“We can have all kinds of discussions about, oh yeah, teacher pay, infrastructure of schools; we can continue to deflect the issue and point to those,” Kinchen said in an interview, but he believes the election for the Timberlake seat will be “made or broken” by his stance on bathroom accommodations for students who don’t identify with their physical sex.

Superintendent Bobby Johnson said accommodating the few transgender students in Campbell County Public Schools has been very straightforward up until now.

“We’re going to protect all kids. We want all students to feel safe when they’re in school,” Johnson said, adding the division has “not allowed and did not allow a student to enter the bathroom for the gender they are identifying with.”

In other words, no one who is biologically a male is permitted to enter a bathroom designated for girls, and vice versa, in Campbell County Public Schools. Instead, Johnson said the principal and parents of a transgender student allow that student to use an individual unisex or staff bathroom.

“It’s never been an issue,” Johnson said. “We have managed it. We’ve done it respectfully, we’ve done it quietly and worked with families and children to make them feel comfortable.”

Johnson said this is a practice, not a policy, because it has not been voted on by the school board and codified.

Kinchen said he thinks the existence of the informal practice, and the practice itself, are unacceptable. He thinks the board should vote on a formal policy, and he believes his constituents don’t want any accommodations made for transgender children.

“When it comes to the transgender thing, most people not only don’t understand it, they’re not supportive of this position and trying to accommodate a minority, to give special privileges and special rights to people,” he said.

If he is elected, Kinchen, an associate dean in the School of Music at Liberty University, intends to bring the issue up for discussion among the board members, open it up to the public at a meeting or open forum and create a formal policy.

His opponent, Barbara Rypkema, disagrees with Kinchen on how pressing this issue truly is.

“I have concerns that [transgender bathrooms are] being used as an issue by Mr. Kinchen and others because of the fact that they don’t understand what the schools are truly facing and so it’s easier to go with a national item that will scare people into a vote,” she said.

For his part, Kinchen said he doesn’t see it as a national issue because there is a practice currently being implemented in Campbell County schools.

Rypkema, previously a bookkeeper at Tomahawk Elementary School, said she doesn’t plan to propose policy while cases like Gavin Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board still are in progress and could set a precedent Campbell County would need to follow. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Virginia filed the case on behalf of Grimm, a transgender teenager, when his school board voted to approve a policy that required transgender students to use “alternate, private” restroom facilities instead of communal restrooms. The case made it to the Supreme Court but was sent back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals after the Justice Department and Department of Education rescinded a President Barack Obama-era guidance that recommended schools accommodate transgender students.

If and when that case is resolved, Rypkema’s strategy would be similar to Kinchen’s: She intends to listen to parents and constituents and implement policy the community approves of. Unlike Kinchen, she won’t predict what the policy will look like.

“Just randomly stating it to be a party line policy — I don’t believe that’s beneficial to the parents or the students. It actually upsets me because I feel like [Kinchen is] using that issue to basically create pawns of the students in this election,” she said, adding she believes his goal is only to win, “not to look out for the students and to improve the education in Campbell County.”

In the Rustburg seat race, candidates also hold slightly different positions on a transgender bathroom policy in Campbell County Schools, but neither has emphasized it to the same extent as Kinchen.

David Phillips, a BWXT engineer, said he didn’t initially intend to build the issue into his campaign but spoke with Johnson about the division’s current practice after Kinchen brought attention to it. Phillips said he doesn’t think transgender students should be able to use a communal bathroom that doesn’t match their physical sex but said, “If we have a special need, we can address it as it arises.”

“I want to first and foremost adhere to the law that’s currently on the books, and I think that’s what we’re currently doing,” he said. “If the law were to change in that regard, then we would have to act accordingly to provide those resources to fall in line with what the law would require.”

Phillips’ opponent, Doug Barringer, thinks Campbell County’s current practice is too informal, and he wants to open the issue up to the community and vote on a policy, similar to Kinchen. Barringer, a software engineer at Harris Corporation, also said he thinks allowing a transgender student to use a staff or unisex bathroom qualifies as “special protection,” under the law instead of “equal protection,” as the Constitution guarantees, which he finds problematic.

Johnson said he would work with the principal and parents of any student who came forward and didn’t want to use a communal bathroom, regardless of whether or not the student was transgender, but that wasn’t sufficient for Barringer.

“It seems like Johnson is merely expanding one special exception to include a second. As such it is not ‘equal access’ but remains ‘special access,’ Barringer wrote in an email. “This may seem a minor contention, but it diminishes a principle that is central to our concepts of equal rights and equal protection under law, all so the superintendent and school board can avoid a contentious debate and difficult decision.”

Barringer also said allowing transgender students to use a separate bathroom could cause a “slippery slope” that would lead to transgender students asking to use the communal bathrooms for the gender they identify with.

Scott Miller, a veterinarian and current school board chair who is running unopposed in the Brookneal district, said he thinks it is “absurd” anyone would treat transgender bathroom policies as a central issue in the election.

“I don’t see a reason to make this an issue. I don’t see a reason to bring attention to Campbell County by making it an issue, and I feel like right now, we’re handling it perfectly well without setting in stone some policy that we won’t have control over anyway if it does come down from above, from a federal or state mandate that we will have to abide by,” Miller said.

He noted at this time, no biologically male students are using girls’ bathrooms in the division.

“We’re addressing the needs of that individual student without making a mountain out of a molehill and creating problems,” he said. “Nobody is forcing us to do anything, so I just find it ridiculous that that’s even an agenda item. We’ll cross that agenda item if we have to, but we don’t have to.”

Residents will vote on candidates for Campbell County School Board on Nov. 7.