by James A. Bacon
How dysfunctional are Richmond City public schools?
Consider the case of River City Middle School, which serves a population that is 59% economically disadvantaged. While many of the city’s schools have enrollments beneath capacity, due to a declining student population in the city, River City is bulging at the seams. Built to hold 1,500 students, the school opened in September with 1,626 students.
The city School Board has been debating whether to transfer some of those students to other schools. In a hearing Monday night, Principal Jacquelyn Murphy-Braxton told of the problems created for bathroom access. Reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
With a limited number of bathrooms and not enough staff to supervise them, teachers have to use instruction time to take their entire class to the bathroom. “No one wants to see us continue the way we have. No one. Not me, and you shouldn’t either,” Murphy-Braxton said.
Teachers using instruction time to take the entire class to the bathroom? Have you ever heard of such a thing? Ever? Anywhere?
What is going on over there?
River City is not an aging, decrepit inner-city school with ancient plumbing facilities. It’s one of the newer schools in the public school system. Take a look at these photos from the M&E Contractors website displaying its work:
No, the problem isn’t ancient bathrooms. In Murphy-Braxton’s words, it’s “…not enough staff to supervise them.”
The obvious question: why does a public school need staff to supervise bathrooms? What goes on there? Are kids getting into fights? Smoking pot? Engaging in sexual harassment? What kind of behavior would warrant a teacher taking five, ten, fifteen minutes out of classroom instruction to escort the entire class to the bathroom so oversight can be exercised?
If kids can’t be trusted to use bathrooms to, uh, go to the bathroom… if bathrooms are a feral zone where kids misbehave… if the problem is so bad that access is restricted to when teachers can escort their class there… something is very, very wrong. Dystopic is the word that comes to mind.
But no one seems willing to describe what’s happening, and the media is too incurious to ask. We are left with such vague statements like this one from Murphy-Braxton: “No one wants to see us continue the way we have. No one. Not me, and you shouldn’t either.”
If anyone thinks that the solution to educational under-achievement is building shiny new schools, take a look at River City Middle School and think again.
