Speaking of how our kids are doing things at a much younger age - this article is absolutely aweful!
www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2004/02/07/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/7897996.htmPosted on Sat, Feb. 07, 2004
Bathroom safety a priority for schools
Two violent attacks on children in a week have refocused school administrators' attention to how to watch restrooms where bullies may lurk.
BY MARY ELLEN FLANNERY AND STEVE HARRISON
mflannery@herald.com
School bathrooms always have had a reputation as havens for smokers, class-cutters and potty-mouthed bullies. But back-to-back tragedies in South Florida have forced parents and school administrators to peek inside the bathroom doors, and figure out how to clean them up.
''I tell my daughter, please don't go to the bathroom alone,'' said Ana Amaya. ``A lot of things happen in the bathroom.''
Amaya's 14-year-old nephew Jaime Gough, a shy violinist with good grades, had his throat slashed Tuesday morning in a Palmetto Bay middle school bathroom. Two days later, a 10-year-old girl in Lauderhill was shoved into an elementary school bathroom, where two classmates pulled off her clothes and raped her repeatedly.
School safety experts are disgusted -- but not surprised. School bathrooms, they say, are dangerous places where trouble-makers can hide behind closed doors and the expectation of privacy.
''It may sound overly simple, but kids with bad intentions are going to do things in places where there's a lower risk of being caught,'' said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm in Cleveland. That includes empty hallways, unsupervised stairwells, and the bathroom -- an area that, ``by its nature, tends to have less supervision.''
FEELING WATCHED
There are ways to make school bathrooms safer, through increased adult supervision or better design, experts said. The solution is to make kids feel as if they could be watched.
Nothing beats a pair of eyes, said Steve Edwards, vice-president of the National Crime Prevention Council. ''High visibility of staff is critical -- they need to constantly check areas where kids are vulnerable, like bathrooms. Staff should be assigned to particular bathrooms,'' he suggested.
At Seminole Middle School in Plantation, a three-person security team of female school administrators patrols the hallways and girls' bathrooms, while a male team makes random stops in the boys' bathroom, Principal Sherry Patire said. ``We just keep opening the doors -- not to invade anybody's privacy, but to make sure they're out in a timely manner.''
After the week's terrible events, Patire took to the school's closed-circuit airwaves Friday to remind students about proper use of the bathroom. ''They know what I mean by proper,'' she said firmly. She also sent a letter home to parents explaining the school's security precautions.
At Royal Palm Elementary, where the rape occured, Principal Robin David declined to talk about the incident or its aftermath. But Keith Bromery, the Broward school district's spokesman, said that starting Friday morning, an adult accompanied each child who used the restroom.
UP TO PRINCIPALS
The school district doesn't have specific policies on bathroom supervision. It's up to each principal to decide how frequently restrooms might be monitored or whether students can go during class time. Nor do they have any immediate plans to review policies -- the Royal Palm incident was an isolated one, Bromery said.
Royal Palm does have a school resource officer and a set of security cameras, which are monitored continuously -- but the cameras weren't installed around the portable classrooms where the rape took place, chief investigator Joe Melita said. Nor were cameras installed in the Southwood Middle School bathroom, where Jaime Gough was killed.
Cameras in bathrooms are prohibited by Miami-Dade school policy, and likely illegal for privacy reasons, Trump said.
''I see security cameras as an invasion of privacy,'' said Kaitlin Birghenthal, 14, a freshman at Palmetto High. 'I don't want everywhere I turn to be a security camera staring back at me. It would be almost `big brother' watching me.''
Security guards in bathrooms aren't much better, said classmate Katrina Brodka. ``I think that's weird. So every time you go to the bathroom there's gonna be someone watching you? Ughh.''
OPEN DESIGN
Even without a camera or guard, there are ways to create the feeling of being watched, Edwards and Trump said. Last month in Virginia, Edwards visited a school bathroom without any doors on the entrance, and external walls that didn't reach the ceiling. It wouldn't have been easy to look over the wall to the partitioned toilets inside, but it created a feeling of exposure, Edwards said.
A ''rat-maze'' design with an open entrance at one end and an open exit at the other creates the same perception, Trump said. Plus, without the doors, ''you could hear cries or noises,'' he added.
He also has seen bathrooms where the sinks are located in the hallways. Kids tend to get in trouble at the sinks, where they linger, Trump said. ``That's where the horseplay and bullying occurs.''
The bathroom in Southwood was a traditional indoor style with a single door. The one at Royal Palm was a portable -- about the size of a portable classroom, with stalls of toilets inside.
INSIDE CLASSROOMS
Newer Broward County schools tackle bathroom design a bit differently.
Elementary classrooms for kindergartners through third-graders have single-toilet bathrooms inside the rooms, said Assistant Superintendent Michael Garretson. That represents the ultimate in bathroom safety, he said.
The problems with school bathrooms in South Florida are not unique. During the past few months, a 12-year-old in San Antonio was raped in one, a Georgia high school student set fire to another, and an eighth-grader near Baltimore attempted to commit suicide in one with a gun.
But many Florida students said they're not so bad. ''I never feel scared to go to the bathroom here,'' said Stanley Pierre, a seventh-grader at Sunrise Middle School in Fort Lauderdale. ``Sometimes there are play fights in the bathroom, but it isn't that serious.''
- there is NO WAY I will ever be convinced that there was a garment malfunction. ANY woman, with or without a bra or pasty on, would automatically bring her hands up to cover herself if she was suddenly put on display! It’s a reflex. CBS either wanted attention taken away from the Administration Boob or Janet was jealous of the attention her plastic-faced brother was getting and wanted some for herself (sibling rivalry - ha!).