I appreciate the Lexington High School bathroom discussions and the willingness of School Building Committee (SBC) members to continue the conversation with families.
During my discussion session this week with Kathleen Lenihan and other SBC members, I spoke about my son’s preference for urinals because they are faster and cleaner, and my daughter’s preference for traditional girls’ bathrooms because of privacy and comfort. In a few years, privacy and comfort will become even more important for her as she manages personal health needs.
That is why I do not understand why the design team chose to reduce urinals by 62%, from 32 to 12 — approximately one urinal for every 100 boys in the high school — while also reducing traditional girls’ bathrooms by approximately 33%.
At the same time, some central administration offices on floor 4 have in-suite bathrooms with extremely short walking distance, while thousands of students face reduced access to traditional boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. That does not feel equitable.
I understand that different people have different bathroom preferences. Some students prefer gender-neutral bathrooms. Some prefer traditional boys’ or girls’ bathrooms. Some boys prefer urinals. That diversity of preference should be respected. It is not right for one group — whether majority or minority — to force its bathroom preference on others.
The purpose of the new high school bathroom design should be to satisfy the practical needs of all students, not the personal ideology or preferred design philosophy of officials or design teams.
I also raised during my discussion with SBC members my discomfort that legitimate concerns from parents and School Building Committee members sometimes appeared to be dismissed by the design team. At times, the design team seemed overly fixed on a single design philosophy while neglecting the basic human needs and preferences of many students.
Lexington Public Schools often says “we all belong”. If we truly believe that, then the new high school should provide practical and accessible bathroom choices for all students. A recent bathroom accessibility petition received more than 430 responses from Lexington residents affiliated with LPS, with 98.4% supporting a better design that improves bathroom accessibility for all students.
I appreciate hearing that the design process will continue to be iterative. However, if the current design team cannot deliver a bathroom plan that satisfies the basic human needs and preferences of all students, then the School Building Committee should seriously consider whether a different design team is needed to complete this important work.
Zhechun Zhang
The “boys lose” framing is misleading because it assumes today’s distribution of restroom fixtures is the fair baseline. — It isn’t.
Today, LHS has 49 boys-only fixtures, 39 girls-only fixtures, and just 11 universal fixtures. Boys already have substantially more dedicated restroom capacity than girls and more than 3.5 times the number of universal fixtures.
Some have argued that boys should retain all 49 existing fixtures while also providing equal accommodations for girls and universal users. But that isn’t a realistic alternative. Replicating today’s level of boys-only access across all three categories would require roughly 158 fixtures, compared with the 105 fixtures included in the proposed design.
Importantly, the proposed design does not eliminate boys-only or girls-only restrooms. Students who prefer those spaces will continue to have them. What changes is that the number of universal facilities increases, giving ALL students more restroom options and more overall access.
The goal of universal design is not to serve a small group of students. It is to create a better restroom experience for EVERYONE: more privacy through fully enclosed stalls, improved supervision through open common areas, greater accessibility and flexibility, shorter wait times, and more restroom capacity that can be used by ALL students.
Rather than taking something away from boys or girls, the proposed design preserves gender-specific options while expanding access, privacy, and convenience for everyone.
The proposed 60% neutral bathroom design raises important concerns about whether the needs and preferences of the majority of students are being adequately accommodated. Based on the current plan, boys who prefer urinals would see approximately a 62% reduction in access to that fixture type, resulting in an estimated user-to-feature ratio of nearly 100:1. Girls who prefer traditional girls’ bathrooms would experience about a 33% reduction in access, with an estimated user-to-feature ratio of roughly 44:1. By comparison, the central administration area is planned with a user-to-bathroom ratio of approximately 9:1. While neutral bathrooms serve an important role in providing an option for students who prefer them, they do not offer the same advantages that many students seek in traditional facilities. For boys, neutral bathrooms generally do not provide the efficiency benefits of urinals, which can help reduce wait times and increase restroom capacity during short passing periods. For girls, neutral bathrooms do not provide the same degree of separation and privacy that many value when managing personal health needs. In this sense, neutral bathrooms may be a preferred option for some students, but they are not necessarily the optimal solution for many boys or girls. A successful school bathroom design should balance inclusion with practicality and ensure that all students can access facilities that meet their needs efficiently and comfortably. The question is not whether neutral bathrooms should exist—they should. The question is whether a design that makes neutral bathrooms the dominant option while significantly reducing access to traditional boys’ and girls’ facilities best serves the student population as a whole. A more balanced design would preserve meaningful access to neutral bathrooms while also maintaining adequate numbers of traditional boys’ and girls’ facilities, recognizing that different students have different needs and preferences.
