29-03-2025
Bathroom bill would set back Valley Middle School construction, cost at least $135,000
Mar. 28—GRAND FORKS — A bill implementing new restrictions on student bathroom use at North Dakota public schools could set back construction on the new Valley Middle School at least a month, according to a school official.
Jonathan Ellwein, Grand Forks Public Schools' building and grounds director, said the bill's ban on shared sinks will require the district to backtrack on completed work and revise its plans for the building's other bathrooms.
"The lead on that bill is, if it passes as written, Valley doesn't open on time," Ellwein said March 21.
House Bill 1144,
which passed the House last month,
seeks to impose new restrictions
on transgender K-12 students' bathroom use and the public schools those students attend. The bill is now working its way through the Senate.
Proponents say the bill protects students' privacy and "transgender ideology." Critics say the bill
makes a target out of trans students,
some of whom already avoid school bathrooms to avoid harassment and abuse.
The bill that passed the House says, among other things, "a restroom for males and a restroom for females may not be located together with a communal sink or communal area where students can enter and exit an individual stall or room."
Noncompliant schools face an up to $2,500 fine per violation.
Five of the new Valley's bathrooms were set to include communal sinks outside of separate bathrooms for boys and girls.
Ellwein says construction workers had already poured concrete for one restroom with shared sink facilities that would have to be reworked.
"We'd have to cut concrete, we'd have to move plumbing, we'd have to move electrical, we'd have to move walls in order to be compliant," he said.
A change order for that restroom alone would cost the district $135,214 and an extra 30 days' work.
He said construction workers have so far held off on pouring concrete where the other bathrooms are set to be located, but will have to decide in the next two to three weeks whether to go forward with the existing plans and face the fines or rework those other spaces — which will cost more time and money.
Ellwein said bathroom facilities with shared sinks are meant to allow teachers to better supervise students.
The feature has gone in and out of style — Ellwein says common wash areas are more common in school buildings designed between the late 1970s and the 1990s — and have again become popular in school construction with the move toward single-occupancy restrooms.
The new Valley would be just the latest of several schools within the district with facilities that run afoul of the bill in its current form.
All told, Ellwein counts 77 bathrooms across district schools that are out of compliance with the bill, at seven elementary schools, Nathan Twining Elementary and Middle School, and South Middle School.
That includes 71 bathrooms, mostly located in kindergarten classrooms, where students access a toilet in a private room and use the classroom sink to wash their hands.
Ellwein says the bill's language around "communal sinks" would disallow this setup and force "large scale changes" to bring the kindergarten facilities into compliance.
Ellwein calculated a uniform per-project cost of $25,000, meaning it would cost the district more than $1.9 million to renovate all its bathrooms.
He said the high per-project estimate was based on the need to make any new bathrooms compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990.
Design plans for the new Twining school, set to be built on Grand Forks Air Force Base, include two facilities that would be considered noncompliant under the bill.
Ellwein said changing those plans would incur minimal cost at this stage.
Rep. Kathy Frelich, R-Devils Lake, has proposed an amendment that would exempt facilities serving students in fourth grade and younger or bathroom facilities "in existence on July 1, 2025."
Ellwein says this would likely address many of his concerns about the school district's existing facilities, but says the use of the phrase "in existence" is unclear about bathrooms under construction.
Frelich did not return a request for comment.
Among those who voted for the bill in the House is Rep. Mark Sanford, R-Grand Forks.
Sanford served as Grand Forks Public Schools' superintendent from 1981 to 2007, meaning he led the district when three of the schools with noncompliant bathrooms were constructed: South, Phoenix and Century Elementary.
Century was built in 1989 and, along with the current Twining school, has 18 noncompliant bathrooms, the most in the district.
Sanford did not return a request for comment.
Ellwein also expressed concern on the impact the bill would have on smaller, rural districts, that have smaller financial reserves to draw on than large districts like Grand Forks.
An estimate from the North Dakota Council on Educational Leadership calculates the cost of the current bill at $140 to $200 million.
