Did you actually read the article?
I have the same question for you. No need to quote the article at me, I read it in its entirety.
For one, what exactly does banning urinals do? It has no impact on who can use the restroom. Except...
"The maximum occupancy for each school bathroom and locker room however, is determined by the number of stalls there are. "
Now, generally, for the purposes of occupancy, a urinal would count as a stall. This is self evident because otherwise there would be no need for urinals. So what this ban
essentially does is greatly restrict the number of male students who can be in the bathroom at one time, and increase the necessary bathroom use turnover.
"In addition to excluding urinal use, Boudreault's plan also prevents students from using shared changing areas in school locker rooms. Students who change clothes for PE class are told do so in a bathroom stall.
"
The school also
completely banned changing clothes outside of a bathroom stall, further increasing bathroom use turnover and restricting access to another private space.
Meanwhile, importantly,
none of these things have any impact as to whether or not a trans student can use a given bathroom. There compromise is a complete non sequitur.
"Sixteen-year-old transgender student Nico Romeri spoke at a school board meeting on February 6 urging it to reject the ban.
IE she wants to use the boys restroom because she wants her "high school experience to be just like everyone else's" and she thinks she is a boy.
She was against the ban because the ban is stupid and doesn't do anything. The ban has no impact on whether or not she can use a boy's restroom; if she could before, she still can, and if she couldn't before, she still can't. All the ban does is massively inconvenience students who want to use the restroom.
And at the end of the article:
"He told the news outlet that he doesn't deem LGBTQ youth or their peers as inherently dangerous, but pointed out that something needed to be done citing concerns raised about Wheeler's proposal, student privacy and bathroom access in general - that would essentially help Milford schools deal with other problems - he said, like students vaping.
'My proposed solution took care of a myriad of other issues that the school district is experiencing,' he said, 'so instead of fighting the gender fight, I decided to fight the larger fight.' "
And this is where it becomes pretty obvious: the creator of the ban itself says its not about the gender fight, its about other issues like vaping, because on school grounds, private areas like bathrooms or changing rooms
are the most likely place for students to vape. (Indeed, at schools, bathrooms are where most drug use in general takes place).
Therefore, 'something needs to be done about gendered bathrooms' was used as an excuse by the Board to restrict bathroom access - because if they came out and just said this was about vaping, there's no way parents would've let them get away with this, but by framing it in politically charged language, they managed to get away with it more effectively (even if the student body still flipped out).
