Since our school was founded, we have had all-gender restrooms at MES. It came to our attention recently that some families weren’t aware of our all-gender restroom policy. Some of our MES families might also not be aware that all-gender restrooms aligns with the district’s practice of building gender inclusive restroom spaces since 2021. MES faculty has an unwavering commitment to inclusivity, and all-gender restrooms offer an inclusive space to all students including our transgender, nonbinary, male, and female students.

Students at MES are accustomed to sharing restroom spaces with all students. Often, all-gender restrooms are within our students’ comfort zone, even while it may differ from what many MES parents experienced in their own school experience growing up where gendered restrooms were most common. We appreciate it when parents consider that school restrooms today must be inclusive of all students and provide privacy. This is why our urinals are covered up and are not used in our school restrooms: they were not built into stalls during the 2019 remodel, and therefore the urinals don’t provide enough privacy in these all-gender spaces. We ask all students to use a stall.

Sometimes, students or families would like a child to have a greater degree of privacy than can be provided in a multi-stall restroom. This could be due to a variety of personal preferences and/or health needs. For any of these scenarios, students can access a single user restroom in the nurse’s office, or they may use the single-user restroom in our resource classroom on the second floor. A greater degree of privacy may be comforting to some students, so please feel free to reach out to your child’s teacher if facilitating this would be helpful.

As a faculty and staff, we are committed to supporting students with feeling as comfortable as possible in our restrooms given the limitations of our space. We are leaning into this work in our classroom meetings and SEL instruction. We will also continue to problem solve absolutely any restroom misbehavior where our MES restroom firms aren’t being followed. As a staff, we hold true that behavior inside restrooms and our all-gender restroom designations as being unrelated. Our students are capable and kind: we trust that MES kids can be kind and respectful in all spaces, no matter who is using the stall next to them.

We will continue conversations as a staff to find more solutions as needed to any challenges with privacy and behavior in our restrooms.