Did You Have the Public School Battle to Use the Bathroom?

[Guest guest]

I wrote this for my own group but thought the topic might be of interest

here as well- so here it is below-

Feel free to share your own adventures

In Massachusetts the right to pee in school for My sister and I was like this.

Our home town's school nurse refused to help my older sister go to the bathroom

so on my on the first day of school my mother stuffed a gigantic Modess

menstrual pad in my under wear and sent me off to school bitching about " Now I

got two handicap kids I gotta get ready everyday! " (as if I wasn't disabled

during all the preschool mornings?)

After a week or two of puddles found underneath me, my first grade

teacher,classmates, and bus driver were very discreet and sensitive. Not one

person pointed, teased, or scolded, in the school environment. My sister however

did badger, harangue,and announce to all in earshot, when the bus picked me up

to bring us home. The driver (we actually had paramedic ambulance workers for

school transportation from 1974 to 1978) took my mother aside and worked

communications out discreetly. A kindergarten room assistant was scheduled after

lunchtime and on call any other needed time of day. I would ask to use the

bathroom and a volunteer classmate of " oooh ooo pick me! " got to run down the

hall and say " Amy needs Mrs Lullietti! " .

It was firmly taught to be said that way, and not " One of the handicapped

Ashdons has to pee " , not " Amy's gotta go potty! " ... This was very progressive

stuff for it's time. When I got a powerchair in second grade the messenger

volunteer became just a door opener to let me out to roll myself to find Mrs

Lullietti on my own.

Somedays it took me twenty minutes of sprinting through the hallways, detouring

into the 'cafenastictorium' (cafeteria/gym/auditorium) area to talk with the

lunch ladies, chat with the nice custodian, on my way to getting Mrs Lullietti,

but I had no more puddle accidents.

When it comes to taking a leak during school days in Massachusetts it wasn't

legally required until 1974 when State Chapter 766 Mainstreaming began.

After 1974, akin to desegregation, it was a constant battle of whether your

parents advocated for you, or were easily buffaloed into agreements less in

favor of disability rights and easier for the school.

These tactics involved making your familly drop by shool for your bathroom

breaks, tutors sent to you for home schooling, being bussed to other towns with

nurses stations willing to help you, send you out to day gimp ghetto schools, or

the worst, end of the line, state institution crippleariums away from home.

From 1968 to 1974 My sister was taxi cabbed towns away, grades one to five, to a

'special classroom'. All the classmates were kids with physical disabilities but

academically 'normal'. Since the classmates had Muscular Dystrophy, SMA,Cysic

Fibrosis, and a girl needing a heart transplant. It was a good fit for a group

of kids with frail health, needing to stay away from colds, strep, flu. Everyone

understood frequent hospitalizations, and complex needs. There were assigned

teacher assistants to manage everything from bathroom breaks, turning pages,

winter coats, lunch set up, etcetera.

Mainstreaming in 1974 was sink or swim. This group of disabled peers were sent

back to their own towns school systems, and my sister was the only one to stay

alive to graduate and attend college. There weren't hybrid ideas of students

home schooling part time, or being all day mainstreamed with peers while having

assistive aides, set aside tutoring sessions. You'd fall way behind your

schoolmates during illnesses or kept back for too many sick days when your

parents couldn't get the school to understand you can't go out in below zero

weather.

Nowadays I hear some parents with a different issue, schools being so cheap or

using ureliable agencies that there's a revolving door parade of strangers

taking their kids with disabilities to the bathroom or injuring their children

because they don't know individual needs.