Anne Arundel schools are adding toilet training to their list of teacher and staff responsibilities because more 5-year-olds are entering kindergarten without the ability to use the bathroom independently.
“Our kids should not be coming into kindergarten not potty trained,” Anne Arundel County Public Schools Superintendent Mark T. Bedell said during a county Board of Education meeting on April 22.
Bedell also said it’s not an isolated issue.
“While I know it may be increasing or revving up here, there are places now where they’re having to have curriculum written and designed around how to help a kid be potty trained,” he said.
The new regulation, adopted unanimously by the school board, makes helping a child “work toward toileting independence” a staff responsibility.
It also keeps the school system in compliance with state laws that require children over the age of five to attend school, regardless of their toilet training, and applies to students with or without special education accommodations.
“We don’t turn children away. We can’t and we shouldn’t. Because we would be turning them away, to a large extent, based on what their parents didn’t do. And no child should be penalized for that,” school board member Joanna Bache Tobin said.
Sonya McElroy, the county’s director of special education services for children from birth through 5 years old, said it was becoming a liability for schools.
“Most of the issues I’ve seen is actually parents reporting that students have been left in soiled underwear, and soiled diapers and soiled Pull-Ups,” she said.
Parents were less concerned, she said, about having staff assist their children in the bathroom, but the new policy requires families to complete a permission form or provide an emergency contact “who shall be asked to come to the school and attend to the student’s needs without delay.”
School board members also emphasized the need to educate parents about their role in potty training their children at home.
“Neither side should be stepping into the other’s lane. We should be partnering with one another,” Bache Tobin said. “But when the gaps exist, we don’t have a choice.”
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