Bathroom policies at Lawrence High School interrupt learning, keep students from accessing toilets

Administrators at Lawrence High School instituted mass bathroom closures to address behaviors like vaping and skipping class, but these policies are backfiring as kids lose learning time and struggle to find a toilet when they need one.

Under the current LHS bathroom policy, all bathrooms are closed and locked during class periods, except for the gender-neutral stalls. Staff members are supposed to unlock the bathrooms at the start of passing periods and re-lock them when class resumes.

Principal Quentin Rials explained this policy in a message to LHS families on Aug. 20. He said the school’s intention was to enhance safety.

“Students are permitted to use the restrooms throughout the day; however, a pass is required for those in good standing during instructional time,” he wrote. “For students who may not be in good standing due to high absences, vaping, or fighting, their classroom teacher will arrange for an escort to accompany them to the restroom and back, thereby minimizing disruptions to instructional time.”

In his message, Rials said these procedures were implemented last school year. However, the escort policy has been a moving target for students and teachers.

According to a teacher at LHS who asked not to be named, all students, regardless of standing, were supposed to receive bathroom escorts when the 2025 school year started. Escorts could be teachers, administrators or private security officers. Spokespeople for the district and the Lawrence Police Department said school resource officers (SROs) have not served in this role.

“I think that Dr. Rials received so many complaints from teachers that he backed off,” the teacher said.

Escorts for the whole student body are no longer. Still, bathrooms are not readily open to all.

Off to a rocky start

“Student safety remains our top priority,” said Jake Potter, the district’s new spokesperson. “Our safety practice includes minimizing disruptions to our learning environment by keeping our students in assigned classrooms for as much of the instructional day as possible, while also ensuring that students have access to restrooms as needed.”

Potter would not answer when asked the total number of restrooms at LHS and how many were kept open on an average day.

“Our comprehensive high schools are very large properties with many restroom locations throughout,” he said.

When asked about bathroom closure patterns at both Lawrence public high schools, he said “This is a campus-specific, situation-specific question, dependent on many factors.”

LHS senior Hugo Cowardin said there are two banks of gender-neutral stalls. One bank is located around the middle of the school, and another is on the far end. He estimated that each bank of stalls has six or seven toilets.

In a school of roughly 1,400 students, around a dozen toilets are consistently available.

Passing periods, when all other bathrooms are unlocked and re-locked by staff, generally lasts five or six minutes. Occasional extended passing periods last up to nine minutes. The LHS teacher said that passing periods have been extended to accommodate the bathroom policy.

“They (bathrooms) are definitely not successfully being unlocked during passing periods,” Cowardin said. “… I’ve heard from classmates that they attempted to go to bathrooms and they just couldn’t get in, and there wasn’t a staff member around to let them in.”

Senior Delaney Haase had the opposite problem. She said she was unintentionally trapped in a bathroom by an administrator.

She said the administrator waited outside the restroom and asked an exiting student if anyone else was inside. The student said there wasn’t, not realizing Haase was present, and the administrator locked the door, which prevented anyone inside from exiting. 

“I had to bang on the door for a little bit until they came to let me out,” Haase said. It wasn’t until later that she realized she could’ve unlocked the door from the inside.

The policy not only weighs on students who just need to go. It also affects their teachers.

Cowardin said students often ask instructors for assistance when they find bathrooms locked. The adults must cut into their class periods to render aid.

“I mean, (recently) during class, the bathroom wasn’t unlocked near my classroom, and my teacher had to take a group of students and unlock the bathroom for them and wait for them to finish and come back in class and keep teaching,” Cowardin said.

Senior Rowan Vincent took issue with the policy. They’ve spent extra minutes of class time hunting down an open restroom.

“It’s a little annoying because I’m missing out on valuable class time, invaluable learning,” she said.

Vincent understood the issues administrators are attempting to address, but saw the policy as an overreach for those responsibly using the toilets. The LHS teacher had similar concerns.