I wholeheartedly agree with Deb Zucker’s analysis. The current distribution of bathrooms is not equitable, and the new design helps rectify that inequity. Over the years, I’ve heard from many high school students about this situation. Let’s support this design to provide equitable access to all students.
Reading through the piece, I was really struck by the focus on honoring student diversity and comfort – especially the point about how privacy and comfort become deeply personal health needs as kids grow up.
The counter-argument that claims the “boys lose” framing is misleading because boys historically had more fixtures. But that line of reasoning misses the forest for the trees. This isn’t about fiercely defending an outdated status quo or demanding a maximalist, unrealistic 158 fixtures. That’s a classic false choice.
The real issue the author points out is the sheer scale of the proposed cuts. Reducing urinals by 62%, leaving about one for every 100 boys while cutting traditional girls’ rooms by 33% isn’t a calibrated fix. It’s a massive reduction in traditional access for everyone.
Saying these spaces aren’t “eliminated” ignores the reality of a high school passing period. Technically existing on paper is very different from being practically accessible when thousands of kids have limited time to get to class. If a school cafeteria cut its lunch lines by 62%, the administration couldn’t just say “well, we still technically have food” to justify the massive lines and hungry students.
The article also brings up a glaring question about equity: why do the central admin offices on Floor 4 get private, in-suite bathrooms with zero lines, while the student body faces severe cuts to traditional options? If equity is our guiding light, it has to apply to everyone, not just the students.
If universal design is as great as its proponents say, we should absolutely include it. Kids will choose it freely. But you don’t need to create artificial scarcity by throttling traditional options by a third or more just to prove a new design works. Real choice means opting in, not being forced in because the alternatives were quietly downsized.
When a community petition gets over 430 responses with a staggering 98.4% consensus asking for better bathroom accessibility, it’s not an ideological complaint. It’s a clear signal from parents and students who care about basic human comfort and privacy. The author is entirely right: expanding options for some students shouldn’t mean creating a functional deficit for everyone else. We can do better than a design that manufactures compliance through scarcity.
I’ve commented below, with a genuine desire to discuss this more with people who have concerns. I think people are sharing concerns that are grounded in their own experiences and articulated out of love and worry.
I do need to point out here, though, that **petitions do not measure consensus**. I did not sign the petition because I did not agree with what it was asking for – the 98.4% statistic you’re referencing repeatedly **is not relevant**.
I’d ask the editor to clarify this as well.
430 (anonymous) responses is also **not a large number** in a district with more than 6,500 students. This petition was distributed broadly enough that I received it separately from six friends. Thousands of people likely opted not to even sign onto this petition (and we can’t know for sure, because **that’s not how petitions work**).
Please stop presenting data in misleading ways. I’d love this conversation to continue, and invite folks to reach out to me if they are interested in dialogue.
Andrew Harris, thank you for your thoughtful response and for sharing your personal experience. Bullying of any student – including trans and nonbinary kids – is genuinely unacceptable, and I appreciate you raising it directly. That concern deserves to be taken seriously.
On the petition: you raise a fair methodological point that petitions don’t measure consensus. That’s true. But the same logic cuts both ways – the absence of signatures doesn’t measure opposition either. What the petition does show is that a substantial number of engaged community members felt strongly enough to respond, and that their concern was overwhelmingly consistent. It’s one data point, not a definitive poll, and it was never presented as more than that.
On your personal experience of bullying in gendered bathrooms – that is real, it matters, and no student should have to endure it. But bullying is a behavioral and enforcement problem, not purely a design problem. Universal bathrooms can help some vulnerable students feel safer, and that’s a legitimate benefit. However, if bullying is the core issue, the solution should also include supervision, accountability, and school culture -not primarily a 62% reduction in traditional fixtures. One without the other addresses the symptoms only partially.
On the framing of “preference vs. need”: you make a sincere point that for trans and nonbinary students, universal bathrooms aren’t just a preference – they’re a safety need. That’s important and worth centering. But the same principle applies in reverse. For some girls, particularly as they get older and manage personal health needs, privacy in a traditional girls’ bathroom isn’t a preference either – it’s a practical need. Needs exist on multiple sides of this conversation, and a good design should acknowledge all of them.
