Public Schools District 3 board member Alicia Farrant asked that the OCPS school board consider removing its gender-neutral bathroom policy and require students to use multi-stall bathroom based on their assigned sex at birth in 2023’s first board meeting held on Jan. 10.
“From what I’m hearing from the community and what I’m feeling is that we have to go back to any group, multi-stall bathrooms should be separated by biological sex and then there are single-stall bathrooms sprinkled throughout the school that any child can use,” Farrant said at the board meeting.
The gender-neutral bathroom policy has been in place since 2018 but was only recently required to be publicly shared with parents following the instatement of Fla. Admin Code R. 6A-10.086. The code states that schools with bathrooms or locker rooms segregated by any criteria other than biological sex must post its policy on their website and send home a letter with students to ensure that their parents are fully informed.
There are two gender neutral bathrooms on campus, 19 segregated. This is a non-issue. pic.twitter.com/mKxsrJI3FJ
— Will Larkins☮️ (@ProudTwinkie) January 11, 2023
“Over the break, I was inundated with concerned parents writing in, calling me, meeting me personally discussing the bathroom policy,” Farrant said. “It’s just now available knowledge to me, to the parents. Many parents, including myself, did not realize.”
Following the letters being sent home prior to winter break, Farrant stated that several unnamed parents have reported to her stories of their daughters being uncomfortable using the bathroom at school.
“I had several telling me that their daughter has gone into the bathroom at their school, walked in and they see a male student who is dressed as a female, so a trans, whatever, and so when they see the male student it makes them feel uncomfortable and they turn around and they hold their pee the rest of the day,” Farrant said.
No other board members during the meeting indicated that they had received similar messages from concerned parents.
Winter Park High School student and LGBTQ activist, Will Larkins, spoke to the board during the meeting, saying that as a nonbinary student, they wanted to offer some student perspective.
“When I go into the bathroom assigned to my sex, and when a lot of trans kids do, they face harassment,” they said. “Winter Park High School is now allowing two bathrooms to be nonsegregated, to be gender-neutral … I walk all the way across campus to go to this bathroom because I am safer there.”
Larkins advised the board that there are currently 19 bathrooms that are segregated at their school.
“There are kids getting killed in schools,” Larkins said. “My teachers are struggling so much with the lack of resources, and I’m not blaming you guys, but there are problems much, much bigger than one gender-neutral bathroom at Winter Park High School.”
Orange County Public School Board is looking at introducing a policy that would BAN gender neutral bathrooms and force trans students to use the bathroom of their birth assigned sex. Meanwhile, there are real problems happening at OCPS schools. pic.twitter.com/97e6hQCfYf
— Will Larkins☮️ (@ProudTwinkie) January 11, 2023
Chairwoman Teresa Jacobs stated during the meeting that it is not standard practice to vote on a matter at the same board meeting it is introduced. Farrant’s request to continue the discussion at another meeting was not supported by the other board members.
During their discussion, several members of the board as well as Superintendent Maria Vazquez took time to address Farrant’s misconceptions of the transgender community.
“Sadly there is a lot of misinformation surrounding transgender students,” Vazquez said. “While some individuals may believe that it’s a matter of ‘I feel like a girl today’ and then a couple of days later ‘I’m back to feeling like a boy,’ that’s not at all the life of a transgender child.”
You can watch the Jan. 10 school board meeting below. Farrant begins her school bathroom discussion at 1:26:24.
