Jupiter High School implemented a zoned bathroom system for the 2024-25 school year to keep bathrooms safe for students. All students have a right to go to the bathroom under Florida law and the new system makes it safer.
“If something happens and you have to get back to class, you can get there quickly and safely,” Sherman Steele, a teacher on special assignment who deals with tardies, attendance and monitoring on campus, said.
The previous procedure for the bathroom was to use an agenda. The students had to have the time, location and teacher signature. This quickly became a very inconsistent and inconvenient process. There were issues with unreadable handwriting and hall monitors not knowing where the students were supposed to be. Now, students get a colored pass that correlates with the bathroom they are supposed to use.
“The only inconvenience with the new system is that they got rid of the agendas entirely,” Amber Capute, sophomore, said. “They should go back to using the agendas so we can keep ourselves organized and we wouldn’t have to share a pass with everyone in the classroom.”
There are multiple different perspectives about the new zoned bathroom system.
“Other schools do it and some of the teachers have been asking for the past two years if we could do the color-coded zone,” Casey Runner, assistant principal at JHS, said.
Teachers from Jupiter High saw that the color-coded system was working for other schools and wanted a more reliable bathroom pass.The color-coded system has provided teachers with multiple advantages, one being the lessened time students spend outside of the classroom.
The 10/10 rule is another procedure that’s been successfully in use for years. It means that students aren’t to leave the classroom in the first and last 10 minutes of class.
“The 10/10 rule keeps us in class but it also keeps us from leaving the classroom incase of an emergency,” Capute said.
All of these procedures have been put into place as a way of keeping track of students and where they are supposed to be located on campus.
“It was more of managing where the kids are supposed to be,” Runner said. “It has helped with keeping the kids in the classroom for instructional time.”
Keeping the students in the classroom is a top priority and the new bathroom zoning helps with that.
“It deters the kids because now they know ‘I have to have that pass’ or ‘I have to have that yellow pass’,” Runner said. “The agendas were just not working.”
Since instituting the new color system, it could be predicted that the number of bathroom related referrals will decline going forward.
“The new bathroom passes just get a little bit confusing and they should bring back the agendas that also helped us [students] keep ourselves more organized,” Capute said.
