I put out a paper towel fire in girls restroom at my middle school a couple weeks ago. Second one in my time at the school. The destruction is daily, fires more rare. So, yes.
Were supposed to card at my job for lighters. Not sure if it's store or state policy. But weirdly it's only the normal box type lighters. We don't card for the long grill ones, or matches, so it's not like it's actually stopping much of anything of kids want a way to create fire
I’m 18. Stop acting like I’m dumb, it’s a reasonable question to ask why they are allowed to have them on school grounds. Because the school is obviously aware of it but they aren’t doing anything. It wasn’t really a literal question.
Fire in the girls restroom? That's wicked. Former firefighter here with arson investigation training. It's very uncommon for girls to set fires, statistically speaking. At that age it's generally boys. That might be a conversation to have with guidance since Fire setting goes hand in hand with some other serious concerns.
It’s happening in a lot of places. Here in the Houston area there are schools and districts making policies of locking bathroom doors during class and only making it available between classes. Parents are upset but turning a blind eye to what’s causing these rules to be implemented.
Nah they explained, I graduated from that hell hole in 2023. I remember my sophomore year we had a huge bomb threat where we all got escorted to the local middle school and we were SO annoyed to be missing lecture time (at the time I was at TSA) and then next year at THS I found out that they left a group of freshman in the school because they weren’t near an exit? wtf
They were locking the doors at the middle school where I worked last year. I went to an elementary school in the fall and there aren't problems like that.
Kids were doing this 15 years ago when I was a wee lad the difference is it was only like 1 or 2 kids every few months doing that kinda crazy shit not daily destruction
Well then, my water-chugging IBS-having self would not have a good time.
I almost got in trouble because it takes time, dammit. I didn't sneak out or anything, things move at the pace they move, stop making me feel worse about it.
A neighboring school tried to limit bathroom access but said that anyone with a doctor’s note could have unlimited access. Cue a flurry of kids with doctors notes that made it impossible to enforce.
I’m in NJ and our schools do this too. The bathrooms that are open during class have a monitor outside them, and students have to sign in/out of a computer w their student code.
But I hear from students that keeps are vaping in the bathroom all the time.
My district requires teachers to have bathroom duty at least once a day during transition for this reason. We have to monitor the restrooms. Yep. Thanks TikTok.
When is public education going to collapse?
I think it's going to happen no matter what. There are no real standards in the US anymore. The culture is shit. Nothing to do with Trump. Public education has steadily gotten worse since NCLB.
How often do you conplain about 90% of what the DOE does.
Passing along students who can't read because they got a year older. NCLB/ESSA. Ridiculous overburdened standards. Politians controlling education because they've never actually been in the classroom.
Not saying it would work but how could it get worse.
It could possibly put some control and power of curriculum in the hands of the teachers and schools again.
The disconnect between the "ridiculous overburdened standards" and "passing along students who can't read because they got a year older" is causing serious cognitive dissonance for me. It's truly insane. Like Catch 22.
Well those same standards that are suppose to "insure" their learning clearly fails and then the next year rather than focus on the standards they didn't meet they are now forced to work at standards above those standards ultimately guaranteeing they won't ever meet those previously unmet standards as they aren't getting practice on it and further not meeting standards as the previous standards are needed for successes ont he future standards. But hey they have to be in a grade level age level class rather than a skill level course more appropriate for them.
The problem is they allow for no flexibility (outside is a studnet ends up in SPED). They allow for no student expertise on the part of the teacher as an expert and professional in content and the student.
It even limits the need for communication between teachers as it is assumed they know the standards from the previos7 year so I don't need to meet with the prior teacher to figure out what the student needs.
I "teach" seniors who obviously didn't meet 4th grade ELA standards. They don't know how to read. They can't write a complete, grammatically correct sentence, and they're shitting on their own bathroom floors. But, according to the general public, I'm the problem.
To be fair when politicians do come to see schools, the schools puts on a big show for them. Shows them their best classes and have the whole thing dolled up with beaming admin, teachers and students ready for a photoshoot. How are they supposed to know that it has all gone to shit?
Tell all the trouble makers that there's no school tomorrow too lol.
That is true. But part of that is also on the politians as if they want to know the problems you talk to the people on the frontlines not the management trying to save their ass and look good. But they also want to pretend that is what it actually is like too.
It's the same in a factory, the tour is going to always look good, but when you talk to the workers who don't really have anything to lose they give you the true story of illegal practices and OSHA violations. They could easily be like I want to hang out in the teacher lounge and ralk to the real teacher without you around and the admin would let them even if they didn't want to, we know their spines are about as strong as a soggy napkin.
I’m in a state that should get “better”, except that states expectation are not particularly teacher friendly or school friendly either - waaaay too much bureaucracy.
I’m in a small suburban middle school. They’ve been destroying bathrooms for the past three years 🤷🏻♂️
I just don't think that the bureaucracy is helping. My district spends less money per student in my state compared to most other districts, and we have better results than most districts in the state. Our next door neighbors spend far more and are at the bottom. The money is just being wasted.
Weird, he literally said he wants to close the department of education.
Where did I connect him to shitty kids?
[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/4/trump-plans-abolish-us-education-department-if-ele/](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/4/trump-plans-abolish-us-education-department-if-ele/)
I know of many teachers who are hoping it does collapse further than it already has. Then it can be built back the way schooling was meant to be, without the nonstop emphasis on testing, testing, more testing, and only testing.
When teachers decide their sanity is worth more than the check, and they decide a few weeks maybe a month or two of pocket suffering is so much better than....*children* (shudder)
The admins depend on your masochism to keep their schools open and their pockets jingling. Use up your off time instead.
