It would seem obvious that students, like adults, have a physical need to use a bathroom during the school day. But in Massachusetts, many schools are closing bathrooms to avoid student misbehavior and vaping.
The condition of bathrooms in Boston Public Schools, and in other urban districts, has fueled public outrage for years, with broken taps and empty towel dispensers seen as sorry symbols of a failure to meet even basic needs.
But across the state and country, an even more fundamental problem is gaining attention: increasing restrictions on students’ access to bathrooms, as administrators keep more restrooms locked and off limits for more of the school day.
Driven by efforts to curtail teen vaping, and to prevent outbreaks of vandalism sparked by the TikTok trend known as “Devious Licks”, the widespread crackdowns on bathroom access have left students in some schools searching urgently for unlocked stalls — and pining for any open restroom, no matter how broken or dirty. As teenagers learn to hold their urine for hours – or stop eating and drinking at school to avoid discomfort — the outcry against the closures from students and parents has grown louder.
“I understand that there are safety concerns, but the whole school shouldn’t have basic human rights taken away,” said Nevaeh Lopez, 16, a student at Holyoke High School who started an online petition to push back against bathroom closures at her school this spring.
The issue has provoked fiery debate at school committee meetings and in online forums around the region in recent months, as well as calls and e-mails to principals and school nurses. A post about bathroom restrictions at New Bedford High School, on the New Bedford Live Facebook page in October, garnered nearly 200 comments, from students who described missing class time while waiting in long bathroom lines, and from adults who placed blame squarely on the teenagers. (“If they would act like civilized human beings they would be able to be trusted,” wrote one.)
There is no doubt uncivilized — and sometimes violent — acts have taken place in school bathrooms. Several students were suspended at Wilmington High School in March after they picked up another student and tried to force his head into a toilet in a boys’ bathroom. “What is equally disturbing is the fact that other students were present and did nothing to stop the incident, and in fact recorded the altercation,” Superintendent Glenn Brand said later.
School leaders nationwide have reported a general uptick in discipline and behavior issues, including fighting and bullying, since students returned to full-time, in-person school following two years of disruption. The troubling trend has been linked to the mental health toll of the pandemic, and to social development delays possibly caused by students’ recent isolation.
Student use of electronic cigarettes has alsorisen at “epidemic” rates in recent years, health officials have warned. As countless school bathrooms have become de facto vaping lounges, desperate school leaders have grasped at any possible solution, including removing doors from restroom stalls and installing vape-detection sensors.
Yet even Donna Mazyck — head of the National School Nurses Association and a leader in the fight to curb teen vaping — said rampant restroom shutdowns are not the answer…
Staffing shortages, exacerbated by pandemic burnout, have reduced the number of hall and restroom monitors available in many districts, forcing more closures of unsupervised bathrooms. But staffing is a problem that can be solved, said Worcester School Committee member Tracy O’Connell Novick, who spoke forcefully against the locking of bathrooms at the committee meeting in January.
“I taught high school, I know why we lock bathrooms, and I don’t think it should be against a policy — I think it should be against the law,” O’Connell Novick told the School Committee. “There are things that are right and things that are wrong, and denying students access to bathrooms is wrong.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I taught for thirty years in public schools with very high child poverty rates (70% and up) and multi-generational, violent street gang challenges (the risk of riots and violence was an every day presence). Even the local police sent armed officers to our high school campus every day at lunch to just sit in their squad cars watching the students eat. Once lunch ended, those two police left. And our administrators and counselors never had student lunch-time off. They all had to be in the quad where the students ate in an attempt to maintain the peace.
One grade school even had coils of razor wire along the eaves to keep the gangs off the roofs. You see, they’d show up at night and chop holes through the roofs with axes to get inside and loot the school of TVs and computers. Those streets around that grade school were so dangerous even the police didn’t patrol them at night.
At the high school where I taught for the last 16 of the years I taught, one of the local street gangs blew out a bullet proofed window one weekend to get into the library after sabotaging the alarm system somehow and stole dozens of TVs and laptops.
And, bathrooms were always a problem. Students had sex in them. Had fights. Met during class to buy or sell drugs. Students destroyed bathrooms all the time. The high school where I taught even spent tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild one student bathroom to make it as indestructible as possible. Even the mirrors over the stainless steel sinks were polished metal. The toilets were stainless steel, too many porcelain toilets had been smashed to bits.
