The timing of the Forest Hills High School bathroom policy has raised a bit of confusion for some of the students and staff. Some say that a student can only go to the bathroom between the first and last 10 minutes of the class period, which gives students a 24-minute time period to use the restroom per period. Others have claimed that the rule is not 10 minutes, it’s actually five, which gives students a 34-minute time period where they can use the bathroom per class period.
Not only this, but as well, teachers have set standards where they may only allow three students use the bathroom during a single class period, unless there is an emergency. Others are very lenient with how many times a student can use the bathroom per week. For students, different teachers may have different sets of rules when it comes to using the restroom.
According to Mr. Bardossas, Assistant Principal of Security, teachers are entitled to regulate specificities within the policy. The amount of times a student can use the bathroom and how many students can go out during a period are completely up to the teacher.
The DOE has a policy of no students leaving classrooms 10 minutes to the bell. Frida Ziu, FHHS President, shares her input in regards to Student Government’s control on the policy. “So we don’t really decide [the specificities], but we do follow what the DOE sends us.”
Also in the DOE policy is the requirement that students with medical needs may be permitted to use the bathroom whenever and however many times they need. So there are a few exceptions to the 10 minute DOE rule.
As well, here at Forest Hills, we started to have a five minutes to the bell system which works for the school’s population, as we are a school of over 3,000 students. So to answer the question as to what time students are allowed to use the bathroom, officially at FHHS? Within the first and last five minutes of the period.
Mr. Jones, AP of Mathematics says he prefers the five minutes to the bell bathroom rule. “By the time that I am 10 minutes into the lesson, I’m having my students shift to the main part of the lesson which is the part that I need them for. So I almost never let anyone go 10 minutes in because I need them to pay attention. So I actually prefer the five minutes.”
The 10 minute rule was in effect to give students and teachers enough time to do the warm up and get settled into classrooms. It’s also technically the DOE’s policy. However, many teachers finish the warm up before the 10 minute mark and are beginning important lessons.
In each classroom, teachers have a bathroom and a bright red hall pass. There is also a digital log outside of the restrooms. Mr. Katsiaris, an English teacher, says, “The log for the classroom is important because what if something happens and we don’t know, like for example, if someone signs out to go somewhere and then something happens to them. We can track when the kid left why the kid left what the issue was.”
Mr. Bardossas enforces that the two logs we use are helpful to track locations of students, including when they left the classroom and entered the restroom, left the restroom and went back to class. The system is designed to ensure that the location of a student is always known in case of an emergency.
