By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The mother of a third grade girl attending Mill Plain Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington is demanding changes in a school room program where students are required to pay to use the bathroom. The program was to be a lesson in money management where students received and worked for Monopoly Money to buy items in the classroom but the teacher required a payment of M$50.00 in order to use the bathroom.
Jasmine Al-Ayadhi told reporters her nine year old daughter, Reem, did not want to pay to use the bathroom and ultimately had an accident, causing her both discomfort and having to endure teasing by other children. In agreeing with the need to teach children the value of money Jasmine said, “Work for your money, to earn it, to buy like a little toy or a little squirt gun or a little ball. When it comes to a bathroom issue, when a child has to pay money to use the bathroom – that’s wrong. It’s inhumane. That’s a health issue.”
Reem said the students in her class earn money by doing things, such as good deeds, being nice, and finishing school work. She said she uses the money to buy treats like popcorn and pizza.
She also said each student in her class has to pay their teacher M$50 dollars in pretend money to go to the bathroom.
On Thursday, Reem was down to her last M$50. She also had to go to the bathroom. She wanted to buy popcorn, like her friends were doing. She said she wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom because she didn’t want to pay. She then had an embarrassing accident.
“When it comes to using the bathroom, having to hold her pee, and if she wants to use the bathroom, you make a choice,” Jasmine said. “OK, if you want to use the bathroom it’s going to cost you M$50, but then you don’t have money to buy popcorn. What do you think a child’s going to do?”
The school gave Reem a change of clothes, a pair of royal blue boy’s basketball shorts. Reem said the other kids made fun of her for having an accident, and then for having to wear boys clothes.
“It didn’t feel so well because I had to wear boy pants and I did get teased,” Reem said.
Jasmine said she talked to the principal on Thursday, who promised to follow up about the issue on Friday. As of Friday night, Jasmine said she hadn’t heard back.
“This is a school,” Jasmine said. “This isn’t a jail. This isn’t a prison. We send our kids to school to learn and to get a good education.”
The school’s spokeswoman released a statement.
“We were made aware of the situation Friday evening. We will investigate as soon as possible Monday morning. We work hard to ensure the health and safety of every child and will make sure we do not have any classroom rule that prevents that.”
A similar incident occurred in Lebanon, Oregon and was reported by news station KATU of Portland, Oregon and the school principal dropped the payment requirement after the story aired.
A pediatrician was consulted and provided an opinion of this based upon his experience. Dr. Bruce Birk is a Portland pediatrician. He says that there’s consensus in the medical community on this issue.
“It would be chaos in a classroom for teachers not to have a system,” says Birk. “Holding in the classroom in between well-established potty breaks has not been shown in any sense of the word to be harmful to kids.”
Yet the message this might be teaching children is something that some parents are going to have much objection to. But not only the parents have concerns, the incident at Mill Plain Elementary could have been interpreted as close to violating state law, at least in the sprit of the law as noted by the state legislature.
In 1977, when bathrooms requiring payment were more common, the legislature enacted a law in the state’s Public Health and Safety code to address the issue of those needing to use restrooms and facility owners demanding payment for their use. The law reads:
RCW 70.54.160
Public restrooms — Pay facilities — Penalty.(1) Every establishment which maintains restrooms for use by the public shall not discriminate in charges required between facilities used by men and facilities used by women.
(2) When coin lock controls are used, the controls shall be so allocated as to allow for a proportionate equality of free toilet units available to women as compared with those units available to men, and at least one-half of the units in any restroom shall be free of charge. As used in this section, toilet units are defined as constituting commodes and urinals.
(3) In situations involving coin locks placed on restroom entry doors, admission keys shall be readily provided without charge when requested, and notice as to the availability of the keys shall be posted on the restroom entry door.
(4) Any owner, agent, manager, or other person charged with the responsibility of the operation of an establishment who operates such establishment in violation of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor.
