With many students abusing the privilege of being able to go to the restroom during class, Principal Deb Smith decided to close all bathrooms except the two in the main office.

“There has been a tremendous number of students out of classes, every day, every period, wandering the hallways and during instructional time. Students need to be in class,” Smith said.

Staff members continuously see waves of students going to and from classes to the bathrooms. Many times they even see the same students, period after period. Smith said that in order to limit the number of students, she closed the bathrooms besides the ones in the front office during class pe- riods.

“They are going to come up here where either I’m up in my office or Ms. Bootel and we can get a better sense of how many kids are traveling in and out of class ev- ery single day, every single period,” Smith said.

Rumors have gone around school that the use of drugs and tagging in the bathrooms are reasons why they’ve been closed. But Smith denied those reasons for the closures. Even though many students do actually use the restroom, others sim- ply wander around campus. When students

leave the classroom, they are missing vital educational time during that period. They take advantage of teachers allowing them to leave class and do all different kinds of things except actually go to the bathroom.

“The number of kids out of class every single day passing, they are just out of class to wander,” Smith said.

Closing the bathrooms during the classroom periods is going to pose problems for students. According to Smith, if they need to go to the restroom during class, it needs to be an emergency and that is when someone from the office comes and escorts them out. Students are upset with this change of when they are able to use the bathroom.

“I think it’s unfair that because other students are taking advantage of this privilege, the people who actually need to go to the bathroom are the ones that have to pay,” sophomore Ashley Diaz said.

In order for the bathrooms to be acces- sible to students during class periods, there needs to be a decrease in the amount of stu- dents in the halls during educational time. Soon enough, the bathrooms will be open once again during class time.

“When they show that they can handle that and I see that this constant parade of students coming to the bathroom during instructional time stops, then we will open up,” Smith said.