One of the biggest issues students of John Dewey High School have with the school is the bathrooms. With surveillance people in front of the bathrooms at all times, the 10 minutes of unusable bathroom time before class ends along with the 10 minutes of unusable time during the beginning of class, and the one pass per class rule, why is it so difficult to use the bathrooms?
Previously, the issue of students skipping class to be in the bathroom was solved by this, however it prevents students from being able to use the bathroom when it’s an emergency. There have been multiple times where students would be in long lines in front of the bathroom well over 10 minutes after class started, waiting for the bathrooms to be open, just for a staff member to be late opening the doors because they were chatting with other teachers or students.
This is an unreliable way to prevent students from skipping class for bathrooms because it prevents students who are in dire need of the bathroom from being able to go. While this issue was solved by teachers being in front of bathrooms to monitor students to sign in and sign out of the bathrooms, there have been times where students were not allowed to use the bathroom without a bathroom pass, which is only one per classroom. The issue of one pass per class is that multiple students need the bathroom and one person can take an extremely long time which causes everyone to need the bathroom even more.
Another issue arises from this as the 10 minute before class and after class starts rule of unusable bathroom time comes up since that’s 20 minutes of waiting time for someone to use the bathrooms. Not only can it take a student very long to be able to go to the bathroom after hours of waiting, it’s also difficult to be able to use the bathroom since there are multiple broken stalls and unusable toilets as well as only one bathroom which is on the first floor.
Along with this, during short Thursdays, the waiting time between bathrooms still remains 20 minutes. With classes being only around 35 minutes during these days, using the bathroom is even more difficult. This would only ensure at least one student to be able to use the bathroom for the whole period.
This can all be prevented by renovating the bathrooms over the summer or during the extended breaks during the school year, allowing up to only 2 students per class to use the bathroom at one time, or opening all the bathrooms on each floor. Another solution would be shortening the times to 5 minutes before class starts and 5 minutes after class starts for unusable bathroom times to allow the janitor to clean up or add more supplies for the bathrooms.
