The McKinney school district says the removal of restroom doors at a high school was not prompted over concerns about sexual activity.
The exterior doors to restrooms at McKinney North High School were removed last week.
“We’ve had dialog about removing the doors from the restrooms for a couple of years,” said Cody Cunningham, McKinney Independent School District spokesman.
The district said social media partly fueled widespread misinformation about the move.
“The students felt like the reason we were removing them was because of some inappropriate sexual behavior in the restrooms, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Cunningham said.
The district said the change happened around the time school officials spoke with students about appropriate public displays of affection. But Cunningham said the talk and the decision to remove the doors were unrelated.
Cunningham said the high school is not seeing any unusual activity or any increase in the numbers of incidents.
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The district said the decision to remove the bathroom doors is a proactive measure to promote student safety and does not compromise student privacy.
Such bathroom designs are becoming more common in new schools and in locations such as airports, Cunningham said.
“We have schools in the rest of our district that don’t have doors on the restrooms, so this isn’t the first one,” he said.