While many could see this as making a mountain out of a mole hill, one has to ask what kind of lesson a policy requiring payment by nine year old students to use a bathroom teaches children.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
KATU
Revised Code of Washington
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
I’ve found the Urban Institute to be a valuable resource. They are a straight policy information source. Their Education Policy branch conducted a study that comports w/ a similar study in the UK. While the conventional wisdom is that veteran teachers are much better then those w/ less experience, the facts don’t bear that out. Both studies found that teachers stop improving anywhere after 3-5 years of teaching.
I’m from MO today, show me where in the novel it states that he’s sent to Australia.
Clarifying with quotation marks:
on 1, May 19, 2014 at 5:43 pm Mike Appleton:
“Teaching children the value of money is important. That can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Charging a child to use a school toilet is not one of them. This is a failure of basic common sense. Enough said.”
The voice of reason.
Keebler – the Artful Dodger is transported to Australia and Fagin hangs (or at least we are lead to believe he hangs).
on 1, May 19, 2014 at 5:43 pm Mike Appleton
Teaching children the value of money is important. That can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Charging a child to use a school toilet is not one of them. This is a failure of basic common sense. Enough said.
The voice of reason.
Paul,
Yes, it is about classroom control. And teachers who constantly have problems with students leaving the classroom to go to the bathroom when they don’t need to probably have poor control of their classrooms.
Not yet, today anyway. You’re doing very good Keebler, very good.
Paul, aren’t there classroom aides? Even without aides, I don’t see that there should be a hard and fast rule that two couldn’t be in the bathroom at the same time in certain urgent circumstances. If my child’s teacher was that inflexible I would be worried.
And yes you are very skilled at dodging in answering the question. No one is attacking anyone nick.
If there is a fire drill you have to account for all of your students. If you have half of them in the restroom, you never know where to look for them. If only one is out, they know they are supposed to group up with you and if they don’t you know where to look for them. The last one out of the classroom is the teacher, who first checks for stragglers, and you take the attendance book to the assigned assembly area where you take roll (and you better have everybody).
Why would recognizing children as children with childlike needs be difficult? I recall some teacher saying he treated his students like adults, that might not be horrible if the were teens, but children under age ten? Pediatric care for children is quite different than general care for adults.
Paul,
He also hoses out Oliver, If you really read it. Does the dodger end up in Australia or just kicked out if the judges courtroom?
Paul,
Not making children pay to go to the bathroom when the need arises outside of the scheduled potty breaks is treating children like “special snowflakes?”
swellkid has a food blog that looks interesting.
Keebler – so prove me wrong. Post his fate from the book. Just to give you a hint, the movies and the musical have different endings for Fagin and The Artful Dodger.
MikeA is a wise man. I think he’s wrong on this, but I respect his opinion. Many here disagree w/ Paul and I on this, and now swellkid joins our ranks of teachers w/ a different perspective. What many here don’t take from MikeA’s wisdom is he did not attack those who disagree w/ him. And, Paul and I did not attack MikeA.
Here is an urban dictionary definition of special snowflake
special snowflake
A member of that newly-adult, me’er-than-me generation which expects attention and praise just for being themselves — doing anything to deserve it is completely optional.
Oh, he’s too much of special snowflake to get a day job — his mom’s paying the rent while he hangs out waiting for the perfect high-paying project to come along. I guess the market for C-minus filmmaking majors is a little soft right now or something.
I would be a parent who would get angry if my child wet himself because two couldn’t be in the bathroom at the same time. Especially first graders. I have to wonder why some go into teaching, I used to wonder about nurses too, the one’s who displayed a lack of empathy.
Annie – it is called “classroom control” you are responsible for every student in your classroom and if they are out one at a time, you know who is out. If you let two out, then it is three, etc. It is the nose of the camel. Once the camel gets its nose under the tent, pretty soon you have the whole damn camel in the tent.
I think each child needs to learn that he or she is special and also that she or he is one of many. I did some substitute teaching and never denied a student access to the bathroom.
Paul,
What does treating children like special snowflakes mean?
Tragic, just plain tragic Paul. You really need to brush up on your history, and you claim to have taught?
Keebler – to what are you referring?