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.
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
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.
Problem areas
Gwinnett County Public Schools Police Chief Tony Lockard said it’s natural that bathrooms draw bad behavior because some students are bound to take advantage of the privacy provided.
“If a student is going to do something against the code of conduct at school or against the law, most likely they’re gonna try to do it out of sight,” he said.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
He said the district has asked administrators and teachers to be in hallways and check bathrooms and similar spaces. Superintendent Calvin Watts told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution amid vocal concerns about behavior last school year that those checks were an immediate response.
When Jordan started at South Gwinnett, one of his first purchases was about 100 mobile desks, some for standing, some for sitting. He wanted his staff to be out in the halls.
Each administrator works in a specific hallway zone, and teachers similarly work outside their classrooms during their planning periods.
Athletic Director Jeff Taylor said he heard students initially complain that everywhere they turn, there’s an adult.
“But that’s a positive,” he said.
Not just because spaces are monitored. Administrators have more chances to get to know students. They check on them and answer questions they may have. They offer high-fives and fist bumps and hear about recent tests and games and plans for prom.
“Students and faculty and staff have to know on day one that this is a different place,” Jordan said.
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
Limiting access
Rockdale County parent Marc Flowers believes the approach to prevent bad behavior in his daughter’s middle school is unnecessary and “undignified.”
Bathrooms in the grade-level hallways at all Rockdale middle schools are locked for most of the day. Students use the bathroom at designated breaks, and a teacher must unlock the door.
“TikTok and other social media challenges, such as the slap fighting challenge, worked their way into schools and school restrooms, which proved to be an easy meeting place,” district spokeswoman Cindy Ball said in an email to the AJC. “RCPS implemented measures to reduce or eliminate the potential for these to occur.”
The district does not lock bathrooms at its elementary or high schools. Flowers brought concerns to school principals and an assistant superintendent and said they responded that students still have access to bathrooms when they’re needed.
Ball said middle school students who need to use the bathroom between classes can ask for a pass to head to one of two bathrooms that remain unlocked or to the bathroom in the clinic. Flowers said getting a pass has been a problem for his daughter.
Her school, General Ray Davis Middle School, uses an electronic system for hall passes. If a teacher grants a student a pass to go to the bathroom or other location in the school, it’s logged digitally. When the student arrives, they check in, and when they return to class, the teacher confirms they arrived.
Flowers said his daughter has had to wait to go to the bathroom because the system limits how many passes are issued at once across the school. She spoke with a counselor about her problem with the system but has been unable to consult a principal, according to Flowers.
Ball said the system “helps monitor student movement throughout the building,” which aids with safety and accountability. Davis is the only school with the electronic pass system. Ball said another middle school tried it and discontinued using it.
Establishing culture
Gwinnett, Georgia’s largest school district, has focused much of the past two school years on behavior and discipline. The school board adopted in the fall of 2021 an approach focused on relationship-building and addressing root causes of behavior.
Some thought the school board limited consequences, leading to public backlash that forced a pause on the policy and clarification that students who misbehave should face the appropriate consequence.
Tinisha Parker, Gwinnett’s executive director of student services, said a new approach based on restorative practices has garnered good feedback from staff who have gone through the training and started implementing it in their schools and classrooms.
Standing in the hall during a class change at South Gwinnett, Todd McCowan, a language arts teacher, said the school’s culture shifted drastically in the past year because of buy-in within the school.
“We not only tell students the expectations, but we actually believe they can (meet them),” he said.
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
More adults in buildings
At a February Gwinnett safety task force meeting open to the public, administrators said their schools would benefit from additional unarmed individuals who help keep an eye around the school. They said ideally, these would be paid, full-time positions to attract people to the job.
Jordan said he used his available funds to hire four campus monitors. The monitors have duties around the building and fill in for an administrator’s hallway responsibility when they are out sick or need to be in an office.
In Cobb County, school board member Leroy “Tre’” Hutchins pushed in the fall for a similar approach to implement “advanced high-tech security screening technology” at schools and add unarmed, civilian school safety officers.
He reintroduced that proposal in February after two people were shot in the McEachern High School parking lot. The board didn’t vote on the idea, saying they didn’t receive enough notice.
In DeKalb County, Ted Golden said adults in a school make a difference. Golden, a retired law enforcement officer who’s running for sheriff, said one day he had to stop at a restaurant so his son could use the bathroom after being picked up from Druid Hills High School.
Golden said the principal told him they locked the bathrooms at the end of the day because school staff couldn’t monitor those spaces as well as conduct close-of-day activities, and students were using the space for activities against school rules.
Golden said the principal told him he needed more people to monitor the building, so Golden started volunteering at the school for a few hours a month to be in the halls and help keep class changes orderly. He checks bathrooms to see if students are gathered there or if he notices traces of vaping.
Winston Murdock, a Gwinnett parent, felt some overreact to student misbehavior or when something dangerous happens in a school. After a student was stabbed at Brookwood High, Murdock said the situation was alarming, but he was satisfied with the school’s response, which included the principal notifying families.
“How do we stop somebody before they do it? There’s obviously no way to figure out before (something bad) happens. That would be the perfect scenario, but we’re not mind readers,” Murdock said.
Lockard and other Gwinnett school district leaders believe their push for students to report concerns either to an adult or the district’s tip system has paid off: At least twice since January, tips that a student came into school with a hidden firearm have led to confiscating the weapons and student arrests.
“It’s about building those relationships, developing that trust,” Lockard said.
