Thumbing Their Nose (Part 2)

A school district in Illinois is disregarding the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights order to change their school policy with regard to transgender students.

Chicago School Doubles Down On Discrimination Against Transgender Student
ThinkProgress
By Zack Ford
October 13, 2015

This week, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) informed District 211, Illinois’ largest school district, that it was in violation of federal law by refusing to allow a transgender student to use the locker rooms that match her gender identity. The school has responded by declaring that it will continue to discriminate against the student.

The student, whose name has been kept private, first filed a complaint with support from the ACLU of Illinois in early 2014. She was already living as a girl and was playing sports, but was forced to change in a separate room a long hallway away from the gym. Following precedent in two similar cases in California, OCR informed District 211 in a not-yet-public decision that depriving the student of equal access to facilities violates Title IX’s sex nondiscrimination protections, calling such treatment “inadequate and discriminatory.”

The school responded by doubling down. At a press conference, Superintendent Dan Cates insisted, “This is about matters of student privacy.” Promising not to abide by OCR’s pending decision, he explained, “What they are asking us to do is have opposite sex students in the same open area of the locker room and that we do not do. This is a matter we take very seriously and this policy would undo that.”

The Chicago Tribune writes that the two sides are far apart.

School officials and board of education members worked for months in hopes of finding an acceptable compromise, Cates said. The proposed solution, which Cates said was "quickly squelched," required the transgender student to change and shower in private.
[…]
The student who filed the complaint has been living as a girl for a number of years, Knight said. She plays sports and would like to be in the same locker room as her friends and classmates. Relegating her to a separate room down a long hallway from the gym only serves to stigmatize her, he said.

It is as the student said; requiring her to use a separate room marginalizes her from the rest of the student body. The students pick up on the fact that she is different and that is when bullying and harassment begins.

What does the school district have to lose by bucking the OCR, plenty.
If the district cannot reach a compromise with federal officials, it risks losing some of the $6 million it receives in federal funding. Cates also acknowledged that litigation is a likely outcome.
Last year, OCR fined a California school district for Title IX discrimination against a trans student.