The Appleton Area School District is allowing members of the opposite sex to access formerly sex segregated spaces such as bathrooms and changing rooms. They also do not have a written policy posted on the District’s website explaining how the District handles sex-based versus gender based rights and accommodations and the steps that students need to take in order to maintain their sex-based rights and privacy.
I have been asked why this is a problem. There are multiple reasons.
Up until only a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to allow members of the opposite sex access to bathrooms and changing rooms. A member of the opposite sex impinging on a sex segregated space in that manner would have been understood to be inherently a form of sexual harassment. A change as great as allowing males to enter private female spaces and females to enter private male spaces is something that that the District should be highlighting and providing information about to students and families on its website so that everybody can be made aware of this change. AASD, however, has not done that.
Regardless of whatever legal responsibilities AASD has to provide accommodations to transgender individuals, it also still has a legal responsibility to provide sex-based protections and accommodations as well. Again, the fact that AASD does not have a clearly written easily accessible policy providing information to students, staff, and families for how they can maintain their sex-based protections and privacy is problematic. This is a really simple step that the District should be taking so that students don’t need to single themselves out to teachers and administrators by asking for an accommodation but instead can just look up what their rights are and where they can go to maintain their privacy. Additionally, a publicly posted written explanation of how students can maintain their sex-based rights would be beneficial to parents who want to help their children navigate the current system.
Superintendent Greg Hartjes has indicated that the District does not have any written policy that everyone can reference. Rather, they utilize a number of different sources that provide the District legal briefings including webinars from “a variety of organizations” and guidance from various state organizations. He said that he would provide copies of some of these resources but then did not. There is no way to confirm that these resources are consistent with each other or that they are in line with the current Title IX guidance from the federal government. It’s also not clear whether all of the District’s staff and educators are reviewing these webinars or that they all have the same understanding of what the webinars and resources say.
A written policy that everyone can reference is a basic way to make sure that everyone is on the same page and understands the rules.
Another response I have received is that boys who identify as girls are not predators; therefore, their presence in a female space is not problematic. Regardless of whether or not that is true, it is not clear whether the bathrooms and changing rooms in AASD are segregated even by gender. AASD had at one point been utilizing guidance from the National Education Association entitled “Legal Protections For Transgender Students”. The District stopped using that guidance after the Biden Administration updated the Title IX guidance in 2024. Now that the Trump Administration has rescinded the Biden Administration’s Title IX updates, it is not clear if that NEA document is again one of the guidance sources AASD is utilizing.
That NEA policy document seemed to indicate that school officials are not allowed to confirm or verify a student’s gender and must simply allow students to access whatever bathroom and changing facilities they want regardless of their sex or gender, which, in addition to allowing transgender students to utilize the facilities of their choice, would effectively give non-transgender students open access to whatever facilities they want to enter. Back in 2022, I asked then Superintendent Judy Baseman about that issue and received no answer. Recently, in 2025, I asked Superintendent Hartjes about that issue again, and he also did not respond. The lack of response makes it seem very likely that bathrooms and changing rooms in AASD are not only not sex-segregated but are also not even gender-segregated and are, rather, open to anybody who wants to enter them regardless of their biology or how they identify.
AASD presents itself as struggling. The number of students in the AASD’s boundaries who are choosing to utilize vouchers to attend private schools rather than AASD is increasing. Additionally, 20% of its high school students are engaged in chronic truancy and absenteeism. Meanwhile, the leadership of AASD cannot even put together and publish a policy that clearly explains to families how students can access and maintain sex-based protections and privacy, and the District’s lack of enforcing sex-based rights, particularly in relation to its athletic programs, is potentially opening it up to loss of federal funds. The lack of a clear, easily referenced and accessible policy on a matter as basic as sex-based privacy safeguarding speaks to a general unseriousness on the part of AASD’s administration that is probably contributing to a lot of other issues the District is facing.
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