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Coronavirus bonus: Restrooms in Boston schools to get stocked with soap and paper towels
By adamg on Mon, 03/09/2020 - 3:47pm
City Councilor Michelle Wu reports that School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius has directed schools to keep bathroom dispensers stocked with soap and paper towels - which many current and former students and parents will tell you has long been an issue - and to check the dispensers at least three times a day.
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Comments
LOL
I'll take "Stuff the school should already be doing" for 1,000, Alex.
First. World. Country.
First. World. Country.
I can't imagine why middle
I can't imagine why middle class families don't want their kids going to BPS! Is it really that hard to have schools functioning at a basic operational level?
You have that backwards
It's because middle class parents don't sent their kids to BPS that it is underfunded and neglected, not the other way around. The city and state can't be held accountable by people making minimum wage or who can't speak english. And the city and state can't convince middle class parents whose kids aren't in the schools that they deserve more funding.
I teach just outside of BPS,
I teach just outside of BPS, we have similar issues.
Today: 1/3 of our teaching staff, 1/2 of our security staff, 1/2 of our social workers, and 1/3 of our admin were out today. We have 3 building substitutes.
I will be shocked if we are still open by the end of the week.
No Soap
I don't recall soap being available in school bathrooms when I was in Boston Public Schools (including Boston Latin) in th 60s and early 70s. There were some paper towels though, when they felt like it. Something else I specifically recall. When I was at Boston Latin there was salt and pepper available in the teachers line at the cafeteria, but none for the students. That was the rule back then, if you can believe it. And I'm sure it wasn't because they had the students health in mind. It was just easier to treat the students like cattle.
Thr NH public schools I
Thr NH public schools I attended pre-1990 didn't have salt and pepper for students either, but there was certainly soap... in the girls' bathroom at least!
Life sucks dealing with kids
I'm very happy I have nothing to do with middle school and high school education. Absolutely they should have paper towels and soap. But I have much sympathy for the poor custodians who need to deal with the aftermath of kids throwing paper towels in the toilets and generally making a huge mess and breaking things.
It's only a small number of shithead kids who do stuff like this but it doesn't take long before someone comes to the conclusion of, "fuck it, no more towels and soap."
Some kids really, really suck.
massive assumption
The towels and soap weren't being bought for cheap out budget cut reasons.
Blaming kids is just convenient.
Plenty on hand, it's just
Plenty on hand, it's just hard when you fill a dispenser and a kid hits it hard enough that it opens and then either throws the full bag of soap all over the restroom or puts full rolls of toilet paper or paper towels in the toilet.
Student behavior in the restrooms are a big problem because they're unsupervised, it's rare that anyone gets in trouble for what happens, so it continues.
In the end everything gets replaced, here's more TP, PT and soap... let's try this again.
So why no soap, toilet paper
So why no soap, toilet paper or paper towels in teachers' bathrooms, then?
everyone's always on their high horse about BPS, but
BPS parent here. This problem should never happen, but its prevalence is exaggerated.
And it's generally not a budget issue, it's a school management issue. Yet I sympathize with some principals and custodians. It's difficult to police the misuse of bathroom supplies in any school, let alone schools with concentrated poverty/trauma and associated behavioral problems.
I have a sometimes troubled kid who used to be fascinated by soap dispensers and took years to train not to pump out cupfuls of the stuff. And girls will quickly use those paper towels to (understandably) line the toilet seat before sitting down.
I work in a well funded
I work in a well funded suburb of Boston and soap and towels frequently run out even in our buildings. Its not an issue of our supply budget - we have plenty of soap and towels. Our main issue is our payroll budget - they cut a custodial position in the middle of last year which meant there just haven't been enough people in the building to clean the bathrooms on a regular basis. There have been instances where it's taken three or four days for empty paper towel dispensers to be refilled - which tells you how infrequently the bathrooms are cleaned. This is all in the name of "fiscal responsibility".