As many people know, West Seattle High School has been trying to enforce new strategies to keep people in class and off their phones. This string of policies started last year with students being forced to put their phones in calculator pockets or in some cases a box that is locked by the teacher. Though the school and district may have initially fostered good intentions for this policy, it often puts unnecessary pressure on teachers to enforce this. Additionally, this causes responsible students to lose trust in their teachers, or maybe even feel annoyed at teachers for enforcing it. Having an expensive personal belonging locked away when you have done nothing wrong can be a frustrating experience.
Yet, the bathroom policy is not the sole example of a new Seattle Public Schools reform that has faced backlash this year. Earlier in the school year, SPS attempted to close 20 schools to avoid debt. Then, when that plan collapsed, they resorted to making janitorial staff cuts and are in the process of closing school libraries for half the week: all in a desperate attempt to save money.
So why, amongst these efforts to spend as little money as possible, is SPS suddenly deciding to invest in an online program to track when students go to the bathroom? Sounds silly, doesn’t it? And a program that you must use online to go to the bathroom after they instated a phone policy to keep us off electronics. The truth is, the more you learn, the worse it sounds, and it goes from silly to outrageous real quick. Let’s break down the steps for using it, shall we?
First you must go to Clever, which you could have pinned as a Google bookmark. But if you don’t, you must go to SPS first and then log into Clever. From there, you must click the application and log in. Next, you must select the classroom you are in, the bathroom you are going to, and you must wait for your teacher to approve this on their laptop. Many of my teachers have already said that you must go up to them and ask for the request to be approved, otherwise they won’t know to confirm it because they won’t always be at their laptop. Which of course makes sense, because a teacher’s job is to help students and focus on educating young minds, not to stand by their laptop to approve bathroom requests. Then, after it gets approved, it’s a race against the clock. A timer starts *cue dramatic race music* and you must go to the bathroom and come back to stop the timer before it goes off. If you can’t beat the clock, you are marked absent for class.
But what do you do if the bathroom you chose is closed? Or, if you need more than 5 minutes to use the restroom? Maybe your class is in the middle of a test, and you aren’t allowed on a laptop. What do you do then? Worse yet, it has made no change in the way students act. If anything, it has made them more prone to simply walking out of class. So not only is our district wasting our time, but they’re also wasting money from our precious budget. Who would’ve thought that the best way to keep track of students is to not make it more complicated?
Frequent glitches in the program have also driven people away from using it. Not to mention, if you are confused by the program at all, it will take even more time to ask a table mate to help you figure it out.
All of this to simply use the restroom. It seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it? Maybe one day, the district will realize that the best way to keep track of students is to have smaller class sizes and to pay teachers sufficiently. In the meantime, we continue to get plans thrown at us for small fixes instead of ones that address the larger systemic issues that continue to affect our education system.
But that’s just my opinion. Let me know if you feel the same! If you have any ideas for how the district can find ways to save money and better ways to spend it, please share that too!