That so-called indestructible bathroom closed a few days after it reopened because some student during a classroom pee break dragged trash cans from outside into the bathroom and set them on fire. That bathroom was closed again, for the rest of the year. The district didn’t have the money in its budget to rebuild it again.
The district decided to assign one CPO from campus security to sit on a stool inside one unlocked student bathroom to guard it. And all the other student bathrooms were closed but that one, on a campus with 3,000 students.
The complaints from parents and advocates were many with threats of lawsuits, demonstrations. The issue: student privacy. It seemed no one outside of the staff were concerned about the sex, fights, drugs, bathroom destruction, et al.
Nothing the district did ended the damage to the bathrooms. Sinks torn off the walls, Mirrors shattered, doors on toilet stalls ripped off. The damage never ended. The fights never ended. Even the polished metal mirrors were gouged ands scratched so bad, they couldn’t be used as mirrors anymore. One of the saboteurs favored things to do was to use paper to stop up the toilets and then flood the bathrooms with turds and piss from the overflowing toilets.
Once, during class, one of the special-ed students went to use the only open boys bathroom in the high school. He returned to his classroom with his pants soaked with his own urine not because the bathroom was closed, but because a couple, a boy and girl, was having sex in there and he was embarrassed. The girl was bent over holding on to the toilet while the boy entered her from behind. It took several of our campus police officers to pull them apart because they refused to stop.
When the parents were called, the girl’s mother told the principal he was liar, her daughter would never do that, and threatened to sue the district. The year before, that girl was in my English class. She was a problem from day one and her mother an even bigger nightmare defending her and threatening all of her teachers for every incident and this girl was in trouble every day. Eventually, the district had her expelled. And that is another nightmare. The legal costs to get rid of students like that one are also prohibitive, so many very difficult students to manage never leave because the school districts can’t afford the court costs to prove guilt.
So, when you read about campus bathroom problems, remember my comment and do not condemn the schools unless you know exactly what the challenges are those schools are dealing with.
Good morning Diane and everyone & Lloyd,
I think people would be shocked if they knew what really went on in schools. This year we had tampons dipped in kool-aid all over the bathroom, students sitting in the bathroom skipping class, vandalization of all kinds, vaping and the list goes on. And you wonder why you can’t get intelligent people to go into this profession. Just add these things to the ever-growing list.
Bathrooms are closed all the time at my large, two-story urban high school. Kids report having to walk all over the building to find one that’s open. Admin tells us teachers to only let kids go during the transitions between classes (6 minutes) and not during the first or last 10 minutes. Consequently, I write passes all during class which makes it hard to teach. Sometimes I feel like that is all my job is: writing passes. When kids leave to use the restroom, they are gone for 20 minutes. They report long lines. I don’t know if this is legit or if they’re skipping. A solution would be to hire more adult hallway supervisors- NOT teachers.
I can attest to what Lloyd and Mamie write. Some students will “hold it” all day long because of fights and drugs in the restrooms. Ours have been destroyed too. The bathrooms have to be monitored. Destruction and illegal behavior should have a consequence. As it is, there is barely any discipline policy and kids can pretty much do whatever they want.
When I taught middle school in the district, students tore down stalls, stopped up sinks and toilets, started fires in trashcans, and set off fireworks. And people wonder why there’s a teacher shortage. TY for letting me vent.
Lloyd What a story . . . what made you stay? CBK
Something tells me Lloyd has an inner toughness that most people lack. I wonder what school he was at. Must’ve been Jordan or Crenshaw, here in L.A. I don’t think there’s anything like those two schools anywhere in the world. I was at Markham a while back, one of the feeder schools to Jordan. We had to send students to the restroom in pairs for safety’s sake. And our campus was a dangerous place to be every Friday night as soon as the sun went down. But we kept those restrooms open and when the offices and classrooms were burned down, we rebuilt.
If we’re going to have a society in which redlining and other forms of discrimination create segregated pockets of hopelessness, not that we should but since we seem to NIMBY must, the least we can do is pay to keep the schools in those pockets of despair in constant repair. It’s the least, the bare minimum society can do.
leftcoast Yes about Lloyd. I kind of thought that too about Lloyd’s strength. My own experience in HS was not ANYTHING like that . . . early 60’s. I was amazed to read his experience. I DID have some experience later in the 70’s substituting at both public and Catholic schools (this was long before I joined the Church . . . I was attending a Presbyterian Church where there was a great group of serious people addressing serious issues).
But I remember a talk with a teacher at the public school who said she was glad that I did okay that day. . . she was just happy that no one broke up the desks . . . this time. CBK
I’d bet that the adminals who close the restrooms have never been on diuretics, eh!
