Parents in a British Catholic school are keeping their daughters at home after a shocking school renovation.
St. Mary’s College, a Catholic secondary school in England, is in hot water after the school removed the exterior walls from the girls’ bathrooms, exposing the stall doors to an open hallway, a classroom and a security camera, reported The Independent.
The school, which is a self-governed private school for 11-to-17-year-olds, reportedly decided to renovate the bathrooms to feature an open floor plan in an attempt to reduce smoking, bullying and truant behavior in the restrooms. Parents, however, slammed the Catholic school for what they considered to be a huge privacy violation.
“My daughter told me about it on Thursday, but I thought she was making a big deal over nothing until I saw it for myself,” said parent Tara Hodgson Jones. She told The Independent that she and several other parents plan on keeping their daughters home until something is done about the renovations — and soon.
“My daughter feels scared and unsafe — it’s shocking,” Jones said.
The boys’ stalls are reportedly undergoing similar changes, and Jones shared that she would also be keeping her son home when the time came. According to parents, the school should come up with an alternative method to prevent bad behavior in the bathrooms.
“If the problem is bullying, smoking and skipping class, they could have approached it in so many other ways,” Jones added.
“My daughter was bullied in year 10, and that was in the classroom, the yard and the lunch hall, so thinking that taking a toilet wall down will stop it is stupid.”
Another parent told the Liverpool Echo that taking down the entire bathroom wall was “disgusting.”
She continued, “They clearly haven’t considered what girls past puberty have to deal with, so to have only one door for privacy without the added security of a room is terrible.”
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