(Carroll, Iowa) – The Superintendent of the Carroll Community School District is denying rumors that they are providing litter boxes in their school bathrooms. Dr. Casey Berlau (who previously served as the shared CAM/Nodaway Valley Superintendent), sent a letter to students and parents Monday. In the letter, he wrote “The rumor is that our schools have litter boxes in the restrooms to accommodate individuals who are self-identifying as animals. This is simply and emphatically not true.”

Mary Jane Cobb, director of the Iowa State Education Association, claims that the rumors started in Michigan when a parent spoke out to a school board. Since then, multiple high schools in the country have been targeted by similar rumors, all of which are false. The ISEA says that the rumor is a right-wing attempt to mock LGBTQ restroom equality, and that it harms students’ mental health.

Cobb told KCCI, “It’s absurd and it’s mean-spirited. And, it is absolutely not the focus we should be having right now. I would just ask the people that are promulgating this myth to stop.”