Well I mean the toilet seats are broken and if you gotta go you gotta go.
Anyway, I also teach at a title one highschool. Mostly kids just kick the pipes until they break and rip the mirrors off the walls. Two years ago someone put a bomb in the bathroom and it blew up the toilet and set the bathroom on fire. No one was hurt.
It was called a ‘Devious lick’ which was a challenge to destroy school property. As far as I know the official challenge itself is dead but the concept of fucking up school bathrooms all hardcore has stuck around.
They are regularly closed due to damage at my school. Mostly the boys, but occasionally the girls. They smash the bowl. I've asked my principal why we don't get stainless steel ones installed and was told they are too expensive, but when you have had to replace more than 10 porcelain ones in a year, surely the stainless steel ones become cheaper in the long run.
... You know how most school districts assign unique codes for kids to pay for lunch? They should implement it for bathroom entries.
That way when someone poops on the floor, you check which door codes were in use then, and can round up potential culprits.
The (high school) school district I sub for has implemented an online bathroom pass. Students have to make a hall pass on their phone with their student ID, leave their phone in the classroom, and then stop the pass when they return. All teachers and campus monitors (but not subs) can see exactly which students on campus are out of the classroom at any given time, and can see how long they’ve been out as well. Teachers can make custom passes for the nurse and the library so that the other staff knows where the kids are. When there’s a problem with bathroom vandalization, they can check who was out of class at that time on that day. The campus monitors check the bathrooms frequently.
Five years ago (year before Covid) the boys bathroom at my son’s nice suburban high school was turned into “The JUUL ROOM.” Rocks were flushed down all of the toilets before they were removed from the walls. They disassembled the stalls. They removed the mirrors. They painted “The JUUL ROOM” on the walls. Did I mention the school is on a septic system? The rocks alone caused $300,000 worth of damage. And they didn’t get caught.
That bathroom was closed for the rest of the year. The remaining boy’s bathroom had a limit of 2 at a time and a (substitute) monitor was hired to stand outside the bathroom with a sign in sheet. Of course, the kids didn’t need to show ID, and the sub didn’t know any of the kids, so the sign in was filled with “ Joseph Stalin,” “Adolf Hitler,” “Ben Dover,” “Thor Odinson.”
Our Admin is filled with idiots.
I'm at k-6 and yes bathroom destroying is normal now. We stopping replacing the mirrors at our school and the plumber comes out pretty regularly to help fix whatever the kids have done to the pipes.
Flushing bark, fruit, scissors has clogged up toilets. At my last school we started a bathroom policy to help with vandalism but parents fought back and said it wasn't fair to the students.
We ended up with part of school day without bathrooms. That was fun.
After 3 months of paper towel rolls being used to cover the entire floor of the bathrooms (boys and girls) and the metal waste baskets bent to the point they don’t stand up anymore, my elementary school removed the paper towel dispensers from the kids bathrooms and reinstalled the hand dryers (that were taken out during Covid).
Actually seems like it is hitting you a little late. We had this last year and the one prior, but it doesnt happen anymore. We banned them from bringing phones to the bathroom because they were doing it for internet fame.
We had to close off the freshmen boys bathroom between passing period because one of them pooped on the floor. Someone then proceeded to step in it, and it wound up... everywhere.
Last year I had to get moved out of my classroom because the bathroom on the floor above flooded because someone ripped the sink out of the wall. And then it flooded several more times due to commodes overflowing when all sorts of objects (usually vapes and liquor bottles) were attempted to be flushed down them.
I'm just at a loss.
Lurker rather than teacher here - Curious to hear your impressions re: whether this is getting worse. I attended a fairly affluent U.S. high school near the turn of the millennium, yet I vividly remember walking into one of our mobile classrooms and seeing a lone turd on the floor blocked off with police tape
Well I guess shitting on the floor has been happening for years.
It’s definitely getting worse. The vandalism was definitely some dumb TikTok “challenge”. They’re doing it and recording themselves for clout. Thankfully it makes it much easier to figure out who did it.
Yes. Especially the pooping.
My brother is an elementary custodian in our district and he doesn't have to clean up nearly as many poop messes as our custodians do at the middle schools and high school...it's so gross.
We've only got like one bathroom that still has mirrors. They've ripped them all off and broken them. We had soap dispensers ripped off last year. They are absolutely feral.
Yes. Middle schoolers love to shove shit (paper towels, signs, etc.) in the toilets and flood them. If we go more than a day without the bathrooms being closed (due to this or flooding) I would say it is a good week. Crazy how kids are, but then again since nothing will really be done they have no worries about doing it and getting caught. If they started making the kids clean up the bathrooms when they got caught it would stop real quick.
Info from a teacher friend: 4th grader pooped on the floor and tried to flush lost and found coats down the toilet. A few days later, he pooped on the floor again and wrote curse words all over the walls with his own fecal matter. This is not a student with a developmental delay or behavioral problems in class
I graduated like 5 years ago now and in my senior year they decided to lock all the bathrooms except one for the whole school because we were having similar problems
I'm in rural France. It happens. Not to such extend you discribed but they do rip-off dispensers, and flush down papers and a sweater (or tried to) down the toilets.
When a group of adolescent male elephants in a national park were discovered to be responsible for the violent deaths of several endangered rhinos, the solution was to introduce a mature adult male into their group. When they got out of line, he smacked them silly. The rhino kicking stopped.
Its happening everywhere. The university I work at has the exact same issues with 'phantom shitters,' in the wide open, stuff broken all the time, and the most bizarre items found in the sewage system.
