The signs on the door say “This washroom is for everyone,” and “This is a safe place for LGBTQ people.”
They let Esquimalt High School students know the washroom is a gender-neutral facility that can be used by anyone.
The facilities give non-binary, transgender or gender non-conforming students — who might not be comfortable using the men’s or women’s room — a safe place to go to the bathroom. By September, such washrooms will be in place at all 47 schools in the Greater Victoria school district.
Students Katie Costas and Morgan Armstrong, the president and vice-president of the school’s Queer Straight Alliance, say putting the bathrooms in schools is a positive step.
Armstrong, who is 18 and in Grade 12, said the washrooms offer “freedom to express your gender identity, but still be able to just do something as simple as use the bathroom without feeling strange or uncomfortable.”
Switching a girls’ washroom into a gender-neutral facility was simple, Armstrong said. “All we changed is the sign.”
Both Costas, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student, and Armstrong identify as non-binary.
“Which to me means I’m not a girl and I’m not a boy,” Costas said. “I’m just kind of both and neither.”
Greater Victoria school board trustee Jordan Watters, who helped lead the effort to develop a district gender-identity policy, said the bathrooms are a good start.
“It’s a really, really important part, just because of what it signals to our students and how it actually makes their day-to-day lives so much easier,” she said.
But there are plenty of other topics related to transgender issues that can be focused on, Watters said.
“The real work is going to come in terms of all the provisions and the policy for learning resources and curriculum, and all these other things that push things a little further.”
Watters said progress has certainly been made since the gender-identity policy was adopted in September.
“For some of us it feels slow, but we’re getting there.”
District superintendent Piet Langstraat said efforts have been made to ensure that the gender-neutral bathrooms provided at schools are “appropriate.”
“What I mean by that is it is not just a washroom in the basement, down the hallway, tucked in a corner.”
The bathrooms should be “truly accessible” to all youth and adults, he said.
Also part of the gender-identity policy is the right for transgender students to play on either a boys’ or girls’ sports teams and the inclusion of transgender issues in sex education.
The Sooke school district does not have a specific gender-identity policy but has been designating gender-neutral washrooms in secondary schools and middle schools for some time, said superintendent Jim Cambridge.
Saanich school district superintendent Keven Elder said gender-neutral washrooms are designated as needed.
“We have a practice which creates them where necessary,” he said. “So that’s a matter for schools to decide. They find a respectful way to make that happen.”
