New legislation mandates access to free period products for DC students

When Juliana Lopez enters the bathroom at her high school in need of a pad, the 17-year-old junior at Columbia Heights Educational Campus is often left empty-handed. 

Lopez recounted urgently needing to visit the school nurse for a pad when she was in ninth grade because the dispenser was empty.

“It took quite some time to reach her because she wasn’t in her office and I really needed one,” Lopez said. 

Lopez’s experience is not unique. Liv Birnstad, a 16-year-old high school junior at Capital City Public Charter, said she also often finds nothing in her school’s dispensers. 

New legislation strives to overcome issues like empty dispensers for students and provide free period products in school bathrooms. 

On Jan. 24, Mayor Muriel Bowser signed the Expanding Student Access to Period Products Emergency Act of 2022, which took effect immediately. As emergency legislation, it will last for 90 days while the corresponding permanent legislation — which the mayor also signed Jan. 24 — undergoes a required congressional review period. According to the DC Council, it’s expected to be codified March 19. 

If all goes well, students should be able to see these products in schools by the start of the 2022-23 school year, according to Amanda Farnan, communications director for at-large Council member Christina Henderson’s office. Henderson was one of the legislation’s co-introducers, a group that included the council’s other female members — Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto, Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau, Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, Ward 4’s Janeese Lewis George, and at-large Council members Anita Bonds and Elissa Silverman — as well as Ward 7’s Vincent Gray. 

Pinto, who introduced the bill, stated in an email that although period products are a necessity and providing them for free shouldn’t be a revolutionary idea, the stigma surrounding menstruation has made meaningful policy change challenging.  

“We often think of period poverty as something that only occurs in developing countries. But the reality is that women, transgender men, and nonbinary people are struggling to afford period products in our own country and indeed in Washington, DC,” Pinto wrote. 

DC’s fiscal year 2022 budget provides $1.64 million in funding for implementation of the legislation, according to the fiscal impact statement included in the DC Council committee report on the bill. The FY 2022 allocation for DC Public Schools (DCPS) includes $384,000 to purchase and install dispensers and $425,000 to purchase period products. Funds are also available to cover costs for implementation at DC’s public charter schools.

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) will have primary responsibility for implementing this law, including developing a strategy and timeline for how DC schools will receive these products, Farnan said. 

OSSE will provide guidance to schools on their obligations under the law, press secretary Fred Lewis wrote in an email. 

Lewis said OSSE will be required to revise health standards on menstrual education; create signage to be placed next to the dispensers; and create web resources, including information about health standards, requirements for schools, downloadable signs, and examples of standards-aligned curriculum. 

He noted, however, that OSSE does not have an enforcement role for the placement, stocking or installation of free period products within schools. That responsibility will be up to individual schools, according to the DC Council committee report on the bill. 

The legislation requires all local education agencies (LEAs) and private schools — as well as colleges, universities and vocational schools — operating in the District to install at least one period products dispenser in each women’s and gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. Elementary schools will be required to have dispensers in one women’s and one gender-neutral bathroom.

LEAs and private schools are also required to have every dispenser stocked with free period products to “serve students’ needs throughout the academic year and any period of summer programming offered on its campus,” according to the legislation.

Farnan said implementation, while exciting, is likely to encounter most of its hurdles at the beginning of the process. She said the biggest challenge she foresees is managing equitable distribution of the period products across all the wards in DC. 

Additionally, some challenges will differ depending on the school, Farnan added. Some schools may already have dispensers or infrastructure for period products in place, while others may not. 

“If some schools are at complete zero, they don’t have that infrastructure or even that space. Then we’ll have to work with OSSE and school administrators to make sure that they have the resources that they need to get that up and running first,” Farnan said. 

Birnstad, a student representative on the DC State Board of Education (SBOE), said her school does have a dispenser in one of the school bathrooms, but that it is not often supplied with period products. 

“My school’s dispenser has quite literally never been stocked. In the eight years that I have been there, I have not been able to receive anything from it,” she said. 

This is an issue for most schools in the District, Birnstad noted, and even the dispensers that are stocked have products of “really low quality” that “don’t work for a lot of situations.”

Lopez, another student representative on the SBOE, said she also experiences dispensers in her school too often being empty. 

“I think when it comes to implementation, it has to be somewhere where it’s easy to access so that you don’t make an extremely long trip just to get what you need,” Lopez said. 

Birnstad said she thinks the implementation of this law will force schools to pay attention to the challenges students face on a daily basis when trying to access period products. She said she also thinks the gender-neutral language of this legislation will open up a worthwhile conversation about gender-neutral bathrooms in schools. 

Lopez said a lot of students are scared and stressed about getting their periods at school and the implementation of this law will help diminish that stress. 

“For me, it kind of represents some kind of belonging and welcoming because you don’t have to feel ashamed for something that is completely normal,” she added. 

Birnstad said she is excited to see these products coming to her school soon, but she has concerns about the rollout. She anticipates it will be hard to monitor whether schools are actually implementing the law. 

Lopez said she thinks OSSE and SBOE should have weekly or monthly check-ins with school administrators to review what products are being used and to ensure that dispensers are stocked. Lopez also called for established, ongoing communication with students. 

According to Farnan, any council member can hold OSSE accountable by pushing for updates on its strategies and plans, concrete data and specific steps to make a timeline work. Legislators can also schedule a meeting with OSSE staff, send a formal letter with a due date for a response, or request a formal oversight hearing by the council, she added. 

SBOE President Jessica Sutter, who represents Ward 6 on the board, said she hopes to include communication about this legislation as part of her monthly meetings with State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant. 

Allister Chang, Ward 2 SBOE representative, said the board’s role in implementing this law is to be supportive, inform OSSE about what members are hearing from constituents, and advise accordingly. 

The law has been a long time coming, Farnan noted, and she’s excited to support the rollout process to help make students’ lives a little bit easier. 

“I love it. I wish this was implemented when I was in middle and high school,” Farnan said. “And I hope that it’s embraced in the same excitement and … the reality of the improvements that are possible by every single school community — and I think it will be.”