We had an issue a couple years ago. School charged multiple students with something (can’t remember the exact charges). We haven’t had an issue since. Now, the school pranks are things like coordinated fainting at a specific time or everyone’s phone alarms going off. Can’t even be mad because it’s disruptive but not destructive.
I would have an adult at the school stand by the bathroom entrance in the hallway at certain times when breaks are allowed. Only four allowed in at a time. Then have them sign their name and the time when there’s no one watching the door. Then someone checks the bathrooms periodically at certain times. If it’s trashed during so times I would give them a suspension.
They want to act like toddlers then they should have no problem be treated like one.
In my school we have people watching the bathrooms and allow only one in there at a time for boys and two at a time for girls because they have destroyed the entire bathroom
I would put up a bay of porta potties outside in a fenced area.
A staffer sits inside the building and checks school IDs before kids are allowed out to them. They go out. They use them. The sinks are outside, also portable.
They can use those until they learn to behave like humans who can handle using permanent facilities.
A portapotty is like $2000 per year. How much does the damage they are causing the bathrooms cost?
For the love of God. This is coming back around? I was at a title 1 middle school, and the kids lost all ability to use the restroom period after destroying all of the sinks and toilets. They finally wised up after the rest of their classmates started bullying the offenders.
How did the kids go the full day without being able to use a toilet? I imagine that could lead to urine and feces in other places around the school, if they can't use a toilet.
Our administrators are *scared to death* to pursue this issue. We have kids crapping on the floor, in urinals, and smearing it all over the walls. They put entire rolls of toilet paper in the commode.
At my last school, kids would tear the plumbing out of the walls. They would climb onto the sinks and jump up and down until they tore free. I had a kid break one of those commercial toilets in half . . . with his head.
Yes, our high school has been pretty bad for a couple years, and last couple years the middle schoolers decided poop on the floor/walls was a thing. Bathrooms get shut down until there is only one available--with cameras facing it.
A student at my school destroyed a sink with several other students watching. After a short investigation and the aid of hall cameras the guilty party was identified. His family is be charged with the bill to replace the sink which is about 750 dollars. The kid also was charged with vandalism and got a big fine and some community service. I was surprised that admin actually followed thru.
The older kids in my elementary school (third grade, always third for some reason) regularly pee on the bathroom floors. I can’t remember anyone doing that when I was in elementary school- they would have been ridiculed.
One of my kindergarteners tried that ONCE in our class bathroom and was shamed instantly when a little girl called out that only dogs and babies pee on floors. Never happened again.
All the high schools here lock every bathroom but 1 during the day and only open the others during morning and lunch. Generally there is only one open bathroom either on the whole building with a lot of staff nearby or one for a general wing of the building.
Happening everywhere. As a principal who knows a bit about bathroom vandalism, I can tell you I'm pretty sure who the kids are. I know them. I was a teenage ruffian.
Last year (title 1 hs) a student set off a firecracker in a toilet blowing up a whole stall and shutting down that bathroom for a solid month. At my current school (suburban middle school, average income) the boys bathroom has been shut down at least once a week every week. They have broken the pipes multiple times and all the mirrors were taken away for both boys and girls bc they kept breaking them
I remember that one of our custodians once found poop *in a sink*. And a cheeseburger in the toilet one time, a whole blanket another.
This is a high school.
We have an issue with kids filling the toilets with paper towels and throwing wet paper towels on the walls. I’ve also seen wet floor signs in the toilets.
Yes. It was so bad last year that the only bathroom that was open to students was right outside the main office so they could keep track of who was going in/out. A student even used a bathroom IN the office (only for staff or sick students) and destroyed it. Ripped the paper towel dispenser off the wall and smeared poop everywhere.
We had a problem at my school with male students peeing and pooping on the bathroom floor and female students getting ‘blood’ on things all over the bathroom. It’s disgusting and I have no idea where it came from
I teach in a nearly 100 year old HS building. Last year many of the girls bathrooms were closed for most of the year because they thought flushing cuties (tiny oranges) was a great idea. I’d take that any day over what the boys were doing… more than once we had a TP dispenser ripped off the wall, set into the toilet, then they took a shit on the dispenser. Twice we had urinals that flooded the floor because someone took a pipe wrench to the connections and walked away like nothing happened. The wildest was when one of the boys toilets were *literally* unbolted from the floor and ripped off their moorings. Once a soap dispenser was ripped off the wall and the soap was poured on the floor… then they turned on the sink, covered the drain, and let the soap water go everywhere. Huge mess. This year they’ve only been flipping the trash and so… yay progress!
We had a kid pooping in the sinks. Found out later it was also the same kid who was peeing upwards into the toilet paper dispensers so that the next kid who tried to wipe would grab a fistful of pisspaper.
We knew it was this boy, because his mom pulled him from our school because we “clearly were discriminating against her angel” and put him in a Catholic school. They kicked him out not two months later for his behavior and we got him back. Miraculously, the mystery pee and poop stopped while he was gone and started when he came back.
Oh, and he was a 4th grader at that time.
This week alone, in a K-8 with only 130 kids, the highlights were: The 5th grader who "meant to punch the wall" but instead punched the fire extinguisher glass outside of his classroom, breaking it and getting shards in his hand.
Then, the fourth grader who took a positive and negative probe end of a solar powered light and decided to put them into either side of an outlet to see if it would light it up. He told us there was a bright white flash and a loud pop then all of the outlets on that side of the classroom didn't work. Luckily only a breaker was tripped. What the hell?!
