Mahomet-Seymour teachers raise concerns about bathroom policy, Schultz explains

BY DANI TIETZ
dani@mahometnews.com

Students’ access to the restroom during the school day was on the minds of many as the Mahomet-Seymour School Board gathered on Tuesday night.

Policy 7:135, which stated, “All students will be permitted access to the restroom at least one time per hour throughout the school day. A passing period will not be considered as restroom access if the passing period is less than five minutes. No student will receive any negative consequence for requesting to use the restroom,” was proposed by Mahomet-Seymour School Board member Colleen Schultz prior to a policy committee meeting on Jan. 13.

While Schultz was in attendance at the policy committee meeting, the working meeting for committee members Lori Larson and Meghan Hennesy did not include a presentation from Schultz.

Mahomet-Seymour Education Association leaders James Heinold and Megan Jones were in attendance. Heinold spoke on behalf of the MSEA about policy 7:135.

“I think as teachers and administrators the big issue with allowing or granting restroom access on the hour is having students unsupervised with (potentially) multiple students at a time,” Heinold said.

Heinold recalled the school shooting in Noblesville, Ind. on May 25, 2018 where Mahomet-Seymour alum, Jason Seaman, threw a basketball at a student as he opened fire in his classroom.

“The student who was involved in the shooting had used the restroom,” he said.

“So, access, having unlimited access to use the restroom and teachers not being able to tell students no, that can really create some issues, not just unsupervised issues but we also have issues with disrupting the class instructional time.”

Heinold said that during a six-hour instructional day, that could mean students lose 30-minutes of instructional time.

At the elementary level, Heinold said that students are able to use the bathroom multiple times during the day.

“I don’t think that there is a policy that the teachers denied kids access to the restroom,” he said.

At Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting, Heinold reiterated some of the concerns about the bathroom access policy with a packed room of teachers.

The union put out a survey prior to the Tuesday night board meeting in which 150 union members responded. Heinold reported that 90-percent of union members disagreed or strongly disagreed with that policy.

Heinold suggested that everyone follow the chain of command that the district has established and should parents have concerns, they address those with the teachers and the administrator before going to a board member.

“When we have issues, we work at the entry-level; we go to the building principal, and if it doesn’t get resolved there we go to Dr. Hall,” he said. “We try to go through our chain of command.”

He said that the board should be focused on education supports and facility needs moving forward.

Heinold read comments from union members, which included a culture of distrust where they feel board members do not trust their judgement as professionals and that they are starting to be micromanaged.

“If we have high-quality teachers, micromanagement doesn’t need to happen. We can make those decisions on a daily basis, hourly basis, minute-by-minute basis. I think we all have the experience and everything we need to tackle any tough situation that comes by, even if it asking us to use the restroom.

“This is not my voice, I speak for all of the teachers in MSEA,” Heinold finished.

During board communication time, Schultz responded with an explanation of her proposed policy for the first time.

Schultz said that although she spoke first about students’ access to the restroom on Dec. 16, 2019 at a public meeting, no one had reached out to her.

During a discussion about the board’s role, Schultz said, that it would be overreach if she told Hall, “I would like for you to direct the administrators to let kids go to the bathroom when they really, really need to.

“I’ve had so many people have issues with that and contact me about their kids having all this stress about not getting to go to the bathroom when they need to. But that would be direction, asking her to talk to the administrators to change things in the district.

“That is not what I am allowed to do on my own. So that is why soon, I will bring a policy so that we can address that need.”

Because Schultz said that board members have been told that they are not allowed to talk to teachers or administrators but have been instructed that policy and the majority of the board are what are used to direct the superintendent, the only way that she could initiate a discussion about bathroom use was through policy.

“I know no one in this room believes it at this moment because you’ve been telling me, but I do support teachers,” she said.

“I’ve never presented the policy and no one has asked me about it,” she said. “No one.”

Schultz said that she was first made aware that students had been denied access to the bathroom for roughly seven years.

But recently, since being elected to the board, parents have also come to her for help.

“I want you to note what I didn’t do,” she said. “I didn’t say who is the teacher?

“This person already went to talk to the principal, though. I didn’t want to know who it was so that I could come back and report on them and get them in trouble.”

Instead, Schultz decided to ask other students if they had access to the bathroom during lunchtime.

When the students replied no, she asked it they could go during class. After she heard no again, Schultz asked what the students do when they have to go to the bathroom.

“The response I got from no less than 10 students was, ‘You just don’t drink,’ she reported. “‘And then at lunch, if you need to, you just take a few sips. And then you can hold it until after school.”

Schultz said that once multiple students told her that, she realized that there was no problem because the students she talked to had fixed it on their own by not consuming liquids throughout the day.

“The thing that broke my heart about that is that they didn’t even think there was a problem with that; that was just their solution to a problem they were facing.

“This was not one student, it was multiple students. Did I ask students who said they could go to the bathroom, sure, there were one or two. But the majority said we are not allowed to go.”

Schultz said that she did not put the blame for the situation on the teachers, but that she understood that teachers may not even be aware that students are experiencing this problem.

“They don’t realize that when they say no in their class, the next person says no in their class and the next person says no in their class and you have a one-minute passing period. All of a sudden, it’s the end of the day.”

Recently, Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School extended passing periods to two-minutes.

Schultz said that she felt like her hands were tied because she is not allowed to talk to the principals.

“I have been told that very clearly,” she said.

Schultz said that because she is not allowed to act individually, all she could do was come together as the board of education to discuss the issue.

“I can only be as part of a board,” she said.

“We can see what we might be able to do to solve a problem for students in our district.”

Although she did not hear any communication from the public or staff about her comment in December, Schultz developed a policy, starting with looking at what guidelines were established for Illinois State prisoners.

According to Schultz, she took that to more than a handful of teachers and they said it was too much and would cause “chaos.”

So she readjusted the policy, intending for it to mean that if a child asks to use the restroom, they should be able to go within the hour.

“I didn’t say immediately. I didn’t tell anyone how to do their job in their classroom; I didn’t say you should hang passes on their wall and then kids can take one and go to the bathroom,” she said.

After hearing what teachers had to say at the policy committee meeting, then receiving a phone call from someone saying that the policy was eroding trust between teachers, Schultz pulled the item from the agenda prior to the regularly scheduled board meeting.

She said she was told that teachers and principals could solve this problem together within 10 minutes.

“It may be politically advantageous for people to believe that my goal is to micromanage or to not trust teachers or to hate teachers, but my goal is to help the kids, to protect the rights of kids.

“The policy was to say we have to let them go to the bathroom at some point during the day. We have to make it so that they don’t hurt themselves because that seems better than asking.

“I don’t think anyone thought how can I hurt kids, but this is what the students are perceiving. This is their reality. I am trying to help.

“I understand that you don’t think I helped in the right way, and that’s fine, no one has to like everything that I do; I’m not perfect and I make mistakes.

“But for everyone to conclude that I am evil and hate teachers, it’s the same thing that I’m being accused of; that I hate you because of something you did whereas you hate me for something I did when I’ve never spoken about it. No one has asked.”

Schultz also tried to clear the rumor that she’d heard among teachers that she proposed a movie policy. She stated that she was not the one to propose the policy. Director of Instruction Nicole Rummel proposed the policy to the policy committee on Aug. 12, 2019.