Construction on Wilson High School’s new, multimillion-dollar aquatic center is scheduled to begin next summer – kicking off a streak of five high school pools Long Beach Unified will eventually build – but the recently released final designs have apparently angered some parents because of a planned gender-neutral locker room.
The Wilson High aquatic center, scheduled to be ready by the next school year, is budgeted for $23 million and will boast a new outdoor pool and spectator seating.
But the complex will also have an all-gender locker room.
That means rather than having locker rooms for boys and girls, students will use the same facility no matter their gender identity.
The locker room will include 58 individual changing stalls, as well as individual stalled showers and restrooms. The facility will have a common area, where students will gather to wait for a stall to open so they can change or shower. The private stalls could pose a challenge to getting large groups of students changed in time for competitions and the common room — where students of all genders would gather — could create safety issues, according to at least one critic.
Long Beach Unified School District officials on Monday, Nov. 29, said the all-gender locker room is meant to provide a safe environment for all students.
Students, LBUSD officials added, were nearly unanimous in saying they were uncomfortable using the communal showers and changing areas that have long been the norm in high schools.
But opposition to the plan may be growing.
While it’s unclear how many parents oppose the gender-neutral locker room, at least one – who also happens to be a volunteer coach at Wilson – recently sent an email to community members excoriating the facility.
And LBUSD has scheduled a virtual community meeting for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 30, to provide information and answer questions. The meeting will be streamed on the district’s YouTube page and folks can ask questions via a Google link that will be available.
A related item is on the agenda for the LBUSD school board meeting – at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1 — during which materials and services for construction at Wilson and Lakewood high schools will be reviewed for approval.
“All-gender facilities affirm our commitment to providing a safe, productive learning environment for all students,” said David Miranda, LBUSD’s executive director of Facilities Development and Planning. “Wilson’s inclusive locker room also will benefit gender-diverse students and students with disabilities, including students who require the assistance of a caregiver of a different gender.”
Gender is different from a person’s biological sex. People are generally born biologically male or female. But an individual’s gender identity can differ from the sex they are assigned at birth – and can even fall outside the traditional descriptions of male and female.
Katie Rowe, the Wilson High volunteer coach, said in her email that the gender-neutral locker room – which she termed “co-ed” – violates norms of safe sports for student athletes and opens supervisors to legal liability because keeping an eye on students will be difficult to impossible.
“The problem is Co-Ed locker rooms ELIMINATE students from being able to change in the open,” she wrote. “This is probably not as much of an issue during PE class. However, for our sports teams this is a HUGE PROBLEM.”
But Evelyn Somoza, LBUSD’s assistant spokeswoman, said the inclusive facilities stemmed from two years of discussion, including input from students and coaches across the district.
While final designs were released recently, the concept of inclusive facilities was presented to the school board in August 2020, she said.
“The District’s decision to include plans for inclusive facilities aligns with the District’s equity and inclusivity values,” Somoza wrote in a statement, “while also taking into consideration a student-driven campaign that called for equitable access to school facilities for all students.”
Rowe, in her email, said the facility would likely be adequate for physical education classes, but that she still had concerns about mixing boys and girls in a locker room atmosphere.
Somoza, though, said the all-gender locker room will actually increase the staff’s ability to watch students.
“Student safety and privacy, as well as staff supervision were diligently considered in Wilson’s inclusive locker room design,” she said. “The locker room can be accessed by staff of any gender, providing Wilson an increased ability to monitor students.”
Rowe also said the locker room could prove problematic during competitions.
Some of those competitions, including the Moore League championship, can have about 250 athletes.
They will all vie for the same stalls, Rowe said – with limited time to get changed.
“So if we have approximately 80-100 girls needing 15-20 minutes to put on a suit and we have 58 stalls,” she said. “That math doesn’t work.”
The 10 shower stalls and nine restroom stalls in the current design would be inadequate, she said.
LBUSD could also face liability issues if teachers or coaches see naked or semi-naked children, Rowe said, though that seems as if it would be an issue in single-gender locker rooms, too.
The planned shower stalls, Somoza said, are large enough for students to shower and change into street clothes before returning to the common area.
The locker room, meanwhile, is an example of LBUSD being a leader in gender-neutral designs, Somoza said – something the state has also keyed in on.
“This month, the California Department of Education announced the formation of a committee that will help develop recommendations to expand the availability of gender neutral bathrooms on California school campuses,” Somoza said. “There is no state requirement that indicates that single-gender locker rooms should have individual changing stalls and showers.”
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