Teacher Makes Children ‘Pay To Potty,’ With Soggy And Humiliating Results


Some parents in Washington are upset over a classroom “pay to potty” strategy that requires children to pay Monopoly money for the privilege of going to the bathroom. Two third-graders were humiliated after coming home from school last week in different clothes because they had wet their pants in class.

KATU reports a teacher at Mill Plain Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington, has instituted a class policy that rewards students with play money for things like finishing school work, good deeds, and being nice. Children can use that money to pay for treats such as popcorn or pizza or toys. But they also are required to pay $50 to go to the potty.

After her daughter came home from school in clothes that she had not left the house in that morning, Jasmine Al-Ayadhi was horrified to learn of the school’s “pay to potty” policy.

Last Thursday, Reem Al-Ayadhi found herself faced with a very difficult decision for a nine-year-old. She only had $50 left, and she needed to potty. But all of her friends were going to be getting popcorn in a little while. So, she decided to try to hold it and buy the popcorn with her friends instead. She could not go to the bathroom unless she paid.

But she didn’t make it. Her mother is furious over the pay to potty policy:

“When it comes to using the bathroom, having to hold her pee, and if she wants to use the bathroom, you make a choice,” Al-Ayadhi said. “OK, if you want to use the bathroom it’s going to cost you $50, but then you don’t have money to buy popcorn. What do you think a child’s going to do?”

According to school policy, Reem was given some other clothes to wear: a pair of boys basketball shorts. The other kids made fun of her, for both having an accident, and wearing boys clothes.

According to district spokeswoman Gail Spolar, “Elementary school children may have accidents. That’s why we have an entire clothes closet. If a child has an accident they come to the office (and) explain that they’ve had an accident.”

Surely that policy was put in place for children who legitimately have accidents, not for accidents arising from misguided policies of making children pay to potty. Would it even be classified as an “accident” then?

“This is a school,” Reems’ mother passionately told KATU. “This isn’t a jail. This isn’t a prison. We send our kids to school to learn and to get a good education.” She is angry over a policy that she calls “inhumane.” Her daughter is humiliated.

After the incident made the local news, another mother came forward about her daughter being caught by the pay to potty scheme. Merchon Ortega’s daughter Lilliana didn’t make it either and wet herself in class on the same day. Lilliana was embarrassed, “It makes me feel kind of horrible in somebody else’s pants and undies.”

Ortega kept her child home from school, saying, “This is not going to happen to my child.”

Both mothers have filed a complaint with the school board, according to Syracuse.com. They want something to be done about the teacher.

The pay to potty policy, as well as the teacher who instituted it, is now under investigation. A substitute teacher is now in the classroom.

Al-Ayadhi points out that paying to potty is actually a health issue, and medically speaking, she has a point.

Huffington Post talked to doctors recently about the health consequences of holding one’s pee too long. According to Dr. Chamandeep Bali, “The longer you hold your urine, the bladder can become a breeding ground for bacteria to grow.” That bacteria can lead to infections, including kidney infection. There can be damage when the body’s cues are ignored.

By now, you may be wondering, “How often is normal to go?”

Urologist Dr. Mark Gordon says, “A ‘normal’ urination rate is eight to 10 times a day.” When one considers that WebMD recommends 10-11 hours per night of sleep for a third-grader, that leaves about 14 hours of waking time. The math works out that it is perfectly normal for a child to need to go to the bathroom every hour and a half to two hours during waking hours.

“We’re never going to prevent a child who is in an emergency situation from going to the bathroom,” Spolar told reporters. “We don’t want the children to have accidents. We don’t want the children to have health and safety issues and so that’s part of that investigation is how the procedure is being done.”

Obviously, all of the students are not aware of that larger district policy. All they see is that their teacher is making them pay with the play money they have to earn in order to get permission to use the potty. What about children who fail to earn enough money? The old expression “too broke to pee in a pot” would apparently apply to them.

Elsewhere, schools have thrown away students’ lunches when they didn’t have the literal money to pay for their lunches, as reported by The Inquisitr.

After the media brought attention to the situation, a spokesman for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), Nathan Olsen, said, “There are no laws on the books that directly deal with paying to use the bathroom but said that doesn’t mean it can’t be investigated.”

What do you think about the teacher’s “pay to potty” policy? Do we really need a law to ensure that children don’t have to pay to go to the bathroom? Or has this teacher gone too far?

[images via bing and KATU]

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