Virginia's Loudoun County School District has entered the spotlight yet again, this time for its plan to shell out nearly $11 million to "modernize" schools' currently gendered restrooms and locker rooms in favor of a more inclusive space for transgender students and to "improve student privacy."
"LCPS shall modernize school restrooms and locker rooms to improve student privacy and to promote the creation of single-user restrooms that are available to all students," the policy read.
Michael Rivera, a Loudoun County father of two and a school board candidate for the embattled district, believes the policy is not only a waste of taxpayer funding, but also overlooks another issue affecting students with special needs.
"This flies in the face of all of the cries from the community," he told "Fox & Friends First" hosts Todd Piro and Ashley Strohmier on Wednesday. "We're talking about 11 million dollars that are not being directly spent on educating children and, to be honest, it's quite insulting."
Rivera said the community has complained about a lack of funding for special needs programs in recent meetings, but the bathroom plan overshadowed their concerns.
The $11 million spending spree could grow if the pilot program is successful, however. Rivera said the bathroom renovations will initially apply to only four schools out of approximately a hundred.
"The community is clearly outraged," he said, adding, "We're talking about several hundred-million dollars if, in fact, this is rolled out through the county."
Rivera said the plan involves removing sex designations on bathrooms to allow boys and girls to share restrooms, a concern he related back to an incident involving a sexual assault in one of the district's restrooms in which a biological male wearing a skirt allegedly raped a female student in the girls' bathroom.
The girl's father, Scott Smith, alleged the district's transgender activism - particularly its willingness to uphold its transgender bathroom policy that sparked outrage from parents - prompted the cover-up that garnered media attention and spawned investigations.
The suspect later transferred to another school within the district and allegedly assaulted another student. He faced charges for both incidents.
The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the northern Virginia district after the incident gained media attention. The probe also followed the school board's decision to withhold information from the sexual assault report.
Fox News' Todd Piro detailed that the new stalls will be floor-to-ceiling, preventing anyone from seeing who is inside the stall, but Rivera stressed the new increased-privacy stalls will only exacerbate existing problems.
