After writing countless referrals for kids using bathroom breaks to skip and wander the halls/smoke in bathroom/go off campus, we teachers finally gave up when every single one was not answered by admin. Most of the time, they deleted them without even speaking to the kid. I told one student I was writing her up for leaving my class to “go to the bathroom,” but then went home, and she said, “are they actually going to talk to me?” During testing, admin noticed a ton of kids wandering the halls. I did too, many of them the usual suspects for skipping/wandering including some I personally wrote up throughout the year. Admin was furious about it and, of course, blamed us. You can read the lovely email written below.

“Students should not be permitted to roam the halls at any time throughout the next several days of testing. If your teacher made final exam or review is too short to take up the entirety of the exam period, revisit them and make them longer. Immediately. Today we have had to deal with several situations where students were roaming, being disruptive to testing environments, and otherwise rude to various members of our community because they were “done” early with their review sessions or tests and their teachers allowed them out of the rooms.

“This, my friends, is unacceptable during final exams. And it is inconsiderate to your fellow colleagues who would appreciate the opportunity to test their students with fidelity. There is literally NO reason that there should be any students in the hall during exam sessions. Even if yours is a review session, use the time wisely and vary your instruction so that your students have things to work on and do throughout the entirety of the exam period. Remember, just because you and your students are not testing, it doesn’t mean that others around you are not.

“Thank you for your compliance with this from here on out. There were too many instances and teachers allowing these things to happen for me to not send this to the whole staff. My apologies. I know that this is not a preferred method of communication when receiving constructive feedback. But we need everyone on board with us in this regard.“