If they would act like civilized human beings they would be able to be trusted”
That person obviously doesn’t know much about adolescents.
“As countless school bathrooms have become de facto vaping lounges, desperate school leaders have grasped at any possible solution, including removing doors from restroom stalls and installing vape-detection sensors.”
Some smoke detectors (in particular, Photoelectric type, which detects an interruption in a light beam) will already detect the vapor from vaping devices (as well as particulate smoke and even steam)
And if schools hooked the vape detectors up to overhead sprinklers in the bathrooms, i that would put an end to the vaping pretty quickly.
It would have the added benefit of identifying the guilty parties AND maintaining a showered and fresh smelling student population.
LOL elementary schools have bathroom issues too. Love your solution
While I was pregnant with twins, my administrator kindly assigned me a seated duty during my admin period. He placed a comfortable chair for me outside the female bathroom. Kids came along, signed a sheet on the clipboard, did what they needed and went back to class. We never closed the bathrooms, except perhaps for a brief time during passing for a changing of the guard. Treating kids with respect means mostly that respect is returned.
But there isn’t enough staff, it seems. Hard to know what would be more important for deploying staff than cultivating a feeling of respect between faculty and kids for universal human needs.
Having a teacher be required to monitor bathrooms is ridiculous. Teachers are not in schools to be bathroom monitors, hall monitors and cafeteria cleaners. Again, it’s a degradation of the profession.
Well, it can be Mamie, or not. I sure wouldn’t want a security guard or school police officer at the bathroom door.
It was a relatively small school where all the faculty wore several hats all the time. I got a lot more accomplished grading student work while on bathroom duty than I would have attending a useless meeting that was irrelevant to my subject matter. And perhaps due to my pregnancy, nearly every student was kind and solicitous of me.
Vape detectors with automated sprinkler systems require no monitoring or even enforcement.
And the negative reinforcement is immediate, severe enough to act as a deterrent but otherwise completely harmless.
They could even install sump pumps in the bathrooms to automatically remove the water from the floor after an incident.
What’s not to like about it?
Tradition!
Hi Christine,
Well, that tells us a lot about the teaching “profession” when a highly educated and trained teacher would rather monitor a bathroom than be in a useless meeting as part of his or her job!!!!
It does indeed, Mamie!
Unfortunately there are too many administrators!
If I were running for school board, I would advocate for fewer administrators and more vape activated bathroom sprinklers!
Christine Yes to your note about learning to be civil. The hidden need in a democracy is that the power needs to shift from OUT (parents, caregivers, the social order, the law) to INNER control, self-control, or in Aristotle’s term, self-mastery.
We all talk about the value of small classes and THAT’s essential precisely because it makes the responsibility of each person for the whole become more apparent. But that’s just a start. I have often wondered when “we” would get it, that it’s not all about taking tests and knowing stem. Somehow, surely, with all of the expertise around, . . . CBK
The automated vape detector/sprinkler system would have a final benefit of keeping the bathroom floors spic and span.
No more dreadful mopping for janitors.
The “Vaporizer System” (TM) * could be programmed to automatically actuate at the end of each day and the sump pumps would automatically remove the water, leaving the floors spotless. They could even have inline soap dispensers for the system.
*that’s my name, so don’t even think about using it without paying me a royalty.
Send the money to SomeDAM Poet
PO Box 888
SomeDAM Town
Connecticut
Please include an extra $10 if you want a years supply of permanent red dye that can be added to the soap dispenser to mark the guilty parties with a Scarlet Letter
Note that Holyoke is operating under state receivership:
“I understand that there are safety concerns, but the whole school shouldn’t have basic human rights taken away,” said Nevaeh Lopez, 16, a student at Holyoke High School who started an online petition to push back against bathroom closures at her school this spring.
Also, The Glob cannot resisit leading off a story that is about the state as a whole by trash talking the Boston Public Schools. The one example cited far later in this story is the successful and respectful resolution to the issue by a Boston Public School.
Students at Boston Latin Academy were more satisfied by the swift response this spring from their administrators, who reversed a short-lived program of bathroom closures within 10 days after students posted their own petition and aired their concerns.
I know that students bring all the problems of our society into schools, which have limited ability and resources to curb unwanted behaviors. That said, the overall social environment in a school is malleable, if leaders believe in the inherent decency of kids which leads to trust rather than punishment. That means working to balance freedom and responsibility of adults and students, rather than restricting freedom by authoritarian edicts. Closing bathrooms is an abdication.
