Kenmore Junior High recently repurposed two staff bathrooms into gender neutral facilities after pressure from local LGBTQ community advocates.

Skyler Pfeil is a 14-year-old transgender student at Kenmore Junior High, and for him, the addition of two more gender neutral bathrooms is big.

State law mandates that schools allow students to use a ‘facility consistent with that individual’s gender identity,’ but actually accessing them isn’t always so easy.

“All throughout my life I would never go to the bathroom at any of my schools,” he said. “I just felt way too uncomfortable to go into the female bathroom because that’s what everyone said I was, and it felt too weird to go into the female bathroom, and I was too scared to go into the male bathroom because I felt like I would be targeted and I would be hurt.”

Skyler said he’s experienced harassment before in restrooms, but on top of that, the two gender neutral bathrooms the school had previously were hard to access between classes on the five-building campus.

So after consideration, and pressure from parents and students, the Northshore School District repurposed two staff bathrooms at the junior high, making them gender neutral.

“Our goal is that we want to help support students the best we can and we want to keep a safe place,” Kenmore Junior High principal Joshua Sanchez said. “We’re all trying to figure out how to support students.”

Skyler’s mother, Corina Pfeil, has been heavily involved in transgender issues and concerns in Kenmore, and was a powerful ally for her son.

“I got the principal to realize that in an area of equality, every student on campus, most students on campus, have easy access to bathrooms,” she said. “With the exception of LGBTQ students.”

She said that she approached the school and district with the idea to convert some staff bathrooms into easily accessible gender neutral ones.

After a slew of emails, phone calls and letters, Pfeil said the junior high implemented the change.

While she applauds Kenmore Junior High for making the changes, Pfeil said she would like to see greater access to gender neutral bathrooms expanded throughout the district.

“Quite frankly, it seems very appropriate throughout our state to do the same,” she said. “It’s ridiculous that if our school has only one bathroom that a transgender student came to use, that’s much the same as a segregated bathroom.”

Responding to state law, North Creek High School opening in 2017 will have built-in gender neutral bathrooms.

Sanchez said that it was a simple conversion for his school since it is relatively new, but that older schools may not be able to repurpose staff restrooms so easily.

“With the way our current building is set up we had a way that we could make that happen,” he said. “Our staff restrooms are already unisex and so we had some staff that were willing to support this process.”

However, through conversations he’s had with other administrators, he said they are considering similar changes in their schools.

Gender neutral bathrooms have been an area of contention nationally and in-state, with many conservative lawmakers voicing concerns about their safety. Concerns that transgender advocates are quick to dismiss as inaccurate, invalid or unfounded.

But Skyler said his peers and fellow students have been much more supportive.

“At my school the kids do understand, and they’re pretty accepting about anything, but I can see how people wouldn’t understand,” he said. “I really do think it would help because it will make the LGBTQ community feel safer.”