Georgia schools explore ways to curb unruly behavior in bathrooms

ATLANTA — Walking the halls of South Gwinnett High School, Principal Rodney Jordan ran into an alum he had never met.

Administrators, teachers and other staff were also in the hallways, including near student bathrooms. The halls were calm. There were no signs of unruliness. Jayqunn Billingsley, a 2023 graduate, let Jordan know he liked what the principal was doing.

Jordan joined South Gwinnett in the summer and implemented changes at the school that were jarring to some staff, students and families, such as working in the halls and periodically checking bathrooms. Months later, leaders from other schools and some districts have visited the school to learn more about what South Gwinnett is doing to improve safety on their own campuses.

“There’s some things here that you may not see in other schools, but you see in our atmosphere and in our discipline that it’s been a success,” Jordan said.

For years, bathrooms have been one space in schools where unruly — sometimes dangerous — behavior has been a problem. It remains so.

In recent weeks, Cobb County’s Sprayberry High School and Gwinnett’s Brookwood High School each experienced a student stabbing another student in the bathroom. Each resulted in an arrest and a badly injured student being treated in the hospital, officials said. Last fall, a DeKalb County parent demanded answers from her son’s high school principal after she said he was attacked in a school restroom while more than 20 others watched, Channel 2 Action News reported.

Ubiquitous smartphones and the opportunity to go viral with a video have been blamed with encouraging vandalism and fights in bathrooms. They’re also the place in schools some students go to vape.

Georgia doesn’t track specific data about bathrooms, but close to one-third of students in the state’s most recent Student Health Survey said they somewhat or strongly agreed that they have felt unsafe at school. A 2023 poll of students in Utah reported that 30% felt unsafe in bathrooms, and a national study from 2019 found 12% of students who reported being bullied said it happened in the bathroom.

For school districts across Georgia, the different approaches to preventing unruly behavior in bathrooms is part of a wider, holistic approach to reduce school violence — which has increased statewide in recent years — and to make schools feel safer for students. Several metro Atlanta school districts have implemented devices at entrances to detect weapons, but manufacturers concede the technology hasn’t detected some knives and other materials.

The challenges with safety has also lead to other approaches in metro Atlanta. Those include clear bookbags in Clayton County, limited bathroom access in certain Rockdale County schools and extra monitoring, like in South Gwinnett.

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