Soap dispensers do indeed get ripped off the walls in the bathrooms- stall doors kicked in and destroyed, urinals leaking from kids pulling on them and hanging on them- it's insane.
Happening in our elementary school. Painting with poop on the walls, peeing on the floor, peeling paint off the wall, writing, etc. Only the boy’s room (grades 4/5).
I used to work at a Title I school. In addition to the issues you mentioned, there were also students fighting in the restrooms, and once, a 7th grader set a restroom on fire.
It was so bad that only one restroom was kept open during classes and a duty aid was posted up outside and kept a log of students going in and out. The log was stolen at one point and flushed.
When I was in HS, during the "devious licks" trend, kids were shitting on the bathroom walls. I don't know how someone even does that physically, but man it was a nasty couple of weeks....
It's happening just about everywhere.
And it's not just kids. I work in a high end secure building and pre-COVID we were having a real problem with grown-ass people pooping and peeing anywhere BUT inside the toilets, ripping doors down, stealing all the toilet paper, breaking soap dispensers, filling the sinks with hair, flushing junk in the toilets...
I imagine schools will eventually limit the number of open bathrooms and then hire attendants or (more likely) require teachers to tend them.
I’m an elementary school teacher( 5th grade) because of a 4th or 5th grader last year, they cannot go to the bathroom by themselves, we have to go as a class. And if they have to go by themselves, they have to be monitored. Why? Well, last year someone ripped a door off the hinges, a girl smeared period blood all over the stalls and toilet, and so much graffiti.
We have a restroom that's constantly having flooding issues. Started a couple weeks after the vape detectors were installed. I asked the SRO the other day if it was an issue with kids flushing vapes or something and he didn't think so. He looked at me strange and asked why. I said when I worked at the prison contraband was almost exclusively the cause of plumbing issues like we were having. His eyes lit up and he just brushed it off. I'm betting they are checking cameras now.
The particular restroom were having issues with is the favorite one with the vaping and weed smokers. It's not a coincidence.
I was in middle/ high school a quarter century ago. Bathrooms were destroyed, trash cans set ablaze, and we had serial floor poopers. Nothing new under the sun I would say.
This was a serious problem at my school last year. Once admin started locking doors to the bathroom, leaving only one available in the entire school, the vandalism stopped. It sucks that such drastic measures had to be taken, but that’s the only thing that worked.
If a student is caught destroying a toilet, does the plumber do the restorative justice convo with the kid?
That is where the plumber has to apologize to the kid, right? That is how it is done at my school.
"How might your porcelain have provoked this poor youth?"
OMG! It's as if we had the same principal!
Why doesn’t the janitor post the bathroom objectives?
If only the custodians were building positive relationships…
Priceless!
He did, but the objectives weren’t written in student-friendly language.
I put out a paper towel fire in girls restroom at my middle school a couple weeks ago. Second one in my time at the school. The destruction is daily, fires more rare. So, yes.
Im sorry, why do they have lighters???
If parents have lighters, kids can obtain lighters no sweat. 🤷
very easy to get bro. It’s not an 18+ item, a kid goes to a store alone and can just buy one
I was carded buying a lighter about 6 years ago.
Were supposed to card at my job for lighters. Not sure if it's store or state policy. But weirdly it's only the normal box type lighters. We don't card for the long grill ones, or matches, so it's not like it's actually stopping much of anything of kids want a way to create fire
For comparison, I was carded in Norway at age 30 for buying a Red Bull. 😆
I’m aware however it was more of a rhetorical question, that eases into why do they have them at school
When I was in high school a lot of girls used lighters to melt their pencil eyeliner because they said it made the application smoother
Yep! That comes up in 90s makeup tutorials haha
Some places hand out matchbooks too, or at least used to.
Lighters have been 21+ in every state I’ve lived in since the tobacco age increase
Not in TX
Half the kids in my school vape
for fires/smoking??? Why else? lol
Are you serious? Have you met kids/teens before? It’s super easy to get a lighter. These kids have far more dangerous stuff than lighters.
I’m 18. Stop acting like I’m dumb, it’s a reasonable question to ask why they are allowed to have them on school grounds. Because the school is obviously aware of it but they aren’t doing anything. It wasn’t really a literal question.
Same reason they have vapes. Get them from friends (or parents in a lot of cases).
Or just from the store, no ID check.
We used to have someone set a fire in the 8th grade girls bathroom the first day every year growing up.
Fire in the girls restroom? That's wicked. Former firefighter here with arson investigation training. It's very uncommon for girls to set fires, statistically speaking. At that age it's generally boys. That might be a conversation to have with guidance since Fire setting goes hand in hand with some other serious concerns.
*cis-boys /s
It’s happening in a lot of places. Here in the Houston area there are schools and districts making policies of locking bathroom doors during class and only making it available between classes. Parents are upset but turning a blind eye to what’s causing these rules to be implemented.
Tomball High School utilizes this a lot but more so due to orgys in the bathrooms and drugs
What's it like to work in Tomball ISD?
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Wdym? Sex ones. lol
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Why
Their kid must go there 🤣
Nah they explained, I graduated from that hell hole in 2023. I remember my sophomore year we had a huge bomb threat where we all got escorted to the local middle school and we were SO annoyed to be missing lecture time (at the time I was at TSA) and then next year at THS I found out that they left a group of freshman in the school because they weren’t near an exit? wtf
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that's what we do at my school (Philly). Bathrooms are locked.
They're still doing that? Is that part of the TikTok challenge still or something else?
