MCPS to Hire 2,800 Bathroom Attendants for 2023/24
On a recent Wednesday morning the normally chaotic, echoey six-stall bathroom in the math wing at Walter Johnson Middle School in Germantown was free of students, and quiet. Still, Pat O'Neill, 62, dressed in a black blazer and matching pants, and black and white printed silk shirt, stood by the sink, a white paper towel in her hand, ready for the next teen to enter. Eventually Mary Garrett, an eighth grader with a hall pass, did.
“I love having an attendant,” Ms. Garrett said, picking through the bowl of mints on a dressing table stocked with amenities like perfume, hair accessories, Q-Tips, sprays, even ear plugs for those who found band practice too loud. “The bathroom attendant is a game changer. I actually look forward to going at school now.”
It’s not just personal care items on O’Neill’s dressing table. The box of Narcan nasal spray, automated external defibrillator (AED), first aid kit, pepper spray, and radio connected to the school’s resource officer are things the CPR-certified attendant hopes she won’t need.
O’Neill’s position is part of a pilot program quietly rolled out by MCPS in January in response to a litany of incidents in school bathrooms, including gun violence, fights, and drug and alcohol overdoses. Successful beyond anyone’s expectations, the program is to be introduced at all 210 MCPS schools in the 2023/2024 school year.
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In the first half of the current school year, Walter Johnson Middle School averaged fifteen bathroom-related misconduct incidents per month, including fights, vaping, and alcohol abuse. There have been no incidents since school resumed in January with attendants stationed in all eight of the building’s student restrooms.
MCPS will hire 2,800 restroom attendants, enough for every student restroom in the MCPS system, plus up to 300 substitute attendants. The new hires will increase MCPS’s full-time personnel by eleven percent. With starting salaries pegged at $58,980, personnel costs and overhead will add $375 million to the system’s $3 billion annual budget. School officials say lives saved are worth every penny.
“It’s not easy, but it’s rewarding,” O’Neill said of her position. “The bathroom is the main part of everything. Students cry in here. They lean on my shoulder. I’m like a psychiatrist. Sometimes they’re sick and throw up. Or they come in and make private calls. Or they want to vape and are disappointed that I’m here, so they can’t.”
