Virginia School ‘Brands My Son a Predator’ for Desiring the Same Bathroom Privacy Afforded to ‘Male Staff,’ Mom Says

Parents are condemning as hypocrisy the fact that a Northern Virginia high school notorious for allowing boys in girls’ bathrooms and girls in the boys’ locker room also has a bathroom specifically designated for “male staff only.”

“This sends a mixed signal to everybody about the expectations of privacy,” a father of a junior at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Tuesday.

“How do they have their own bathrooms if our own students don’t have their own bathrooms?” the father asked.

The Daily Signal reached out to Loudoun County Public Schools and Stone Bridge Principal Timothy Flynn for comment but did not receive a response by press time.

The ‘Male Staff Only’ Sign

ABC News reporter Nick Minock shared the photo of the sign on Monday. The father said he took the photo in May.

“I saw the sign in the school when I was with my son for that sports physical and I just snapped it,” the father told The Daily Signal.

The sign remained on the door as of Tuesday morning.

The father sent The Daily Signal a photo of his son standing by the sign, which he said had been taken earlier Tuesday.

Transgender Bathroom Politics

Loudon County Public Schools, which includes Stone Bridge, adopted Policy 8040 in 2021. This policy allows students to use their chosen names and gender pronouns, and opens sports, restrooms, and locker rooms to students on the basis of claimed gender identity, rather than biological sex.

The policy drew scrutiny in May 2021, when a 15-year-old male student forced a girl to commit sex acts in the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge. The school district moved the male student to Broad Run High School, where he then sexually assaulted another girl in a girls’ restroom in October of that year.

The Loudoun County Juvenile Court had found the perpetrator “not innocent” of charges of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio. The student also pleaded “no contest” to charges of abduction and sexual battery on Oct. 6.

This March, a girl who identifies as a boy entered the boys’ locker room and filmed the shocked response of multiple boys. The school district opened an investigation into the boys, claiming they had violated Title IX—a federal law barring sexual harassment and discrimination.

The district later dropped the charge against one of the boys, who is Muslim, while keeping it against the two other boys, who are Christian, leading to religious discrimination concerns.

Earlier this month, the school district found the two boys guilty of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination, imposing a 10-day suspension. The boys have appealed the suspension, which the school temporarily lifted. One of the boys moved out of state, but the Title IX charge remains on his record.

‘Hypocrisy’

The parents of the boys who now face Title IX claims also condemned the bathroom sign.

“[Loudon County Public Schools] gives male-only bathrooms to staff but brands my son a predator for wanting the same privacy,” Renae Smith, the mother of the boy who left the state, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

“They protect their own while destroying a teenager’s name for speaking up,” she added. “This is not equality—it’s hypocrisy, and it’s harming kids.”

“Nothing rots character faster than hypocrisy,” Seth Wolfe, the father of the Christian boy who remains at Stone Bridge, told The Daily Signal in a statement. “When educators and administrators fail to stand behind what they teach, students and parents become victims of policies designed not to protect but to oppress their individual freedoms.”

Tumay Harding, the boys’ Title IX coordinator, described the school as “the epicenter of crazy.”

“Why are the rules different for adults than they are for the children?” she asked in a phone interview with The Daily Signal Tuesday. “Is it because they’re uncomfortable if there’s a person of the opposite sex in their private spaces?”

“That would only make sense,” she added.

“[The Loudon County Public Schools] Title IX office was put there for the trans agenda and the trans agenda alone,” Harding concluded.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found Loudoun County and four other Northern Virginia school districts in violation of Title IX for their transgender policies earlier this year.

The Loudoun County Public Schools’ Title IX office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about whether the “male staff only” sign might violate the school district’s reading of Title IX.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, a Republican running for governor, has championed the cause of “the Loudoun 3,” speaking at a press conference on the issue last week. Her Democratic opponent, Abigail Spanberger, has yet to address the issue.

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