South Western’s elected school board is making some strange decisions.

For the last two years, they’ve fixated on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ kids use. In 2023, officials in this Hanover-area district played musical chairs with school bathrooms in a misguided attempt to appease the loudest bigots among them — ending up with five different types of bathrooms.

After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue. Board President Matthew Gelazela, who was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower, pointed to Red Lion’s discriminatory policies as something to aspire to.

Now, upon the advice of that law firm — the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center — the board approved spending $8,700 to cut windows so passersby can look into the so-called “gender-identity” student bathrooms.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    30 days ago

    Does $9,000 seem a bit low for the cost of adding windows to all the relevant restrooms in a school district?

    • Fondots@lemmy.world
      3·
      29 days ago

      It looks like the district has 6 schools, not sure how many of these bathrooms are in each school, but I’m going to assume they’re probably only adding one of each gender identity bathroom per school, or 2 each, 3 if we count the unisex bathrooms.

      I have no real frame of reference for what kind of windows they’re installing, so I’m not sure how much they cost, and of course windows can get as expensive as you care to spend. But after perusing home Depots website, let’s just say $500 a pop for materials.

      Depending on how competent their district maintenance personnel are, they may be able to install it themselves and not need to bring in contractors, pay for overtime, etc so esentially free installation.

      6 schools × 3 bathrooms × $500 per window does come out too $9000 on the dot.

      Don’t know how accurate my estimates and assumptions are, but it’s potentially within the realm of possibility