The bathrooms at South Lakes have always been an issue. With some students vaping, doing drugs, and vandalizing the bathroom, policies are necessary. E-hall pass has been abandoned this year, meaning the administration had to rethink the bathroom policies. The new policies tell teachers to give up their planning time to monitor the bathrooms. 

To go to the bathroom, students must sign in and out at the bathrooms using a google form on a communal computer. The form asks for student ID number and classroom number, and students aren’t allowed into the bathrooms without filling out the form. 

To ensure that students are actually signing in, teachers sit next to the computer while doing their own work. Many bathrooms were shut down in order for there to always be a teacher at each bathroom.

Teachers were told to sign up for three 45 minute time slots per month to monitor the bathrooms. This time comes out of their planning period and sums up to two hours and 15 minutes each month. Many teachers feel like this new requirement is asking for too much.  

“I understand that there’s a real problem at our school. I don’t think the solution is that teachers should be giving up their planning time to become bathroom bouncers,” Ms. Keisler, an English teacher at South Lakes, said. 

Teachers have many responsibilities, from lesson planning to grading to mandatory meetings, so every minute of planning periods are put to use. 

“There are so many things that we do in that one 90 minute block to serve all our students and sitting entering names into a system is not maximizing what I can offer the students or the school at all,” Keisler said. 

Additionally, teachers had to manually input student’s names into the system during the first week of school, meaning they couldn’t do their own work as students checked in. Trying to keep track of all the students going in and out while getting their names down caused some teachers to feel “totally overstimulated and overwhelmed,” according to Ms.Keisler.

Because planning periods were cut short, due to monitoring the bathrooms, some teachers had to stay up late, on their own time, to finish their work. 

“It was really upsetting to me, honestly, because I try to give the kids the best start to the year. I try really hard to do that, and it was like all of my time was taken up,” Keisler said. 

Expectations for teachers grew this year, with bigger class sizes, more retakes, and more grading. But monitoring the bathrooms takes away from the time they have to accomplish these new things. 

Some students may be deterred from bad behavior by the presence of a bathroom monitor and sign in form. However, in the event that something does happen, the form might not be the most useful. Students could potentially make up a room number or student ID number and there’s not a straightforward way to know which stall people are in. 

In addition to being time consuming for teachers, going to the bathroom has become an inconvenience for students as well. 

“For all of the students who have no interest in doing something bad it’s just a hassle and the students who are really committed to doing something bad can probably find a way around it,” Keisler said.

Filling in the form on the way in and out can cost students time that they could spend learning in class or eating lunch. Lines reaching up to 10 students have become a common sight in the hallways. 

“It’s just taking more time out of class. You’re spending more time filling out the forms,” Sophomore Belen Brown said.

The new policies seem to be reducing vandalism in the bathrooms, but are causing extra stress for teachers. Spending half of three planning periods a month adds up and puts strain on the remaining time, causing teachers to do more work at home.