Things Parents Don’t Know About High School

Note: The following article does not apply to all high schools in this country, but it does represent most of them.

Ever wonder what’s going on “behind the scenes” with your kids while they attend high school? In general, all school-boards want to make a good first impression on the parents, but throw in 1,000+ kids into a high school and things change very quickly. For instance, take the week prior to the beginning of a new semester. The floors are clean and shiny, the staff are kind and pleasant, and there are posters on various walls displaying information on different school courses.
But by the end of the first week, everything gets thrown out the window. The floors are littered with garbage, food wrappers, empty bottles – all of which are trash from the students’ lunches. This is pretty sad, considering that there’s a garbage can in every classroom and in the cafeteria itself. Ever wonder why there are tiny fleas flying about the school during the winter? Now you know.

Then there are the washrooms. At first, they’re all clean and shiny, but all good things eventually come to an end. Before you know it, there’s graffiti written all along the inside walls of the toilet stalls, and much of said graffiti has profanity embedded within it. Many kids refuse to flush the toilets, which is quite disgusting, especially if you’re in a hurry. Sometimes you can even see urine on the toilet seat itself or on the floor around the toilet. But that’s not the end of it. Other kids will break off the coat hangers on the inside of the stall door, or worse, break the lock on the door. And speaking of locks, there are several kids who think it’s funny to lock the stall door and crawl out underneath it to prevent others from getting in. Not so much of a joke when you desperately need to use the washroom and the other stalls are either occupied, don’t have any toilet paper, or have broken door locks. Now, true, the janitors are supposed to take care of these problems, but what I’ve found is that most high schools only employ two or three janitors to take care of the entire school. And of course, that’s a lot of work, especially when sweeping the floors and cleaning the washrooms aren’t the only jobs they’re responsible for doing.