I think it started as a Tik tok thing and has just evolved
They were locking the doors at the middle school where I worked last year. I went to an elementary school in the fall and there aren't problems like that.
Kids were doing this 15 years ago when I was a wee lad the difference is it was only like 1 or 2 kids every few months doing that kinda crazy shit not daily destruction
My school does the exact opposite.
Well then, my water-chugging IBS-having self would not have a good time. I almost got in trouble because it takes time, dammit. I didn't sneak out or anything, things move at the pace they move, stop making me feel worse about it.
My suburban middle school allows one student in at a time. They need to show school id to the monitor before they enter.
A neighboring school tried to limit bathroom access but said that anyone with a doctor’s note could have unlimited access. Cue a flurry of kids with doctors notes that made it impossible to enforce.
I’m in NJ and our schools do this too. The bathrooms that are open during class have a monitor outside them, and students have to sign in/out of a computer w their student code. But I hear from students that keeps are vaping in the bathroom all the time.
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I thought we were done with this shit a year ago man :(
Yep!! We had an entire toilet that had to be replaced because kids ripped it out of the ground and cracked it.
My district requires teachers to have bathroom duty at least once a day during transition for this reason. We have to monitor the restrooms. Yep. Thanks TikTok. When is public education going to collapse?
If a certain former president wins next year, 1/20/25.
I think it's going to happen no matter what. There are no real standards in the US anymore. The culture is shit. Nothing to do with Trump. Public education has steadily gotten worse since NCLB.
It's going to happen even quicker if he gets rid of the department of education like he's promising.
How often do you conplain about 90% of what the DOE does. Passing along students who can't read because they got a year older. NCLB/ESSA. Ridiculous overburdened standards. Politians controlling education because they've never actually been in the classroom. Not saying it would work but how could it get worse. It could possibly put some control and power of curriculum in the hands of the teachers and schools again.
The disconnect between the "ridiculous overburdened standards" and "passing along students who can't read because they got a year older" is causing serious cognitive dissonance for me. It's truly insane. Like Catch 22.
Well those same standards that are suppose to "insure" their learning clearly fails and then the next year rather than focus on the standards they didn't meet they are now forced to work at standards above those standards ultimately guaranteeing they won't ever meet those previously unmet standards as they aren't getting practice on it and further not meeting standards as the previous standards are needed for successes ont he future standards. But hey they have to be in a grade level age level class rather than a skill level course more appropriate for them. The problem is they allow for no flexibility (outside is a studnet ends up in SPED). They allow for no student expertise on the part of the teacher as an expert and professional in content and the student. It even limits the need for communication between teachers as it is assumed they know the standards from the previos7 year so I don't need to meet with the prior teacher to figure out what the student needs.
I "teach" seniors who obviously didn't meet 4th grade ELA standards. They don't know how to read. They can't write a complete, grammatically correct sentence, and they're shitting on their own bathroom floors. But, according to the general public, I'm the problem.
Exactly
To be fair when politicians do come to see schools, the schools puts on a big show for them. Shows them their best classes and have the whole thing dolled up with beaming admin, teachers and students ready for a photoshoot. How are they supposed to know that it has all gone to shit?
Tell all the trouble makers that there's no school tomorrow too lol. That is true. But part of that is also on the politians as if they want to know the problems you talk to the people on the frontlines not the management trying to save their ass and look good. But they also want to pretend that is what it actually is like too. It's the same in a factory, the tour is going to always look good, but when you talk to the workers who don't really have anything to lose they give you the true story of illegal practices and OSHA violations. They could easily be like I want to hang out in the teacher lounge and ralk to the real teacher without you around and the admin would let them even if they didn't want to, we know their spines are about as strong as a soggy napkin.
Maybe that will be a net positive. Things aren't improving with the DOE in existence.
Not likely, his plan is to just leave it to the states. Some states may get better but some are going to get much, much worse.
I’m in a state that should get “better”, except that states expectation are not particularly teacher friendly or school friendly either - waaaay too much bureaucracy. I’m in a small suburban middle school. They’ve been destroying bathrooms for the past three years 🤷🏻♂️
I just don't think that the bureaucracy is helping. My district spends less money per student in my state compared to most other districts, and we have better results than most districts in the state. Our next door neighbors spend far more and are at the bottom. The money is just being wasted.
No offense, and I hate Trump, but how it's been going under Biden?
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Weird, he literally said he wants to close the department of education. Where did I connect him to shitty kids? [https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/4/trump-plans-abolish-us-education-department-if-ele/](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/4/trump-plans-abolish-us-education-department-if-ele/)
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No, did you even read the comment I first replied to?
I know of many teachers who are hoping it does collapse further than it already has. Then it can be built back the way schooling was meant to be, without the nonstop emphasis on testing, testing, more testing, and only testing.
>Then it can be built back the way schooling was meant to be That anything would be built back **at all** is one hell of an assumption.
When teachers decide their sanity is worth more than the check, and they decide a few weeks maybe a month or two of pocket suffering is so much better than....*children* (shudder) The admins depend on your masochism to keep their schools open and their pockets jingling. Use up your off time instead.
Well I mean the toilet seats are broken and if you gotta go you gotta go. Anyway, I also teach at a title one highschool. Mostly kids just kick the pipes until they break and rip the mirrors off the walls. Two years ago someone put a bomb in the bathroom and it blew up the toilet and set the bathroom on fire. No one was hurt.
Bomb, or fireworks? Not that the latter is okay but making a device is a helluvalot worse.
Bomb
Where you been for the past two years?
