A Deerfield middle school has been thrust into the national spotlight after a student’s parent filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Justice and went on Fox News over a transgender student using the girls locker room.
Nicole Georgas, the parent of a girl at Shephard Middle School, appeared on “America Reports” last week and spoke during the Deerfield Public Schools 109 board meeting on March 13, accusing school staff of forcing her daughter and other students to change their clothes with the transgender student.
Georgas said her complaint to the DOJ had been forwarded to the Department of Education. Attempts to reach the appropriate DOJ spokesman were unsuccessful.
Georgas demanded locker rooms and bathrooms be designated as biological male and biological female, arguing there is “already a gender-neutral option.”
“The girls want their locker rooms and bathrooms back,” she said. “They want their privacy back.”
Georgas said the district is in violation of federal policy, pointing to recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump banning transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports. Allowing transgender people into female bathrooms “erodes” female privacy and safety, she said, and her daughter’s “wellbeing, privacy and mental health” are at stake.
In a statement, the school district said students are not required to change into gym clothes in front of others in locker rooms, and have “multiple options to change in a private location if they wish.”
The district said its policies and procedures, including student use of locker rooms, are in line with state laws, the Illinois School Code and guidance from the Illinois State Board of Education.
“District 109 is committed to providing a learning environment where all students and staff are respected and supported,” the statement said.
Numerous speakers at Friday’s meeting gave public comments during the meeting supporting the school board and the unidentified student.
Kristal Larson, executive director of the LGBTQ+ Center Lake County, clerk for Avon Township and a transgender woman herself, said there are an estimated 2,000 transgender or gender nonconforming students across Lake County, and another 10,000, “who identify under the queer umbrella.”
She warned about the struggles such students face at school, sharing her own experiences struggling with changing rooms growing up, an issue that would continue for years into adulthood.
“I intentionally stayed away from changing spaces because of my fear of being in male-dominated spaces,” Larson said. “I avoided it at all costs.”
Larson emphasized the need for supporting the students and making them “feel just as right and safe as other students.”
Another speaker at the meeting was David Weisberger, who said he’s had two children go through the school district. He criticized what he described as “fearmongering” against trans students.
“Instead of acknowledging her for who she is, they’re framing her identity in a way designed to provoke outrage and fear,” Weisberger said. “We all care about student safety, but real safety means ensuring every student can go to school without fear, not singling out kids just because of who they are”
Weisberger was also critical of Moms for Liberty Lake County, a local branch of the national conservative political advocacy group, which had called for parents to attend and give comments during the meeting.
In Facebook posts, the group called for residents to “stand up for locker room safety,” and echoed Georgas’ allegation that the students had been, “forced to change for PE with a biological male.”
Weisberger accused the group of dividing the community and “turning children into political targets.”
“This isn’t just about a locker room policy, it’s part of a national effort to roll back LGBTQ rights and push a political agenda,” he said.
On the national level, executive orders from the Trump administration seek to strip transgender, nonbinary and intersex people of the ability to change their gender markers on passports or to serve in the military. They aim to force transgender women in federal prisons to be housed with men, and to bar them from participation in female sports.
The orders also attempt to end gender-affirming care for transgender people younger than 19, and prohibit federal spending on the promotion of “gender ideology,” a vague directive that could have implications for anything from schools to rape crisis centers.
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers,” Trump wrote in an executive order titled, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” issued on Jan. 20 following his inauguration.
