Speech to the Illinois School District 109 Board of Education Regarding Gender Integration of Locker Rooms at Shepard Middle School (April 10th, 2025)

I. Introduction

      The following text is a speech I delivered, in part, at the April 10th meeting of the Board of Education of Illinois School District 109, which governs Shepard Middle School in Deerfield.

     Readers seeking additional context and background for this article, should read my previous article about the topic - titled "Reaction to Shepard Middle School Staff Pressuring a Girl to Disrobe in Front of a Trans-Identifying Boy" - which was published on March 20th. That article is available at the following address:

     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2025/03/reaction-to-shepard-middle-school-staff.html

     The speech below would probably take about six minutes to read, the board's normal limit is three minutes - and their limit was reduced to two minutes on April 10th in order to accommodate more speakers - so an abbreviated version of the speech was delivered to the board.
     What follows is my second draft of the speech, without omissions or abridgement. This is the full text of what I would have said, had my time been unlimited.

     The April meeting of the District 109 Board of Education was held at 7:00 P.M. on the evening of Thursday, April 10th, 2025, at Caruso Middle School, located at 1801 Montgomery Road in Deerfield.
     Another meeting will take place at the same time and location, on Thursday, May 8th, 2025.

II. Speech

     Pardon me for speaking quickly.
     My name is Joe Kopsick, I’m a security guard who attended Lake Forest -area schools, and I pay taxes that fund schools in Waukegan, where I live.

     While I support Nicole Giorgas’s proposal to label existing locker rooms for biological males and females, I would also like to urge the school to add additional private stalls in boys' and girls' locker rooms, as well as new locker rooms and bathrooms which would provide equal access and accommodations to transgender, intersex, and non-binary individuals.

     Providing private changing facilities to girls who don’t want to undress in the same room as a trans student… was already the compromise position, just a few years ago. But now, even that has been taken away.
     There is no reason to limit normal access to the private stalls within the girls’ locker room, by biological cisgender girls; because prior to February, one hundred percent of the people who used that room, were satisfied with those arrangements.
     In many schools, boys and girls play sports together on the same fields and courts, at the same time; including in wrestling. Yet nobody makes the boys and girls change or shower in the same room. There would be no need for that. So, then, why must the fact that boys and girls and trans kids are playing together on the field, mean that they also must change and undress and shower together, off the field? No reason at all. So why do it?
     Neither girls' comfort nor trans people's comfort is more important than the other. That’s why each group should be afforded the same equal right to exclude, in order to achieve a relative degree of privacy.
     If someone assigned male at birth, wants to use the girls’ locker room, and there is no mutual agreement that they’re welcome in either locker room, then they need a third locker room. They would have plenty of room, and plenty of privacy, and would know that they can never get kicked out.
     If we’re going to have gender-integrated sports, then 1) boys, girls, and non-binary students should not be made to undress in the same room as each other; 2) students and parents should be fully informed of any risk of injury from sports; and 3) students should be free to choose whether to play on a gender- integrated or -non-integrated team. That’s the only way this can be consensual for everyone involved.

     Additionally: The school seems adamant that nobody was forced to undress. If that’s true, then it’s only because the girl resisted. The girl complained, and called her mom. That’s the evidence of force.
     They tried to make her undress; that’s the force. …If you’re charged with attempted murder, you don’t get to go free just because your attempt didn’t succeed. The attempt was still illegal. You still attempted to force a child to undress. That's the force.
     Beatings and assault are overt force. But pressure, intimidation, manipulation, and threats are covert force. So is taking away alternatives, which are normally available, for no good reason – such as the private changing stall.
     You might say, “Well, the other girls complied. Certainly that was voluntary.” Not true; they were given no choice but to undress. Their parents didn’t know that that was happening to them at the time. Most of the girls probably undressed because they were afraid not to. They were intimidated. That’s the force.

     If the teachers blocked the exit (and please correct me if I'm getting any facts wrong), then that's the force. That’s probably unlawful restraint, and therefore possibly also false imprisonment, or maybe even kidnapping. In my opinion, it’s entrapping a minor to commit an act of public indecency. The people who did this, need to be investigated for any and all offenses they might possibly have committed.
     The fact that coaches and administrators would not have forced the girl to change, if it had been another cis girl who had made her uncomfortable, means that this could only have been done for the sake of public humiliation.

     To the parents of the trans-identifying child:
     Nobody hates your kid; we are concerned about your kid. Nobody thinks your kid doesn’t exist, and nobody wants anybody to have to show their genitals in order to enter a bathroom or locker room.
     The trans kid is just a shield, whom the staff is using, to deflect criticism away from themselves, to defend exercising more and more control over your kids every day. Most of the people saying trans kids belong in girls' locker rooms, are doing everything they can to make it look like the people saying they don't, hate trans kids, rather than that they are upset with the teachers (which is the truth of the matter).
     The teachers, coaches, and administrators who allowed this, want to deflect criticism away from themselves; because they don’t want anyone to find out that, every school day, 78.3 students are molested or raped by a teacher or fellow student – and that’s just what’s reported – as of the 2017-18 school year. Assuming a 180-day school year, and seven hours and twenty minutes of school per day, that’s one molestation, somewhere in America, every five minutes and thirty-seven seconds (during school hours).
     [Source: http://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/15/sexual-violence-reports-rise-drastically-at-schools-education-department-data-shows-429663]

     The police, lawyers, and judges in Lake County are doing everything they can to stop lawsuits against abusive teachers from going forward. And the money to hire lawyers to defend teachers for rape, comes mostly from taxpayer funds.

     How am I supposed to sleep, knowing this? How am I supposed to work, knowing what my money will be spent on?

     In effect, all of you are forcing me, and other taxpayers who don't have children, to fund - through my taxes - people who help teachers get away with molesting and raping your children.
     Please stop forcing me to fund this system of molestation factories that you call public schools.

     As far as I’m concerned, every public school should lose federal education funding, whether they end gender separation or not. They rape over fourteen thousand kids per year. On top of that, education was never legally made into a federal issue to begin with.
     We must elect a governor who will nullify Pritzker’s Executive Order 2019 11, and we must amend Section 3B of the Illinois Human Rights Act. We must convince local sheriffs to refuse to enforce laws that force children to engage in public indecency, and to file charges against each and every sex crime suspect (regardless of profession, wealth, or reputation).
     To any children who are listening: Your teachers don’t care about your safety, and your parents have sold you into slavery. Nobody is going to defend you but you. If you get an opportunity to study martial arts, take it.
     Please stop sending your children to these schools; this is insanity. We must stop fooling ourselves, and we must admit that these schools are failing our children.

Written and published on April 7th, 2025.

Edited and expanded on April 9th and 10th, 2025,
including several minor edits which were made
after the speech was partially delivered.