Which brings us to the core question: how is a design of 60% universal and 40% traditional gendered bathrooms justified as the right balance? That justification hasn’t been clearly made. The burden of proof is on the design team to demonstrate that this specific ratio adequately serves all students – including the trans student who needs safety, the girl who needs privacy, and the boy navigating a 62% reduction in urinal access. Asserting that universal design benefits everyone isn’t the same as showing that this particular ratio does.
Nobody in this conversation is arguing against protecting vulnerable students. The argument is that protecting one group should not require substantially reducing practical access for others – and that a design serving 1,200+ students deserves a more rigorous, transparent justification than has been offered so far.
To conclude, I want to thank the SBC for conducting private listening sessions via Zoom – that engagement is genuinely appreciated. And I would like to call for a public community forum and a survey in LHS, so that even more voices can be heard transparently. A school that believes “we all belong” should make space for all perspectives in decisions that affect all students.
I deeply appreciate the tone we’ve maintained in our conversation. Thank you all!
Your point about bullying being a behavior issue is absolutely true, and worth considering. We’re pushing the administration to address this and will continue to do so. The bathrooms aren’t a fix by a long shot.
To this point, I think we as the adults set the tone and the students are listening. How we act will have downstream effects on bullying behavior. Nationally, the tone is toxic, harmful, full of demonization and misinformation. This leads to bullying.
Locally, we have an impact too. The tone of this conversation will be impactful. It was impactful two years ago when we had the debate about Serious Talks. I fear that the mailing campaign that was undertaken against the curriculum communicated that many of us don’t belong. We in the queer community had to stand up because we were worried that if left unchecked, these messages would empower bullies. We gathered more than a thousand signatures from (identified) Lexington community members to remind our kids that we all belong.
Now, we have a chance to communicate our values through our actions. I’ve said this to Julie and members of the SBC. Building bathrooms that prioritize safety and universal access **can reduce bullying behaviors** by communicating our values through action.
I appreciate that the SBC is taking parent concerns seriously and listening. This kind of leadership allows more perspectives to be heard and I hope feels validating to parents.
Zhechun, I think you are coming from a place of care and concern for your children and the students of LPS. Reading your letter, I believe you may have not fully understood the concerns that led to this decision. You wrote:
“I understand that different people have different bathroom preferences. Some students prefer gender-neutral bathrooms. Some prefer traditional boys’ or girls’ bathrooms. Some boys prefer urinals. That diversity of preference should be respected. It is not right for one group — whether majority or minority — to force its bathroom preference on others.”
This is not about preferences.
There are safety concerns for trans and nonbinary kids in gendered spaces. The bullying I experienced in bathrooms as a gender non-conforming teenager continues 25 years later. For many vulnerable kids, having universal bathrooms isn’t a preference, it’s a need.
You go on to reference “basic human needs and preferences of all students”. I’ll be really frank here: I’m able to pee standing up, but it’s not a need. In the building I work in, I can walk another 100 paces to get to a bathroom with a urinal, and sometimes that feels worth it, but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a choice I am privileged to make, not a basic human need.
When a trans kid is bullied in the bathroom so many times that they stop using the bathrooms at school, THAT is a human need being unmet. I know this is the case for some kids at the high school, and until we get that right, I’ll be speaking up and helping to educate folks who might not know enough about these issues.
I hope this perspective and framing changes how you view the subject. I’ve had many productive conversations with folks in town about topics related to gender – I’m happy to discuss this more any time.
Andrew Harris
Andrew Harris, thank you for sharing your perspective.
The first core value of LPS is that we all belong. That means students who prefer all-gender bathrooms, students who prefer urinals, and students who prefer traditional girls’ bathrooms all belong. Access to bathrooms should not depend on whether a student’s preference is held by a minority or a majority. Every student deserves safe, convenient, and equitable access to the bathroom that best meets their needs.
That is why the petition requests an alternative design that better aligns with LPS’s first core value:
Reduce maximum student travel time to 45 seconds or less, aligning more closely with the approximately 30-second access provided in the central administration area.
Provide triads of boys’, girls’, and all-gender bathrooms throughout the building to minimize travel time for all students, regardless of bathroom preference.
Increase girls’ toilet capacity by at least 30% compared with the current building to reduce wait-time disparities.
Maintain at least the current number of boys’ toilets and restore a urinal-to-toilet ratio of at least 2:1 to preserve efficiency, capacity, and hygiene.