Exactly, Arthur. It’s unfair to the far greater number of kids who just want a modicum of normalcy and humanity as they go about their day. Track down the wrong doers and hold them accountable.
At another school where I taught, the principal was an idiot. Once, during an after-school PD session, he began by excoriating all “those teachers who called out sick today so you wouldn’t have to come to this meeting”. Those of us seated in front of him were blameless! His approach definitely would have been to close the bathrooms.
Once again the news of student misbehavior serves those who would destabilize the public education system rather than look for a positive solution. They would do the right thing if the government would just let the teachers beat the kids and proselytize them like they used to. Schools are gone to hell. Crash the whole thing.
Half the body politic is more interested in blaming the failure of public schools on the opposition than it is in solving the problem of the tiny minority of students being behaviorally problematic. The rest of the year epilepsy just don’t know what to do.
We had some vandalism last year connected to the tic-tok thing. It finally passed, but no one ever found out who was responsible to my knowledge. Some of the children are not taught to respect societal values.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I read your comment after Inwhote mine blow.
I wrote, that is.
For the last 13 years of teaching, before retirement, I taught in all 3 of our district’s middle schools at various times. (I was an L.D. Resource Teacher.) The worst problem we had in the bathrooms were girls leaving classes to spend class time putting on makeup. (Ladies: remember when you were that age & put makeup on at school because your parents wouldn’t allow you to leave the house w/lipstick, eye shadow or rouge?) Anyway, one clever principal put an end to that by having all the mirrors removed. He did it in the boys bathroom, too, because they’d go in to comb their hair!
No complaints from us, & no angry calls from parents!
The bathroom issue cuts to the heart of all the problems we have with the so-called reformers. They blame students and teachers for their oppressive policies. They blame students and teachers for their oppressive policies. Students need bathrooms, butreformers say they need to prove they’re worthy of them. Students need fewer armed police on campus, but reformers say they need to earn safety by proving they have SEL skills. Students and teachers need stability, but reformers say we need to earn the right to a public school by scoring “proficient”.
Whenever we need anything, reformers say we need to prove we deserve it. Your attention, boys and girls, the restroom is closed. Jim Crow is using it and he needs it all to himself.
LeftCoast Yes, it’s sort of like the wife beater who makes it so difficult to live with him that she finally leaves; and then the wife-beater says to the judge: “See, judge, SHE is the one who left ME.”
So called “reformers,” insofar as they are working for those who want to dismiss with
and strangle all-things-public, draw funds from public education, nit-pick teachers and the public system, lie about grades, claim an uneven playing field (because public institutions and services are not on principle profit-making), and sabotage the system doing whatever else they can to make it hard on public education, and them spread their propaganda about it all over the media like fertilizer on a field of tomato plants. “Look how bad it is. We need to get rid of it.”
The whole playbook is really becoming quite predictable. CBK
It’s all part of the basic plan to eventually replace reality with AlteReality, with alternate facts, alternate Constitutions (so you can deny legal rights) and even alternate laws of physics (so you can deny climate change and the need to regulate greenhouse gases)
As the Supreme Majority just said
“We’re the Umpire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
SomeDAM I have an idea: The new real reality can take a Sharpie Pen as its symbol. I have to go now . . . I want to invest quickly in a flag-making company. CBK
The Blame Game
The finger pointing game
Will really get you far
When everyone’s to blame
Except the ones who are
And I believe either you or “SpellIncorrect” misspelled “buttreformers” when you said
“Students need bathrooms, butreformers say they need to prove they’re worthy of them.”
Don’t mean to be cheeky, but they can certainly reform my butt.
Really appreciated the bathroom humor in those first few comments. A nice break from the doom-filled news. When I was a freshman in college, a notorious incident took place in the [notorious] freshman men’s dorms. Elapsed time was said to be under 3 minutes. A small team armed with multiple cherry-bombs—except for the one whose sole job was to carry a large tape-recorder blasting the “Mission: Impossible” theme— started flushing on the fourth [top] floor, dashed down the stairs to third floor to repeat, etc…
I blame the vague and toothless Codes of Conduct that allow limitless misbehavior.
Without any concrete limits, why is anyone shocked that some students misbehave in limitless ways.
It seems to me that there is an easy solution. Most students are required to carry ID cards. Make the restrooms key activated. Require students to report damage(or be required to pay for it.). The last person to enter the restroom prior to the report is likely the vandal. Expell the person responsible and charge the parents for the damage.