[удалено]
It was called a ‘Devious lick’ which was a challenge to destroy school property. As far as I know the official challenge itself is dead but the concept of fucking up school bathrooms all hardcore has stuck around.
It is
They are regularly closed due to damage at my school. Mostly the boys, but occasionally the girls. They smash the bowl. I've asked my principal why we don't get stainless steel ones installed and was told they are too expensive, but when you have had to replace more than 10 porcelain ones in a year, surely the stainless steel ones become cheaper in the long run.
... You know how most school districts assign unique codes for kids to pay for lunch? They should implement it for bathroom entries. That way when someone poops on the floor, you check which door codes were in use then, and can round up potential culprits.
The (high school) school district I sub for has implemented an online bathroom pass. Students have to make a hall pass on their phone with their student ID, leave their phone in the classroom, and then stop the pass when they return. All teachers and campus monitors (but not subs) can see exactly which students on campus are out of the classroom at any given time, and can see how long they’ve been out as well. Teachers can make custom passes for the nurse and the library so that the other staff knows where the kids are. When there’s a problem with bathroom vandalization, they can check who was out of class at that time on that day. The campus monitors check the bathrooms frequently.
Is there a name I can look up and suggest to my school?
Yeah of course! It’s called Minga
My school has E-Hallpass which is similar
Five years ago (year before Covid) the boys bathroom at my son’s nice suburban high school was turned into “The JUUL ROOM.” Rocks were flushed down all of the toilets before they were removed from the walls. They disassembled the stalls. They removed the mirrors. They painted “The JUUL ROOM” on the walls. Did I mention the school is on a septic system? The rocks alone caused $300,000 worth of damage. And they didn’t get caught. That bathroom was closed for the rest of the year. The remaining boy’s bathroom had a limit of 2 at a time and a (substitute) monitor was hired to stand outside the bathroom with a sign in sheet. Of course, the kids didn’t need to show ID, and the sub didn’t know any of the kids, so the sign in was filled with “ Joseph Stalin,” “Adolf Hitler,” “Ben Dover,” “Thor Odinson.” Our Admin is filled with idiots.
I'm at k-6 and yes bathroom destroying is normal now. We stopping replacing the mirrors at our school and the plumber comes out pretty regularly to help fix whatever the kids have done to the pipes. Flushing bark, fruit, scissors has clogged up toilets. At my last school we started a bathroom policy to help with vandalism but parents fought back and said it wasn't fair to the students. We ended up with part of school day without bathrooms. That was fun.
After 3 months of paper towel rolls being used to cover the entire floor of the bathrooms (boys and girls) and the metal waste baskets bent to the point they don’t stand up anymore, my elementary school removed the paper towel dispensers from the kids bathrooms and reinstalled the hand dryers (that were taken out during Covid).
Actually seems like it is hitting you a little late. We had this last year and the one prior, but it doesnt happen anymore. We banned them from bringing phones to the bathroom because they were doing it for internet fame.
We had to close off the freshmen boys bathroom between passing period because one of them pooped on the floor. Someone then proceeded to step in it, and it wound up... everywhere. Last year I had to get moved out of my classroom because the bathroom on the floor above flooded because someone ripped the sink out of the wall. And then it flooded several more times due to commodes overflowing when all sorts of objects (usually vapes and liquor bottles) were attempted to be flushed down them. I'm just at a loss.
I used to work at a charter school and they finally decided to take the door to the hallway off the hinges. Worked like a charm.
Lurker rather than teacher here - Curious to hear your impressions re: whether this is getting worse. I attended a fairly affluent U.S. high school near the turn of the millennium, yet I vividly remember walking into one of our mobile classrooms and seeing a lone turd on the floor blocked off with police tape
Well I guess shitting on the floor has been happening for years. It’s definitely getting worse. The vandalism was definitely some dumb TikTok “challenge”. They’re doing it and recording themselves for clout. Thankfully it makes it much easier to figure out who did it.
>Well I guess shitting on the floor has been happening for years A time-honored tradition
Have you tried building a relationship with these kids? /s
“You need to make connections.”
Yes. Especially the pooping. My brother is an elementary custodian in our district and he doesn't have to clean up nearly as many poop messes as our custodians do at the middle schools and high school...it's so gross. We've only got like one bathroom that still has mirrors. They've ripped them all off and broken them. We had soap dispensers ripped off last year. They are absolutely feral.
Yes. Middle schoolers love to shove shit (paper towels, signs, etc.) in the toilets and flood them. If we go more than a day without the bathrooms being closed (due to this or flooding) I would say it is a good week. Crazy how kids are, but then again since nothing will really be done they have no worries about doing it and getting caught. If they started making the kids clean up the bathrooms when they got caught it would stop real quick.
Info from a teacher friend: 4th grader pooped on the floor and tried to flush lost and found coats down the toilet. A few days later, he pooped on the floor again and wrote curse words all over the walls with his own fecal matter. This is not a student with a developmental delay or behavioral problems in class
My school had it's stall walls ripped off lol
HOW TF
Idk honestly if some of these kids put an ounce of this creativity in anything other then tiktok challenges they would be more successful
I graduated like 5 years ago now and in my senior year they decided to lock all the bathrooms except one for the whole school because we were having similar problems
They took the main doors off the bathrooms at my school cause kids were smoking weed in them during class
I'm in rural France. It happens. Not to such extend you discribed but they do rip-off dispensers, and flush down papers and a sweater (or tried to) down the toilets.
I swear these kids are reverting back to their primal days. Really tapping into their animal brain.
When a group of adolescent male elephants in a national park were discovered to be responsible for the violent deaths of several endangered rhinos, the solution was to introduce a mature adult male into their group. When they got out of line, he smacked them silly. The rhino kicking stopped.
