Miraloma Elementary, a grade school in San Francisco, has instituted a policy of gender-neutral bathrooms. The school is changing restroom door symbols accordingly.
“There’s no need to make them gender-specific anymore,” Miraloma Principal Sam Bass told the website SFGate.com. “One parent said, ‘So, you’re just making it like it is at home.’”
A 2013 California law requires schools to allow students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity, and San Francisco has had a similar policy on the books since 2003. While many schools in the country have separate restroom accommodations for students claiming to be transgender - a condition in which a person identifies with a gender different from the one they are born as - Miraloma is rare in its order to change all of its facilities to be free of any gender signifiers.
As the school year started, workers at Miraloma removed circles, triangles, and other traditional symbols of male and female from bathroom doors. The kindergarten and first grade bathrooms are the first facilities to have been altered; the rest of the school will be transformed over the next few years.