Staff in Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland are now required to help teach kids who are not potty-trained how to use the toilet.
The regulation, passed by the Anne Arundel County Board of Education on Wednesday, has principals telling staff to help “move students toward personal care and toileting independence.”
Under state law, schools cannot turn away children who are not potty-trained.
Tammy Cho, a former prekindergarten teaching assistant at two Anne Arundel County elementary schools, told The Baltimore Sun that “we had kids even beyond the kindergarten level who are not potty-trained. I don’t understand what’s going on. There seems to be a trend of children coming [to school] with less and less foundational skills.”
Parents are required to provide diapers, underwear or wipes along with a change of clothes, while the county school system will provide staff with “personal protective equipment.” Parents must also sign a potty-training permission slip.
At the board meeting, Anne Arundel County Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell said, “We’ve got to do our part as a community. Our kids should not be coming into school not potty-trained.”
Board member Joanna Bache Tobin pointed out at the meeting that the money allocated to the school system keeps growing in part from the need for schools to become “a social services center.”
“We need the taxpayers of the world to understand that the more we have to take on, the more it costs,” she said.
