Smokin' - and everything else - in the boys' room

I'll play devil's advocate and question whether these kids are otherwise well-behaved. For example, are these the same kids who rip up and mark up the seats on the T?

In any event, there's a ton of displaced expressions of emotion at that age, and even many "good" kids are going to find outlets for them. The bathroom is one of the few places where you can act out and be unlikely to get caught!

Grown professional women aren't much better... There are usually 1-2 pee splattered or unflushed toilets in our floor's women's room at any given time.

garbage can on a ceiling, hilarious!

Wait, Im sorry, its still kind of funny though. Its a tough thing to deal with because its pretty much the one last place in a school that is not under constant surveilence, for obvious reasons. Boys have alot of aggression and our system doesn't have too many outlets for that, so they do crazy things like trash bathrooms. Ive noticed that a well structured (key word WELL) sports program works with many kids, karate as cools them off as well, but your always going to have those outsiders (some are cool, others not so much) who dont get into any of that (or who that doesnt work for) who will still have aggression to get rid of.

The one thing I can think of that worked for my school (it was a small school so it may not work in a large setting) is that every teacher would have a log of bathroom use, and students could only use the bathrooms during class (not in between.) Every bathroom would be checked in between classes by a teacher and any out of the ordinary mess (trash can on ceiling etc) would have to be cleaned by the boys who were excused for that period of time at the end of school. That would go on for a few weeks and then the bathrooms would be reopened until the problems started again. People figured out pretty quickly who was messing up the bathrooms and the problem was resolved pretty quickly. The other thing they tried was only using the two bathrooms up near the principles office for everyone, but that was a nightmare because instead of a 30 second run to the closest bathroom you were hauling it for 3 minutes to and from to get to the bathroom, it wasnt productive at all.

"Surveillance Cameras"

I think the threat of them would start a dialogue, especially with parents, about the consequences of inappropriate behavior.

When I was in high school, it only took some minor vandalism for faculty and the principals to stake out the restrooms at break times. Then again, unlike either the local area or the common era (not sure), parents were billed for vandalism damage. It used to piss me off when my husband taught high school that the little destructive brats he caught red-handed were never subject to paying for their damage.

Jam the doors open. Most bathrooms don't open directly to the toilets so there's no privacy/indecency issue and when the doors are propped open and kept open, most kids don't feel they have the security to do the kinds of activities (like taping a trash can to the ceiling) because the tattle of an opening outer door is lost and any noise they make will go straight out to the hall.

My dad's middle school bathrooms don't even have doors, just a bit of windy passage that leads from the hallway to the bathroom (like a stadium bathroom).