PALATINE, Ill. – An Illinois school board has agreed to leave a settlement agreement in place, allowing a transgender biological male student to use the girls’ locker room, as long as the student agrees to change and shower in private, out of view of biological females in the room.

School officials had threatened to negate the agreement, based on a statement from federal authorities last week that suggested that the student should have the option of changing or showering openly or in private, and that the policy should apply to all transgender students in the district.

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Township High School District 211 officials insisted that the compromise was based on the student’s promise to use privacy curtains, and that the compromise only applied to the student in question.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights backed down on the issue earlier this week, issuing a statement that confirmed the district’s interpretation of the deal.

“The agreement provisions specific to locker room access apply only to Student A, and the District’s agreement to provide Student A access to locker rooms is based on the student’s representation that she will change in private changing stations,” Catherine Lhamon, the Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, wrote in a memo to a school district attorney, according to the Chicago Tribune.

At a special meeting on Tuesday, the board decided against taking further action and left the compromise in place.

School board President Mucia Burke called the compromise “the best course of action for the student while balancing the needs of all the teenage students in our district,” according to the Tribune.

But the issue seemed far from settled. For the second time in two weeks, hundreds of angry residents packed a school board meeting to debate the emotional issue.

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Many in the community believe the school board compromised too much. They believe school restrooms and locker rooms should be strictly segregated by biological gender, regardless of how transgender students perceive themselves.

“Regardless of what anybody says, this student is a male,” the Tribune quoted one resident as saying.

The parent of several girls in the district said, “It seems the rights of this one person are trumping the rights of everyone else.”

Several residents were concerned that the compromise would set a general precedent allowing transgender students everywhere to have open access to the restrooms and locker rooms of their choice.

Many people carried signs at the meeting, encouraging the district to fight the federal government in court.

“Like it or not, we are setting precedent here,” a speaker at the meeting said, according to the Tribune. “Other school boards are going to look at what we did here, and they’re going to cave to the OCR too.”