The Guilderland and Voorheesville school districts have installed machines in girls’ bathrooms to dispense tampons and pads, as required by a new state law.

The law, effective July 1, says menstrual products must be free and available to girls in grades 6 through 12.

Guilderland has outfitted all of the girls’ bathrooms in the middle and high schools with the machines, while Voorheesville has added them to a number of restrooms throughout the secondary school.

The measure is part of the Women’s Opportunity Agenda that was passed in April. A broad measure, it calls for, among other things:

— Improved access to infertility treatment, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status;

— Consistent health-insurance coverage for donor breast milk, especially for premature or preterm infants;

— A multi-agency effort to combat depression in new mothers;

— Extending the timeline for storing rape kits; and

— Closing a loophole to require domestic abusers to surrender all firearms.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s website says, “Feminine hygiene products are as necessary as toilet paper and soap, but hardly ever as available or free. At $7 to $10 per package, a month’s supply of something as simple as a box of pads or tampons can be one expense too many for struggling families.”

Guilderland

Guilderland schools Superintendent Marie Wiles said that the district worked this summer to outfit the 17 girls’ bathrooms in the middle school and the 22 in the high school with machines to dispense sanitary napkins and tampons for free. She said that the machines were not fully ready by July 1 but that they were ready before the start of school.

In the past, Wiles said, products had been available to students for free in the nurses’ office, but not in the restrooms.

Wiles said that the cost of the dispensing machines and menstrual products had been just under $12,000 and that the district expects the annual cost of replacing the products to fall between $800 and $1,200.

The state requirement was finalized too late to be included in the 2018-19 budget, so the district pulled funds from other lines in its facilities allocations, Wiles said, noting that Guilderland will adjust for the 2019-20 budget.

The school year started just three weeks ago, but Assistant Principal Ann-Marie Springsteen has heard positive feedback from one student, she said. The student had asked Springsteen about it, thinking that it was an initiative the district had conceived; Springsteen had to tell her that, no, it was a new law.

Voorheesville

“We’ve tried to have representative area coverage,” said Voorheesville’s superintendent, Brian Hunt, rather than machines in every restroom. Unlike Guilderland, with the middle and high school miles apart, Voorheesville’s secondary school serves students in grades 6 through 12.

Hunt noted that students need not walk far to find a restroom with the menstrual products.

The district was able to do it without much difficulty or expense, Hunt said.

Previously, students had been able to get these products, when needed, from the nurse, but that was less convenient, Hunt said, noting that it can be a long walk to the nurse’s office. “We’re a big school — you’ve got to walk a long way, and what if she’s in there with somebody else?” he asked.

Hunt called the new law “one of those mandates that needed to happen and that didn’t impose a major burden on us.”

Hunt said that the original part of the Voorheesville secondary school is 60 years old and that there is “always something you’ve got to do.”

He said the district has renovated bathrooms many times over the years and that this is no different. Voorheesville had, earlier, designated several of its single-use bathrooms for use by either gender and installed new signs to make this clear.

After repeated calls and emails to Berne-Knox-Westerlo administrators went unanswered, a BOCES public-relations representative for the district, Cuyle Rockwell, emailed on Wednesday, saying simply that the district had installed machines in its bathrooms, and that products are also available in the nurse’s office.