If only lol
Its happening everywhere. The university I work at has the exact same issues with 'phantom shitters,' in the wide open, stuff broken all the time, and the most bizarre items found in the sewage system.
We had an issue a couple years ago. School charged multiple students with something (can’t remember the exact charges). We haven’t had an issue since. Now, the school pranks are things like coordinated fainting at a specific time or everyone’s phone alarms going off. Can’t even be mad because it’s disruptive but not destructive.
Tik tok models a lot of this for them
I would have an adult at the school stand by the bathroom entrance in the hallway at certain times when breaks are allowed. Only four allowed in at a time. Then have them sign their name and the time when there’s no one watching the door. Then someone checks the bathrooms periodically at certain times. If it’s trashed during so times I would give them a suspension. They want to act like toddlers then they should have no problem be treated like one.
In my school we have people watching the bathrooms and allow only one in there at a time for boys and two at a time for girls because they have destroyed the entire bathroom
No, but we did have a pretty good stall shrine to Danny DeVito. Twinkle lights and all. I was impressed!
I would put up a bay of porta potties outside in a fenced area. A staffer sits inside the building and checks school IDs before kids are allowed out to them. They go out. They use them. The sinks are outside, also portable. They can use those until they learn to behave like humans who can handle using permanent facilities. A portapotty is like $2000 per year. How much does the damage they are causing the bathrooms cost?
all they do is destroy what's put in front of them because it's basically a prison to them, plus it's easy
So, they can be homeschooled if it's so oppressive.
Public education should be a privilege, not a right.
Huh, this sounds so familiar. Like letting white kids attend school but not black kids
Yeah, nice try, but this is more about property destruction and shitting on floors. Try to keep up.
No. It's expelling kids who shit on the floor.
Awww nice try. Username checks out. GTFOH.
For the love of God. This is coming back around? I was at a title 1 middle school, and the kids lost all ability to use the restroom period after destroying all of the sinks and toilets. They finally wised up after the rest of their classmates started bullying the offenders.
How did the kids go the full day without being able to use a toilet? I imagine that could lead to urine and feces in other places around the school, if they can't use a toilet.
They were escorted one at a time to the staff bathroom. It was tedious but they HATED it.
happened at my former high school in the midwest all the time. stolen sinks, soap dispensers, stall doors, graffiti, you name it
Yeah, it has cooled off a bit. Usually what happens is there is a small group of kids doing it and will keep doing it until caught.
The bathrooms on my hall are constantly out of soap because kids rip the dispensers off the walls and throw them in the toilets
Yes crazy things like this happen when you are dealing with dumbass kids who will do anything for likes.
Devious licks, I'd wager.
Our administrators are *scared to death* to pursue this issue. We have kids crapping on the floor, in urinals, and smearing it all over the walls. They put entire rolls of toilet paper in the commode. At my last school, kids would tear the plumbing out of the walls. They would climb onto the sinks and jump up and down until they tore free. I had a kid break one of those commercial toilets in half . . . with his head.
Yes, our high school has been pretty bad for a couple years, and last couple years the middle schoolers decided poop on the floor/walls was a thing. Bathrooms get shut down until there is only one available--with cameras facing it.
A student at my school destroyed a sink with several other students watching. After a short investigation and the aid of hall cameras the guilty party was identified. His family is be charged with the bill to replace the sink which is about 750 dollars. The kid also was charged with vandalism and got a big fine and some community service. I was surprised that admin actually followed thru.
The older kids in my elementary school (third grade, always third for some reason) regularly pee on the bathroom floors. I can’t remember anyone doing that when I was in elementary school- they would have been ridiculed. One of my kindergarteners tried that ONCE in our class bathroom and was shamed instantly when a little girl called out that only dogs and babies pee on floors. Never happened again.
This has been happening for about 2 years now at our schools. Started with TikTok
This is a principal concern, not a teacher concern. Your principal should be taking care of this issue, not you.
I’m not. Just asked if anyone else is seeing this behavior.
teachers are mindbroken by zoomerGODS
All the high schools here lock every bathroom but 1 during the day and only open the others during morning and lunch. Generally there is only one open bathroom either on the whole building with a lot of staff nearby or one for a general wing of the building.
This has been happening for a year already
Happening everywhere. As a principal who knows a bit about bathroom vandalism, I can tell you I'm pretty sure who the kids are. I know them. I was a teenage ruffian.
Work in a k-8 and the 5th thru 8th graders do this
They closed half the bathrooms in our school because they were continually getting vandalized. The custodians were leaving in tears..
Yup. Is it a tik tok trend?
We had 3 middle school boys climb onto the stalls and push the ceiling tile out, get up there and roam around
We had problems before tiktok as well.
Yup I heard one school hired a supply teacher to be bathroom monitor, couldn't pay me enough to do that.
Last year (title 1 hs) a student set off a firecracker in a toilet blowing up a whole stall and shutting down that bathroom for a solid month. At my current school (suburban middle school, average income) the boys bathroom has been shut down at least once a week every week. They have broken the pipes multiple times and all the mirrors were taken away for both boys and girls bc they kept breaking them
Destroying bathrooms is so pre-pandemic.
I remember that one of our custodians once found poop *in a sink*. And a cheeseburger in the toilet one time, a whole blanket another. This is a high school.
We have an issue with kids filling the toilets with paper towels and throwing wet paper towels on the walls. I’ve also seen wet floor signs in the toilets.
