North Cook News

As the Glenbrook High School District 225 Board of Education recently voted to adopt its first transgender student policy, a group of residents and parents remain opposed to the idea and are looking at possible litigation to fight it.

The official policy passed by the board allows transgender students to have access to the restroom that goes along with the gender they identify with and also allows such students to have access to a private bathroom if requested. According to the policy, transgender students would also be granted access to locker-room use on an individual basis. 

Glenn Farkas, a local resident and former Republican candidate for the District 9 Illinois Senate seat, is among the group opposing the new policy and said it does not consider the rights of other students. 

Glenn Farkas

"I think they rushed into it and did not consider the rights of the other 99 percent of the kids in the school, or maybe they did but they did not consider them in such a way that we thought was fair," Farkas told North Cook News.

"We have told them this policy was rushed through," Farkas said. "They did it over the holiday winter break, and we didn't appreciate that. We thought it was purposeful to avoid scrutiny and to avoid any of this stuff that is happening now."

Farkas, who said he believes that the policy creates privacy and protection issues and that it sets a precedent for further implications down the road, has requested documents dating to 2015 that deal with the transgender policy development and any research. He said he has also requested a private meeting with school board officials.

"We have given them a choice to meet with us or go to litigation," he said. "If they don't, we will be using those FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) documents as part of our research to decide whether to file a lawsuit or not."

"It's a very divisive issue now within the community, and I think the school board is making it worse because they just keep pushing us off. We would be in favor of expanding single-use bathrooms throughout the school, but we think they crossed the line a little bit with unfettered access to all bathrooms and locker-rooms at this point," Farkas said. 

"We are really concerned about how the board went about it with such a controversial social policy change to not give parents and students a right for input," he said.