{"id":27762,"date":"2025-11-07T14:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/27762\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:20:09","slug":"philadelphia-school-concerns-parents-slam-bathroom-breaks-staff-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/27762\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia school concerns: Parents slam bathroom breaks, staff shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

More than 40 parents, staff and community members showed up to the Philadelphia school board meeting on Thursday to share grievances over the district\u2019s wellness policy, school closings and the scarcity of librarians and speech therapists.\n<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at some of the major points of discussion.\n<\/p>\n

Parents push for guaranteed bathroom, water breaks<\/p>\n

For years, parents and advocates from the grassroots group Lift Every Voice have pushed for guaranteed bathroom and water breaks and at least 20 minutes of lunch time for students. While the district previously approved policies ensuring recess and banning collective punishment, it stopped short of codifying them. Parents report that inconsistent policies have led to distressing situations, including students wearing diapers or having accidents due to denied bathroom access.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019m sure you\u2019re aware, children are not being given adequate access to bathrooms. They have to skip water breaks, rush through meals, miss recess because of scheduling or staffing, and families feel and see the impact every single day,\u201d said parent Amy Faulring. \u201cKids are tired, they\u2019re hungry, they\u2019re distracted and anxious, not because they don\u2019t want to learn, but because their basic needs aren\u2019t being met and consistent in humane ways.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

At the end of the meeting, Superintendent Tony B. Watlington<\/a> echoed concerns but cautioned parents to review all evidence.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident that we can reach an appropriate thinking, collectively, about issues related to recess, bathroom breaks and water,\u201d he said. \u201cWe must empower teachers to be the people in charge of these classrooms. And people who can\u2019t, who won\u2019t do that, we deal with them appropriately. But I\u2019m telling you, I see very few cases that come across my desk. And I have yet, in three and a half years, in our schools to see any child in a diaper because they can\u2019t go to the bathroom. Just be careful that we don\u2019t say things that we don\u2019t have evidence to support.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Watlington also said that children should be treated with respect and that, if they need bathroom breaks, they should have them.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they need to go to the bathroom, they need to be able to go,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen they\u2019re thirsty, they need to get water. And despite the fact that some of our schools are in very compacted areas, there needs to be an outlet for young people to get energy out.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Philly schools face shortage of librarians, speech therapists<\/p>\n

Parents and staff also continued to advocate for more school librarians.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, two out of three children in the city cannot read on grade level by fourth grade, making them six times more likely to drop out of school,\u201d said Gregory Vogler, a Philadelphia resident and suburban Philadelphia school librarian.\n<\/p>\n

Vogler cited research that found that students in schools with full-time certified librarians score significantly higher on reading assessments than those without. He said that the School District of Philadelphia had 176 librarians for 259 schools in 1991.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, there are five full-time librarians serving 218 schools and over 18,000 students, a ratio of one librarian for every 23,000 students,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is an embarrassment. We would never accept that ratio for counselors, nurses or teachers. So why should we accept it for librarians?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Many district staff members raised similar concerns about the lack of staffing for critical speech therapy programs.\n<\/p>\n

Amy Eckert, a school speech-language pathologist, shared that students were not receiving speech services because no speech-language pathologist had been assigned to their school. She said the issue reflects a district-wide problem, with at least 20 unfilled SLP positions, many covering multiple schools, amid a 90% increase in early intervention students entering kindergarten.\n<\/p>\n

While 151 new special education teachers were hired to meet growing needs, no additional SLPs were added. Community members urged the district to prioritize recruiting and hiring enough SLPs, possibly through offering a critical shortage bonus, to ensure students with disabilities receive essential speech and language support.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[223,69,71,70,1998],"class_list":{"0":"post-27762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-pennsylvania-education","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-school-district-of-philadelphia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}