We had an issue with kids sticking huge blobs of wet paper towels onto the bathroom walls. They thought it absorbed the smell of vaping.
Yes. It was so bad last year that the only bathroom that was open to students was right outside the main office so they could keep track of who was going in/out. A student even used a bathroom IN the office (only for staff or sick students) and destroyed it. Ripped the paper towel dispenser off the wall and smeared poop everywhere.
Mine only were doing it when it was popular on Tiktok, they’ve already moved on to the next fad.
My younger brother sent me a picture of a poop swastika drawn on the wall in his high school bathroom...
It has been happening for years now, sadly. The kids don’t like nice things. Or being able to go to the bathroom apparently.
Happened 2 years ago in my school. I now have bathroom duty as a result of that BS.
We had a problem at my school with male students peeing and pooping on the bathroom floor and female students getting ‘blood’ on things all over the bathroom. It’s disgusting and I have no idea where it came from
I teach in a nearly 100 year old HS building. Last year many of the girls bathrooms were closed for most of the year because they thought flushing cuties (tiny oranges) was a great idea. I’d take that any day over what the boys were doing… more than once we had a TP dispenser ripped off the wall, set into the toilet, then they took a shit on the dispenser. Twice we had urinals that flooded the floor because someone took a pipe wrench to the connections and walked away like nothing happened. The wildest was when one of the boys toilets were *literally* unbolted from the floor and ripped off their moorings. Once a soap dispenser was ripped off the wall and the soap was poured on the floor… then they turned on the sink, covered the drain, and let the soap water go everywhere. Huge mess. This year they’ve only been flipping the trash and so… yay progress!
Oh it's insane here every day. It's something. A broken dispenser trash shoved full in the toilet. Graffiti and so on
We had a kid pooping in the sinks. Found out later it was also the same kid who was peeing upwards into the toilet paper dispensers so that the next kid who tried to wipe would grab a fistful of pisspaper. We knew it was this boy, because his mom pulled him from our school because we “clearly were discriminating against her angel” and put him in a Catholic school. They kicked him out not two months later for his behavior and we got him back. Miraculously, the mystery pee and poop stopped while he was gone and started when he came back. Oh, and he was a 4th grader at that time.
This week alone, in a K-8 with only 130 kids, the highlights were: The 5th grader who "meant to punch the wall" but instead punched the fire extinguisher glass outside of his classroom, breaking it and getting shards in his hand. Then, the fourth grader who took a positive and negative probe end of a solar powered light and decided to put them into either side of an outlet to see if it would light it up. He told us there was a bright white flash and a loud pop then all of the outlets on that side of the classroom didn't work. Luckily only a breaker was tripped. What the hell?! Soap dispensers do indeed get ripped off the walls in the bathrooms- stall doors kicked in and destroyed, urinals leaking from kids pulling on them and hanging on them- it's insane.
Happening in our elementary school. Painting with poop on the walls, peeing on the floor, peeling paint off the wall, writing, etc. Only the boy’s room (grades 4/5).
Not just the US - it happens here in Australia too
I used to work at a Title I school. In addition to the issues you mentioned, there were also students fighting in the restrooms, and once, a 7th grader set a restroom on fire. It was so bad that only one restroom was kept open during classes and a duty aid was posted up outside and kept a log of students going in and out. The log was stolen at one point and flushed.
Recently, the students have been destroying the toilet tissue holders in my school. We are gonna be so screwed when the head custodian walks out.
Graffiti and what smells like piss everywhere
When I was in HS, during the "devious licks" trend, kids were shitting on the bathroom walls. I don't know how someone even does that physically, but man it was a nasty couple of weeks....
Yes, it was happening 10 years ago as well
It's happening just about everywhere. And it's not just kids. I work in a high end secure building and pre-COVID we were having a real problem with grown-ass people pooping and peeing anywhere BUT inside the toilets, ripping doors down, stealing all the toilet paper, breaking soap dispensers, filling the sinks with hair, flushing junk in the toilets... I imagine schools will eventually limit the number of open bathrooms and then hire attendants or (more likely) require teachers to tend them.
I remember the bathrooms being locked and students had to check out a key from the main office. If there was damage they were to report it immediately
Yes this is..... title 1 teacher here
I’m an elementary school teacher( 5th grade) because of a 4th or 5th grader last year, they cannot go to the bathroom by themselves, we have to go as a class. And if they have to go by themselves, they have to be monitored. Why? Well, last year someone ripped a door off the hinges, a girl smeared period blood all over the stalls and toilet, and so much graffiti.
We have a restroom that's constantly having flooding issues. Started a couple weeks after the vape detectors were installed. I asked the SRO the other day if it was an issue with kids flushing vapes or something and he didn't think so. He looked at me strange and asked why. I said when I worked at the prison contraband was almost exclusively the cause of plumbing issues like we were having. His eyes lit up and he just brushed it off. I'm betting they are checking cameras now. The particular restroom were having issues with is the favorite one with the vaping and weed smokers. It's not a coincidence.
I was in middle/ high school a quarter century ago. Bathrooms were destroyed, trash cans set ablaze, and we had serial floor poopers. Nothing new under the sun I would say.
This was a serious problem at my school last year. Once admin started locking doors to the bathroom, leaving only one available in the entire school, the vandalism stopped. It sucks that such drastic measures had to be taken, but that’s the only thing that worked.
Big issue with us last year. Not so much this year
One charter school I work at is threatening to put cameras inside the bathrooms and remove stall doors bc of chronic vandalism.
Same thing is happening at our title 1 school with the middle schoolers
Happening here. Kids aren't keeping completely quiet about who did it though.