Every LPS student, regardless of bathroom preference, deserves both a safe learning environment and a bathroom environment that works for them. If the district’s best anti-bullying strategy is a bathroom plan that reduces urinals by 62% and traditional girls’ bathrooms by 33%, then I would argue the solution lies in improving student conduct and accountability—not reducing access to bathrooms that many students prefer to use.
The proposed design provides neither the efficiency many boys rely on from urinals nor the privacy many girls prefer in traditional girls’ bathrooms. Students should not have to sacrifice one need to accommodate another.
We are building one of the most expensive high schools in the country, supported by a $660 million investment, in a community that values excellence in education. This should not be a zero-sum game.
Is it too much to ask the design team to present a bathroom plan that ensures no student has to choose between instructional time and access to their preferred bathroom? Is it too much to ask for student bathroom access that is comparable to the access provided in the central administration area? Is it equitable that, under the current proposal, roughly 100 boys may compete for a single urinal while administrators have access to in-suite bathrooms?
If “we all belong” is truly our guiding principle, then our bathroom design should reflect that commitment for every student—not just some of them.
We all belong, don’t we?
As a longtime LHS teacher, I’d like to follow up on Andrew Harris’ points about safety. According to the YRBS youth behavior survey data from 2024, 22.8% of trans and gender nonconforming students have been bullied on school property within an additional 14.1% of queer students. Trans students face significantly higher rates of depression, suicidality, and self-injurious behaviors compared to our general population. The safety of all transgender and gender-conforming students is of utmost importance to me personally and to all of our community, and we are failing them at far too high rates.
Bathrooms are typically one of the most anxiety producing spaces for trans and gender non-conforming individuals. A 2017 survey indicated that almost 43% of these students avoided bathrooms at school due to safety concerns or feelings of discomfort. Three different surveys over various years identified toilets as being particularly hostile environments for transgender diverse students linked to reports a verbal, physical and sexual assault. Avoiding bathrooms can lead to disastrous health consequences. If we truly believe that we all belong, we will ensure that these places are safe and inclusive for all the students on campus.
Sufficient, widespread, and convenient gender-neutral bathrooms provide safety and privacy for our most vulnerable students: not only trans and gender non-conforming students, but also students with disabilities, both visible and invisible. This allows caregivers who work with students to accompany them into the bathroom areas, and in more publicly used restrooms, families can accompany children, elderly folks, and disabled to the bathroom for assistance when coming to visit LHS for sports, plays, family conferences, and other public events that bring them to our campus. Gender-neutral stalls like the ones proposed for the new LHS allow many people to retain their privacy for a myriad of conditions and reasons.
I also thank Andrew for pointing out that a petition can, by its very nature, not be considered reliable data here, as is does not sample a cross-section of stake-holders.
I thank the LSC and LPS leadership for continuing these conversations.
Rina Mazor
Lexington High School Teacher
I am grateful to my neighbors for caring so deeply about students, and I believe we all share the same goal: ensuring that every student has safe, convenient access to a restroom during the very short passing periods between classes.
What I am concerned about is strong opposition based on assumptions not supported by evidence.
Universal restrooms are not an accommodation for a small group of students; they expand access for everyone. Fully enclosed stalls provide significantly more privacy than traditional restroom stalls, while open common areas improve visibility and supervision. Studies show that when people have the opportunity to experience modern universal design, most prefer it because of the increased privacy and shorter wait times.
Universal restroom designs are already in use in schools and public spaces across the United States and are even more common in Europe.
The framing that “boys & girls are losing” is misleading and I do not support reducing universal facilities (which can be used by all students) in favor of additional urinals that can only be used by a portion of the student body.
The proposed design is actually 60% gendered fixtures and 40% universal. The myth that a majority are universal is in fact not correct. SMMA Toilet Room Design (3/10/26 Report) https://drive.google.com/file/d/11mN-yeigmjrQHFt4IhJhDPLbiytNzOGc/view?usp=drivesdk
Can parents please clarify their concerns about privacy?
How are you imagining these bathrooms? What specific privacy concerns need to be addressed?
I think there is a chance we are not on the same page.
Perhaps you have specific concerns, like “I am worried that feminine hygiene products will be accessible but in a place that is in plain view, and I’m concerned children will neglect their needs because they are embarrassed to be seen taking them.” Let’s name them so I can help advocate for them to be addressed.
I expect privacy concerns can be addressed in the design and I think they should be.
Thanks for the continued collaborative and supportive tone. It means so much.