Kitty litter in classrooms? Pinellas schools candidate insists it’s true

Pinellas County school board candidate Erika Picard insists that students who identify as cats are seeking special treatment in schools.

As part of her campaign, the Palm Harbor University High guidance counselor regularly refers to students requesting litter boxes in their school restrooms. This week was no exception.

Explaining her concerns with how diversity, equity and inclusion programs have become part of a liberal agenda — a concept pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies — Picard on Monday raised the issue of going too far in accommodating students.

“When you hear about kids identifying as whatever, and we’re now accommodating them with a kitty litter box in the bathroom, that’s a problem,” Picard told the Council of North County Neighborhoods during a candidate forum.

“And I have actually talked to families that have had that happen in their kids’ classroom. It’s insanity. It’s crazy, right?” she continued. “And I didn’t make that up. This is a family that actually had this happen to them in Hillsborough County schools.”

Incumbent board member Eileen Long, who Picard is challenging, scoffed at the remark. “There is no kitty litter box in Pinellas County schools, OK?” Long said before addressing other issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Hillsborough County school officials denied the allegation.

School Board member Patti Rendon, whom DeSantis backed in 2022, said she has not heard even a whisper about kitty litter in a school restroom.

“It is not happening in Hillsborough County schools,” Rendon said. “I absolutely would know.”

She said the district strictly follows Florida law regarding restroom access by children’s birth certificate.

District spokesperson Tanya Arja said the administration’s chief of schools consulted with all regional superintendents after Picard’s recent forum statement, to determine if any incidents took place.

“There’s no one who knows anything about that,” Arja said.

She added that the district would not grant such a request if one were made, but there is “no indication that any school has been asked. That has not happened in any of our schools.”

Leaders of the Hillsborough district’s teachers union and a parent group said they also had not ever heard a complaint, question or discussion about kitty litter in a school restroom.

Asked for more specifics to nail down the allegation, Picard offered none.

“I would love to give you names of the family I spoke with at the First Responders event in March,” she told the Tampa Bay Times via email. “However, I never wrote their names down, nor did I ask them exactly what school it was at. They just said it was a Hillsborough County school.”

She did not back away from the comment, despite the officials’ rejection of her assertion. Rather, she suggested the situation demonstrates why someone like her should be on the Pinellas board.

“I believe there are things that happen in schools that are not always shared with the district level officials, which is exactly why we need someone working on our board that has recent boots on the ground experience in our schools, especially post covid,” Picard said.

She added that she tells the story to remind people about the “crazy requests” that schools get and to discuss what’s acceptable in the schools.

“If a parent brings a concern to me, I have no reason to not believe the validity of it,” she said.

Picard began talking about kitty litter in schools early in her campaign, saying the schools should focus on basic education and not other issues. At that time, she clarified that she had no information that it happened in any Pinellas schools.

“I have no specifics and is debatable if it is actually happening ‘according to the schools’ but it begs the question, when have we gone too far???” she wrote to the Times in late 2023.

Rumors about children identifying as cats or other furry animals, and asking for litter boxes in schools, first emerged nationally in 2021. Mostly Republican politicians said they heard of such activities, and used the stories to advance criticisms of gender non-conforming youth and policies designed to support them.

Fact checkers debunked the stories as a hoax. Conservative podcast host Joe Rogan, who advanced the idea, acknowledged in 2022 that it was false.