The Northern Humboldt Union High School District school board meeting this Thursday addressed the locking of gender neutral bathrooms, tardy sweeps, class sizes, and arts education. Many of these issues were raised by faculty, students and families at the recent Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) annual meeting.

Superintendent Roger Macdonald addressed the issue of gender neutral bathrooms. Students recently criticized the administration for not providing enough access to gender neutral bathrooms and pressured school officials to do more. Macdonald discussed having met with the SAGA (Sexuality and Gender Acceptance) club, though he did not offer concrete solutions to the bathroom dilemma. 

“We acknowledge that we have an issue with our bathrooms, and we’re doubling down on that,” Macdonald said.

Currently, students must ask for a key to access the gender neutral bathrooms. McDonald said bathrooms are locked for “safety.”

Math teacher, Jacob Godinez raised the question of whether the current tardy sweep system is effective and presented his concerns of confusion in the system. He asked administrators to adjust and improve communication with teachers, referencing staff’s concerns voiced in the recent “Time to sweep the sweeps under the rug?” article by The Pepperbox.

Later, Macdonald discussed reasons behind class size discrepancies between Arcata High School and Mckinleyville High School. He acknowledged that class sizes may vary due to the number of students enrolled in these Independent Study at the different schools.

Statistics provided by the superintendent showed 4.3 percent of Arcata’s students have an independent study plan, versus 8.8 percent of Mckinleyville’s student body, accounting for the large differences in class sizes.

Recent graduate Frida King urged administrators to take students’ feedback into consideration when distributing arts education funding.

“Art is about empowering students [and] there is always room for improvement and holes to fill [in arts education],” King said.