In the coming 2016-2017 school year, Danbury High School is planning on allowing transgenders to go to the bathrooms they identify with.
This comes after President Obama and his administration issued a decree to all public schools saying that they must allow students to use whatever bathroom they choose based upon their stated gender identity.
Principal Gary Bocaccio and Associate Principal Megan Martins have been researching this issue for the entirety of the year.
Martins says, “We want to be proactive and want kids to feel included. We want to make sure that we have made considerations to make sure that everyone’s comfort is being attended to.”
Signs have been ordered to indicate that everyone is welcome to use a specified bathroom and provisions to a new locker room are also being looked into.
Senior student Alec Moore reacts to this saying, “I personally don’t mind. I don’t care as long as we have mutual understandings of boundaries in a bathroom.”
Danbury High School attends to the transgender community with the Diversity Club and the Gay Straight Alliance, with members being able to express themselves in ways they choose.
Bocaccio has been talking to other Fairfield County principals about the best ways to make this as accepting as it can be within the schools.
Martins says, “While we want to promote inclusion, there is certainly a faction of people who are not comfortable with that and so it’s challenging to navigate and to make sure that everyone is feeling good about things.”
Bocaccio and Martins said they believe teachers and students alike will react positively to the signs on the bathrooms.
Martins says, “One of the amazing things about this building is how accepting everybody is. My hope would be that those who are not comfortable with it would choose to do so quietly. I don’t think it’s going to be a huge deal here.”
Junior Simon Vu says, “It is the right thing to do. Equality is something essential when it comes to freedom, without it, no one is able to prosper.”