How will new transgender guidelines affect suburban schools?

The impact on suburban school districts that have recently addressed the issue of transgender students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms was unclear Wednesday after the Trump administration rolled back his predecessor’s 2016 federal guidelines on the matter.

But advocates of privacy rights, who have championed the belief that access to gender-specific facilities should be determined by one’s biological sex at birth, welcomed the move.

“I think it’s a good thing because the federal government has no place telling local school districts what to do with their bathrooms and locker rooms,” said Vicki Wilson, a Palatine resident and co-founder of the group D211 Parents for Privacy. “It’s a move in the right direction.”

In Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211, an agreement was reached with the departments of education and justice in late 2015 allowing a single transgender student limited access to a girls’ locker room, in accordance with the student’s self-identified gender.

The agreement was based on a compromise offered by District 211, which was threatened with the annual withholding of $6 million of federal Title IX funding for not allowing the student access to the girls locker room at all at the time she filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

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