When the parents of students at Queensbury Middle School in New York heard the school planned to launch a girls-only swim unit in the fall semester of 2025, they did not expect to have to fight to keep boys out of the unit —and out of the girls’ locker room.
According to *Kyle and Ellie Douglas, the conflict began brewing when their daughter, *Nora, was in fourth grade. A trans-identifying male student in Nora’s grade began presenting as a girl, with the expectation that he would be treated as such. Parents were aware of these changes, but did not view them as a safety concern.
By fifth grade, however, the trans-identifying male student had started using the girls’ restroom. One parent brought concerns to the principal, according to the Douglases, expressing safety concerns, but the school kept these issues quietly under control.
But in October 2025, when Nora was in sixth grade, Nora accidentally revealed a situation that had occurred in the classroom with the trans-identifying male student that led Ellie to uncover he had been inappropriately touching her daughter. Immediately, Kyle and Ellie reported the incident to school officials.
According to Kyle, he went to the principal to discuss the trans-identifying student’s behavior, explaining the classroom incident and expressing concerns for his daughter’s safety. He mentioned a post about an upcoming girls-only swim unit starting the following week and asked whether the trans-identified student would be allowed to participate.
The swim unit, which was intended to promote body-positivity amongst middle schoolers at Queensbury, was specifically advertised by the school as a single-gendered program. When Kyle expressed his concerns about the trans-identifying student being included in the girls-only unit, the principal informed Kyle that his concerns over the trans-identified male student’s behavior and the inclusion of this student in female-only spaces were “separate problems.”
“I go talk to the principal of this school, and I talk about the whole incident, and then I tell him about the swim unit. I asked, ‘Are we taking safety into consideration here?’” Kyle said. “They expect me, my wife, and my daughter to be okay with her going into a locker room where there are no teachers, when it’s only the students, and that’s supposed to be reasonable.”
Ellie said that after the first class of the swim-unit, Nora confirmed the trans-identifying male student’s participation in the swim unit and his presence in the locker room with her.
“When we found out what happened in class, she was like, “‘Oh, he’s in my swim class, and it’s a girl swim unit, and it’s starting on Monday,’” Ellie said. “She told me about the assault on Wednesday, and I reported it to the school Thursday. She stayed home Friday from school because she was terrified. So we find out, OK, well, she is now gonna have to go into a locker room with this boy. And I was at work and someone suggested filling out a DASA report.”
A Dignity for All Students (DASA) report is a formal document of alleged bullying, harassment, or discrimination incidents for all New York public schools, adopted in 2012 to protect trans-identifying students from being discriminated against in cases of alleged abuse.
“The first sentence of the DASA form, that I read, stated how it was geared to make sure that all students were safe and comfortable and as a learning environment,” Kyle said. “But unless you’re not a transgender student, then it doesn’t matter.”
According to Kyle, the principal explained that the DASA report prevents removing the trans-identifying student from the swim unit because that would be viewed as discrimination. The principal then suggested that if Nora and other students are uncomfortable with the arrangements, they may use the men’s locker room, Kyle recalled.
“They want my daughter, who is a girl, to go into the boys’ locker room instead of changing in the women’s?” Ellie Douglas told IW Features. “They are telling her to leave a space that’s supposed to be safe to go into a more unsafe space just because that one student needs to be accepted.”
The Dignity Act Coordinator (DAC) investigated the Douglases’ report about what Nora had experienced, and it was substantiated once other students confirmed seeing the inappropriate behavior. The school’s resolution? Nora’s chair was moved across the room away from the trans-identified male student.
Kyle and Ellie were understandably still concerned about their daughter’s continued safety, so Kyle decided to meet with the school’s superintendent and athletic director to discuss the locker room situation while referencing the classroom abuse she had experienced. The officials explained their hands are tied due to state policy and funding concerns.
“I went to the superintendent and the athletic director, the first thing they said, ‘Look, despite what you and I believe in, there’s nothing we can do,’” Kyle said. “They told me they’re just concerned about funding.”
As a result, the trans-identifying male student is still participating in the girls’-only swim unit, and is regularly in the girls’ locker room undressing, causing many of the girls to express concerns to their parents, Kyle and Ellie said. And yet despite the DASA report, multiple concerns raised by other parents, and the school having private changing facilities to accommodate the trans-identifying male student, the school has said it cannot remove the student from the girls’ locker room without risking a lawsuit.
Hoping to motivate school officials to action, Kyle and Ellie said they recently attended a school board meeting with 30 to 40 other parents who shared their concerns. Three fathers spoke during the allotted public comment portion of the meeting.
“They made us do the three-minute public speaking, and at the end, they asked the board if anyone had a comment. It was crickets,” Kyle said. “Then the president of the school board pipes up and says, ‘Oh, well, I forgot earlier, but I’d like to congratulate another member of the board’s daughter for making the all-state team this weekend.’ Then they all started laughing.”
Kyle said the school board minimized the parents’ concerns before they even approached the microphone. When he requested to speak at the meeting, Kyle said he filed his request with the subject line as “Boys in girls’ bathrooms or boys in girls’ locker rooms.” He waited for the meeting’s minutes to get posted to see if the school changed it, and they did. They had relabeled his request with the subject line “Boys and girls’ spaces.”
But for Kyle and Ellie, the issue of boys in girls’ spaces is not a political issue—it is about safety for their daughter and girls like her. They said they will continue to fight in their local school board meetings while working toward a change in New York state law that will restore common sense to schools.
“That’s what we’re trying to shed light on. This is not a surface-level political issue,” Kyle said. “Nobody is hateful towards transgenders. We need to shed light that this is not safe, it is a safety concern. Nobody on the other side views it as a matter of safety, but because of our daughter, we know just how important it is to protect girls from boys in their spaces.”
Indeed, the Douglases shared that the continued discomfort their daughter experiences at school has deeply affected her and has been made worse by the school’s efforts to sweep it under the rug.
“She threatened to run away, she has asked to be homeschooled, she has some anxiety going into a bathroom, and she has anxiety about going to swim,” Ellie said. “She wishes she never told us, and I think that an 11-year-old girl when in middle school is rough enough, then adding the layer of being worried that your safe space is no longer safe—it has changed our family.”
Ellie said this battle has taken over their family’s focus out of necessity, and the lack of support from the school’s administration has showcased how little safety matters to them when weighed against the acceptance of trans-identifying students.
“Everybody’s so scared to disrupt this policy, but we’re all sitting here afraid that one of our daughters is gonna get really hurt or assaulted in there,” Ellie said. “No one’s doing anything about it. They’re just saying their hands are tied. I’m basically being told I just have to deal with you continually putting my daughter in harm’s way.”
*Pseudonyms are used to protect the storyteller’s identities.
