Natwerk Designs

What are the laws concerning locked bathrooms in schools?

A common practice in my CT high school is for school officials to lock the bathrooms during the day. Most likely, this is an attempt to reduce the number of kids skipping class, which is all well and good, but it becomes a problem when one has to walk all the way across the school just to use the restroom. This has been going on for all of my four years here, and I've finally had it. Is there any law (from Connecticut or otherwise) that deals with this kind of problem?

Public Comments

1. There are no laws that specifically address the issue.
2. I can see it from both points of view...while I've never heard of a specific law regarding access to washroom facilities (except in the case of people with incontinence) it would be unreasonable for a school to not provide facilities to its students...many of them would end up switching schools for this reason. I understand the frustration school officials have with kids skipping classes and constantly asking to leave class to go to the bathroom when they should go on their own time between classes. Unfortunately, kids don't always plan ahead and they need access to bathrooms even more than adults do! So, it might be more reasonable for them to simply heighten their enforcement of anti-truancy regulations or provide teachers with master keys for the washrooms that they could give to students at their discretion. Perhaps electronic locks with a card key system would be most effective. This way if a card was stolen the school could simply deactivate it, and the bathrooms could automatically be unlocked during breaks without a caretaker having to do it manually.