Cameras were recently added to four bathrooms at the Windsor Charter Academy Early College High School, two women’s and two men’s rooms, and several parents say they are not OK with them being there.

The cameras are mounted on the ceiling, one in each of the four bathrooms, and according to the school, they point only toward the sinks. The stalls, which are a new design for the school, span from the floor to ceiling, which Rebecca Teeples, the executive director of Windsor Charter Academy Schools, said in a phone interview was designed to increase privacy for students.

The cameras, she said, point toward the wash stations because that is considered a public space, and cameras were placed in all public areas of the school to increase security for students.

Bill Bethke, an attorney in private practice who represents the Windsor Charter Academy schools, as well as others in the state, said the school wanted to monitor those entering and leaving the bathroom to protect students.

But those cameras have also made some students feel uncomfortable. Kaylee Garrett, an eighth-grader at Windsor Charter Academy Middle School, said she has seen students at the high school cover the cameras in the bathrooms with tape, because they felt uncomfortable using the restroom with the cameras in place.

She told her dad, Trevor Garrett, the cameras have been there for about three weeks. Trevor said he and his wife, Annie, who have three children at the Windsor Charter Academy schools, found out Wednesday.

“I was floored,” Trevor said.

Trevor and Annie, along with another parent, went to the school office Thursday morning to ask why the school chose to put the cameras in place, and why parents hadn’t been notified.

Teeples confirmed in a phone interview parents had not been notified, but the students have known about the cameras since before they were put in place. Signs stating the area is under video surveillance were put up before the cameras, Teeples said.

The cameras in the Early College High School were included in the design for that portion of the school, Teeples said, which opened this year. The decision to include cameras was made by academy administrators, she said.

Trevor said his family was told the cameras only point toward the sinks in the bathrooms, but he cited the U.S. Department of Justice website, which says cameras should not be used in areas where students have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Annie said her daughters told her some students might use the bathrooms to change. If the stalls are full, she said, they often change outside the stalls. That, to Trevor, means they expect privacy inside the entire bathroom.

Teeples said the cameras do not violate student privacy, as the bathroom stalls go from the floor to ceiling and the sinks are a separate, public area. If students want to change clothes, she said, they can use the private stalls or the locker rooms at the school.

Bethke said the floor-to-ceiling stalls are a setup not often seen in other schools. While it may take some time for students to get used to the setup, treating hand washing stations as a public space is not uncommon, Bethke said. He said he has often seen elementary schools with hand washing out in the hallways.

“I would urge people to consider that the charter school is trying to improve the protection of privacy, but in doing that drawing a line between the private space and the public space that is new and that people will learn to use appropriately,” he said.

Annie said she contacted the Windsor Police Department with her concerns about the cameras. According to Lt. Craig Dodd of the Windsor Police Department, Officer Chris Darcy, the school resource officer for the town of Windsor, visited the school Thursday morning and did not find any indication of any criminal violations.

Trevor said he was additionally concerned because staff said select administrators and Information Technology employees all have access to the footage and he was worried what they might see, but Teeples said the move to put cameras in all public areas of the school – including, she said, the washroom portion of the bathrooms – was about student safety.

“Every decision we make, we make to make sure our students are as safe as possible in our school,” she said.

According to Dan Seegmiller, the superintendent of the Windsor-Severance Re-4 School District, the decision to place the cameras in the sink portion of the new bathrooms in the school, was made independently by the charter academy. Although the district is the charter authorizer for Windsor Charter Academy schools, Seegmiller said the district does not oversee the facilities. Seegmiller said none of the bathrooms in the district have cameras, or the same floor-to-ceiling stall design.

“Installing cameras in restroom facilities is not a practice that we follow in any of our traditional Weld RE-4 schools,” he said in an email.

Theresa Myers, the director of the Communication and Community Relations Department for the Greeley-Evans School District 6, said the district also does not have cameras in any school bathrooms.

The Garretts said they plan to continue working to have the cameras taken down, even if that means pursuing legal action.