Pennsylvania principal threatens to punish students protesting transgender bathroom policy

The principal of a Pennsylvania school district warned punishment could come to students who participated in a walkout to protest a school policy allowing a trans girl to use the girls bathroom.

The walkout at Sun Valley High School in Penn Delco School District took place on Wednesday, three days after school Principal John Paul Roskos reminded students about the district’s unexcused absences policy.

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“I would like to highlight our policies on student attendance and what constitutes a lawful excused absence vs an unexcused absence and how these attendance codes can effect student grades,” Roskos said in a newsletter email reviewed by the Washington Examiner. “Please take a moment to review these.”

The protest was organized after parents and students repeatedly complained to school district officials about the policy that allows biological men who identify as women to use the female lavatory facilities.

According to emails shared with the Washington Examiner last week by the parent activist group Parents Defending Education, the district superintendent, George Steinhoff, told a parent that several years ago, the district “consulted our legal counsel and clarified that its practices around school-level bathroom use were in compliance with Title IX, relevant court rulings, and anti-discrimination policy.”

Roskos, after his initial newsletter, sent a follow-up email to families that said that because the protest was “unrelated to any student or school sanctioned event,” the district’s policy on unexcused absences would apply.

“When students attend school, parents and school staff expect them to be where they are scheduled to be,” he wrote. “For that reason, ‘cutting’ or skipping class is not permitted in schools and is treated as an infraction.”

A source within Penn Delco School District told the Washington Examiner that the protest went off on Wednesday peacefully, but some students were blocked from participating by teachers who would not let them walk out of the classroom, and coaches had threatened student-athletes with repercussions if they participated.

“The numbers weren’t as high as we anticipated,” the source said. “Evidently, the coaches were threatening the athletes with repercussions from the school, so no athletes walked. And some students were texting their parents, who were outside, that they couldn’t make it out because the teachers were blocking the hallways and telling them to go back to class and told the students ‘they were doing this for their safety and the safety of all the students.'”

Pictures and video of the protest shared with the Washington Examiner showed the walkout drew a small crowd of students, many of which carried signs that said “respect women’s rights” or “bathrooms were segregated for a reason.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Steinhoff said that reports that school staff had blocked students from leaving were “incorrect” and that he had “no knowledge of any staff blocking students from leaving.”

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“Contrary to blocking students from leaving the school, students were permitted to join the parent protest held outside of the school and those who participated were logged back into school at the conclusion of the event,” he said.

As for Roskos’s indication that students who walked out would face discipline, Steinhoff said he was “only aware of notice that was provided to parents and students of the code of conduct that includes responses to skipping or cutting class.”