Staff obtained ‘gender-affirming’ products from the Seattle Children’s Hospital through the ‘Community Health Locker Project.’
Seattle Public Schools (SPS) launched a program earlier this year in collaboration with Seattle Children’s Hospital to provide “gender-affirming” products such as chest binders, TransTape, nipple guards, and tucking underwear to middle and high school students to use at will, newly obtained internal documents reveal.
The supplies were provided by the Seattle Children’s Hospital and placed in lockers for students to access beginning in March 2025 as part of the SPS “Community Health Locker Project,” according to emails obtained by the watchdog group Defending Education via the Freedom of Information Act and shared exclusively with National Review.
The SPS Health Education Office worked with the Garfield High School Teen Health Center — “a safe, confidential place where students can receive medical care, nutritional services, and mental health care” — to stock the lockers.
Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Children’s Hospital did not reply to National Review‘s request for comment at the time of publication.
The initiative was briefly put on hold due to “federal changes affecting LGBTQ+ communities” but was quickly resumed, internal emails show.
While the emails do not specify which federal changes caused the school to put the program on hold, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January of this year that bars federally funded schools from injecting left-wing dogma around sex and gender into K–12 curricula.
In addition to TransTape and tucking underwear, both of which are used to conceal the male genitalia, students were also given access to makeup kits, Nair hair remover, and sports bras. The student-led group Garfield GSA (Gay–Straight Alliance) provided guidance on which products should be put in the lockers and how often the lockers need to be restocked.
“We’ve definitely crossed the Rubicon when the concept of school supplies includes chest binders, nipple guards, tucking underwear and ‘TransTape,’ provided by the school district,” said Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications at Defending Education. “This is evidence of a district that has been captured by gender ideology and is complicit in harming other people’s kids.”
A LinkedIn post from a self-declared “Seattle Public School (SPS) Community Health Locker Advocate” said the project was initiated via the SPS LGBTQ+ Project-Program Coordinator, as a step toward “expand[ing] access to gender-affirming products for gender-diverse students.”
“These health lockers throughout SPS middle and high schools includes chest binders, condoms, and makeup for free!” the post reads. “This helped inform over 25,000 SPS students receiving a secondary-level education, and (hopefully) many more students to come!”
Before the locker program began, the LGBTQ+ support coordinator in the district’s Health Education Office sent an email to faculty and staff emphasizing the importance of taking a special interest in LGBTQ+ students around the holidays, given that their families might be “non-accepting.”
“The holiday season can be a challenge for our LGBTQ+ students, and we frequently see an uptick in mental health crises and suicidal ideation during this time,” the LGBTQ+ support coordinator for SPS who uses “they/he” pronouns, wrote in the email. “Queer and trans youth with non-accepting families, or who depend on schools for basic necessities, are most at risk.”
The directive from SPS also included a list of “coping strategies for the holidays” for educators to pass along to LGBTQ+ students.
The support coordinator also suggested that students reach out to the Trevor Project, a group that was defunded by the Trump administration earlier this summer, costing the organization a $26 million contract.
The Trevor Project bills itself as a resource for gender dysphoric adolescents and embraces an affirmation-only approach. The organization hosts a chatroom for trans-identifying teens called TrevorSpace, which one mother previously described to National Review as a “Pandora’s box” of sexually perverse content, aggressive gender reassignment referrals, adults encouraging minors to hide their transitions from their parents, and many troubled kids in need of psychological counseling.