Regional School Unit (RSU) 10’s new Mountain Valley Community School will have a co-ed locker room when it opens in January, where male and female students will change in the same area, according to a school board member.
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“We are going to have a major situation when the kids start going into the building and parents understand that, as of right now, boys and girls go into one locker room, and that is not acceptable. As a board, we have gotta do better than that,” said Sumner school board member Kristen Chapman at RSU10’s Monday meeting.
Chapman raised the concern in response to an email sent to the board by Rep. Tammy Schmersal-Burgess (R-Mexico), whose town, along with Buckfield, Hanover, Hartford, Roxbury, Rumford, and Sumner, is part of RSU 10.
Schmersal-Burgess was naturally concerned that the students would be using the same facility as a locker room, regardless of sex.
During the meeting, Chapman informed the rest of the board that she had found an old 2022 floor plan of the school, which included a dividing wall separating the locker room into two distinct facilities. In the current floor plan, the wall no longer exists, and the facility will be used by students of both sexes.
RSU 10 Superintendent of Schools Deb Aiden defended the co-ed facility, saying that, while the locker room will be used by both sexes, each individual changing room and shower is entirely private, so male and female students would not actually be changing in sight of each other. According to Aiden, the only thing not done in private would be hand washing.
Notably, restrooms typically have completely private stalls and are nevertheless segregated by sex, except in cases when transgender-identifying students are allowed to use the facilities of the opposite sex.
Another member, Alison Long, representing Buckfield, suggested that Chapman was bringing up something that was not a real concern, but rather an issue raised by outside voices trying to stir up a “culture war.”
“I don’t see a problem here, and I’m hoping that we don’t turn this fighting [indistinguishable] about a brand new building in our district into a culture war,” she said.
The school was built using funds from the Maine Department of Education (MDOE). During the meeting, Chapman addressed another board member’s email in response to Rep. Schmersal-Burgess, claiming that the locker room was built as it was in order to comply with MDOE requirements for “space and up-to-date designs” for new constructions receiving state funding.
Unfortunately, the audio quality for the recorded version of RSU10’s meeting was so poor that the Maine Wire was unable to determine which board member Chapman said sent that email.
Chapman then said that she reviewed numerous MDOE policies but was unable to find anything requiring locker rooms to be co-ed.
After multiple board members responded to Chapman, seemingly defending the locker room, she pointed out that no one had explained to her where in state law or MDOE guidelines the department required them to have a co-ed locker room.
She did not receive an answer during the meeting; instead, it went into executive session.
The Maine Wire reached out by email to Chapman and by email and phone to Schmersal-Burgess for comments and further information on the situation, but neither responded immediately.
So a student is going to go to his/her locker, take out his/her sports clothes and shoes, take them into their private shower and toilet room, change and then return their classroom clothes to their locker in the coed locker room? This is going to have to be a very small school for each student to have his/her own private shower and changing room or a class of twenty or thirty is going to spend more time waiting to change than participating in playing a sport.