DEERFIELD, Illinois (LifeSiteNews) — An Illinois school district defended itself against allegations that it required girls to undress in front of a gender-confused boy and three school administrators by saying that students can just go elsewhere if they don’t like men in their locker rooms. On the other hand, transgender activists defended the policy.
Deerfield District 109, located in the wealthy northern suburbs of Chicago, responded to viral allegations this week that three administrators forced female students to get dressed for gym class in front of a male student in their locker room.
Parent Nicole Georgas spoke to the school board on March 13 about a series of incidents that occurred in February.
“The girls want their locker rooms and bathrooms back. They want their privacy back. This is why I’m here tonight. My 13-year-old daughter’s well-being, mental health, and privacy are at stake,” Georgas said. She said her daughter refused to cooperate with school officials and left the locker room.
“She was told by the administration that a student can use the bathroom as well as a female locker room because they now identify as female,” Georgas said at the March 13 board meeting. She pointed out there is a “gender neutral option” for gender-confused students. The district’s response was to have her daughter take a different gym class.
Reduxx reported further:
The girls, unwilling to have their privacy violated even further, collectively refused to undress in front of him. The following day, Assistant Principal Cathy Van Treese hauled the girls into her office and questioned them, before escorting them to their locker room and forcing them to change into their uniforms with the boy present. Van Treese was accompanied by Assistant Superintendent Joanna Ford and Director for Student Services Ginger Logemann.
LifeSiteNews emailed all three administrators on Monday to ask about the accusations and any additional context. None of them responded. Director of Communications Eric Steckling did not respond to similar requests for comment.
Georgas reportedly filed a federal civil rights complaint. As she pointed out during the school board meeting, President Donald Trump has said that school districts violate the law when they allow men into girls’ private spaces.
However, the district denied the allegations, but appeared to put the blame on the female students themselves.
“No student is required to change into a gym uniform for physical education class in front of others in locker rooms,” the district stated, according to WBEZ. “All students in the middle schools have multiple options to change in a private location if they wish.”
However, this statement is in contradiction to those made by supporters of male students being allowed to walk around girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. They accused Georgas and others of trying to “exclude” gender-confused students.
— Matt Lamb (@MattLamb22) March 19, 2025
“They just want to exclude a child based on the fact that they’re [allegedly] transgender. It really does not have anything to do with changing,” a gender-confused adult who goes by the name “Asher” McMaher, executive director of Trans Upfront Illinois, claimed to WBEZ.
McMaher’s son, who goes by the name “Noella,” allegedly “knew” he was transgender at the age of two. “Asher” is actually a woman, who has a female “spouse,” as previously reported by LifeSiteNews. “Noella” made headlines for walking the New York Fashion Week runway dressed as a girl and representing the Trans* Clothing Company brand.
Other gender-confused individuals showed up to the school board meeting to support male students in girls’ locker rooms.
As reported by the Lake County Gazette:
Kerrick Goodman-Lucker of Northbrook, a female who dresses like a male and has grown a mustache and beard, said she had a male cross-dressing friend in college who “was pulled out of a woman’s bathroom and attacked by a police officer for using a bathroom (he) thought was safe.”
She complained that cross-dressing kids are “being attacked as liars… and deviants.”
Jesse Holzman of Chicago, a woman who describes herself as a “Queer, Non-binary, Consensually Non-monogamous, Intersectional Feminist, Anti-Racist, Activist, Educator and Scholar,” said that “ensuring access to (girls’) bathrooms and changing rooms is not controversial,” …
…At Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, Holzman is a recruiter of cross-dressers for a federally-funded study of “HIV incidence” in cross-dressing men. On her Linkedin, she says she also “crafted a pronoun guide” for Lurie. She previously worked as an independent “gender and sexuality consultant”
“Kristal Larson” of Hainesville, the Avon Township Clerk and first cross-dressing male ever elected to office in Lake County, came in a skin-tight, black mini-skirt dress to speak “on behalf” of “2,000” cross-dressing school students he claims attend Lake County schools.
Supporters of sex-segregated spaces and the rights of females defended Georgas and the courageous girls.
“This is sexual abuse and exploitation of minors. Ahem, @FBI,” Riley Gaines wrote on X.
“When the girls chose not to change in front of the boy, administrators stood guard in the school locker room to force them to change into PE clothes,” parental rights activist Nicole Solas wrote on X. “Girls are not safe in public school.”