Recently, B-CC parents met with Dr. Mooney to discuss having parents and caregivers helpers at school during lunch to help out. The goal presented by the parents was to allow security and administration to open more bathrooms during lunch so students could utilize them. As well as allowing students to use the gym during lunch to do things such as play basketball, a sign-up genius has been created to allow parents to volunteer as they try out the new program.
The PTSA operates a listserv that serves the parent community primarily. It allows for the discussion of topics important to parents and their students. After multiple posts about what parents call “The Bathroom Situation” at B-CC, which refers to the bathrooms being locked a lot of the time, the PTSA wanted to brainstorm with the B-CC administration about how parents could be of assistance in helping address the issue.
Feedback was also received from other nearby high schools to determine if they are experiencing similar issues in their bathrooms as well as what solution they have implemented, if any. According to this feedback, the root of the issue is that the bathrooms at high schools are unsupervised spaces, and students may engage in various behaviors that may be considered unwelcome.
Multiple solutions have been tested around high schools in the county, such as installing vape detectors in the bathrooms, removing outside bathroom doors, regular security monitoring, restricting bathroom times, and locking bathrooms. B-CC has decided to adopt the latter two initiatives, but what parents are hearing from students is that these solutions are not working well, as quick and easy access to a bathroom is a necessity.
“While the rules are well-intentioned, namely to keep kids safe, the outcome is kids can not quickly and easily go to the bathroom,” says B-CC parent Kerry Green, who is a member of the PTSA and the parent who originally came up with the idea for volunteers. “Therefore, we offered to bring more parent volunteers into the building so that we could help monitor the front office, halls, and gym during lunch so security and administrators could open up more bathrooms.”
The initial ask was for five parents a day to come to school for an hour and see if it frees up time for administration and security to open up and monitor more bathrooms. Another benefit would be that if there were more adults in the building, the school would be able to open up the gym for basketball during lunch. “We did this a couple of years back, and it was a huge success,” Says Ms.Green. “It is great for everyone’s health and mental health to have additional outlets during lunch, so the PTSA is highly supportive of making more space available.”
The preferred solution, according to Ms.Green, is that “Ideally, B-CC would have a greater number of security guards in the building so they weren’t relying on parent volunteers to monitor spaces, but until that happens, we parents are happy to help when we can.”