“(The district) is working so hard to avoid being punitive or suspending the few that the great majority end up suffering,” the teacher wrote in a message.

Frustration also mounted for students who felt that restrooms were not well maintained.

Senior Caletta Harris said the bathrooms are hazardous and unsanitary.

Haase added, “I have to waste class time waiting for a bathroom stall that probably has pee all over it.”

Different schools, different rules

A student source at Free State High School reported that some bathrooms were closed last year, primarily for maintenance purposes. All in all, FSHS has not implemented a restrictive bathroom policy; toilets are generally open and accessible to kids.

Yet some students at FSHS skip school and vape, just like some LHS teens.

“Practices and procedures may vary or may differ at specific school sites based on the design of the building, the number of students moving in hallways at a specific time (student traffic), etc.” Potter wrote.

This raised alarm flags for an LHS parent who asked not to be named. She was concerned about inequities in treatment and opportunities between the two high schools.

LHS generally serves a more racially diverse and lower-income student population than FSHS. About 39% of students at LHS were kids of color in the 2023-24 school year, compared to about 31% of teens at FSHS at the same time, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“I’m so tired of the narrative that … these kids, because they’re a different color, because they identify as queer, because they don’t have as much money, that they’re a problem,” the parent said. “And when you treat them like that, they’re going to act like that sometimes … They’re just as good of kids, they’re just as smart. It’s so frustrating.”

The LHS parent, who has queer children who have attended LHS, also said many nonbinary students rely on the gender-neutral bathrooms. Increased demand for gender-neutral restrooms could be damaging for “a subset of kids that depend on that access,” the parent said.

The LHS teacher also suspected there might be bullying in the few remaining restrooms.

“I mean, when there’s a huge group of students in those gender-neutral bathrooms, some kids are scared to go in there, and I don’t blame them,” she said.

She was also concerned because she heard kids were doubling up in stalls.

“That’s not safe,” she said. “I mean, more than one kid in a bathroom stall. That’s insane.”

Current procedures also have the potential to harm students with mobility limitations or disabilities that might require frequent and immediate bathroom access.

Rials did not respond to any questions, including an inquiry about how LHS staff and administrators are collaborating with students with disabilities who need bathroom accommodations.

Fighting vaping with toilet troubles

Haase was skeptical of the efficacy of closing restrooms. She said the few available stalls were further limited by longer-term restroom dwellers.

“Not only does the policy make it harder for students in ‘good standing,’ but it doesn’t even seem to be eliminating the problems it’s trying to eliminate, such as people graffitiing the bathrooms and skipping class in them,” she said.

The LHS teacher, who is in contact with peers at FSHS, knows that vaping continues to be a problem at both schools and is concerned about the health effects for everyone in the building. She said other schools use vape detectors, and she wishes that the district had allocated its money from a settlement with Juul toward this type of preventive measure.

“A student vapes in the bathroom, and it automatically notifies the administrators,” she said. “Administrators go, they get that kid, it’s an automatic suspension.”

In his Aug. 20 message to LHS families, Rials said they will adjust policies and procedures as they receive more information. However, he reported that the school has “observed a significant reduction in restroom-related issues and received positive feedback from students and staff about the enhanced safety within our schools.”

Two student commencement speeches in May referenced the bathroom policies. One student’s speech named the litany of changes the class experienced in four years, from the rise of AI to global wars to “of course, the ever-changing status of bathrooms that are locked.”

In another speech, a graduating student mentioned events that made the class stronger, joking about “the 10-mile journeys to find an unlocked bathroom.”

“I’m 17 years old, almost an adult, and I can’t go to the bathroom without it being a hassle,” Haase said. “It’s a bodily function that pretty much all of us do multiple times a day, so I don’t think there should even be a ‘policy’ for something like that. Just let me go to the bathroom.”

— Lawrence High School student journalist Emilia (Mimi) Rosado Schmitt contributed to this article.

Note: This post was updated to clarify details of a student’s experience.

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

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