Why Are School Bathroom Stall Doors So Small? A Teacher Explains What This Means For Kids
Last Tuesday, I was standing by the third-grade bathroom door monitoring pre-lunch break when Milo came out, ears bright red, twisting the torn cuff of his T-Rex hoodie. He wouldn’t look me in the eye at first, just mumbled that he didn’t want to go back in there ever again. After a minute of quiet prodding, he said it: when he was sitting on the toilet, a first grader leaned down and peeked under the door. The gap between the bottom of the stall door and the floor is so big, he said, the kid could see his knees. Everyone knows when you’re pooping, he said. And now everyone knows it was me.
I’ve been teaching third grade at this elementary school for seven years, and I’d heard versions of this complaint before. Lila, who moved up to the middle school wing last year, told me halfway through fifth grade that she’d started holding her bladder all day because she didn’t want anyone to see her changing a pad through the gap. A quiet boy in my class two years ago ended up in the nurse’s office with a painful stomach ache from holding it for three straight days, and it was only when his mom called me after school that he admitted he was too embarrassed to use the school stalls. I’d nodded and sympathized each time, but it wasn’t until Milo’s meltdown that I actually went into a stall and checked it out for myself.
I knelt down on the sticky lemon-disinfectant-scented linoleum, and sure enough: I could see straight across to the other stalls. The gap was almost 12 inches. The top of the door only came up to my chin, and I’m 5’4”. Any of my students over 4’10” would have the top of their head sticking out for anyone walking by to see. I stood up, leaning against the cinder block wall, and thought the same unpolished question so many parents and kids have: why the hell are the bathroom stall doors so small anyway?
Turns out, the answer is the same as it is for so many questionable school choices: safety. After a series of high profile incidents in schools decades ago, districts started building stalls with large gaps at the top and bottom so staff could check on kids if something goes wrong. The logic goes that if a kid passes out, locks themselves in, or is hurt, you can see in quickly without having to break the door down. It makes sense on paper, I guess. But what no one seems to account for is how this design hits kids right when they’re developing a whole new sense of body privacy and boundaries.
By age 5 or 6, most kids start to feel uncomfortable with other people seeing them naked or using the bathroom. It’s a normal, healthy part of growing up: it’s how they learn autonomy, respect for their own body, and respect for other people’s bodies. For neurodivergent kids like Milo, who struggles with unplanned social interaction and sensory overstimulation, that need for privacy is even stronger. For pre-teens going through puberty, it’s not just awkward—it can be humiliating to have anyone guess what you’re doing behind that door, when you’re already hyper-aware of every change happening to your body. Instead of supporting that healthy development, our stall designs basically tell kids their need for privacy doesn’t matter.
After Milo’s episode, I started brainstorming cheap, easy fixes I could do for our grade level bathroom without waiting for the district to approve a six-month renovation. I remembered a simple hack for small home bathroom stalls, and picked up a pack of tension rods and a couple of fabric shower curtains from the dollar store on my way home that night. Total cost was $7.50. I cut the curtains to fit the 12 inch gap at the bottom of each stall, slipped them onto the tension rods, and clicked the rods into place between the stall walls. It took me 20 minutes after school one day, no tools, no permanent modifications.
That’s the thing that bugs me most about this issue: it’s such an easy fix, but it rarely gets talked about. Parents hear their kid say they don’t want to use the school bathroom, and a lot of the time they just tell them to get over it, or blame the kid for being too shy. Teachers hear the complaint and figure it’s just how school bathrooms are, nothing we can do. But the small changes make a huge difference. I’ve had three fewer kids complain about bathroom privacy in the two months since we put up the curtains, and Milo even told me last week it’s “okay now” to go during class.
For parents, if your kid says they don’t need to go to the bathroom at school, or they always wait until they get home, don’t brush it off as just being silly. Ask them specifically: do the stall doors make you uncomfortable? A lot of kids are too embarrassed to say what’s actually wrong, they’ll just complain about stomach aches or refuse to go. If they do say the stalls are too open, validate that feeling first—don’t say “it’s no big deal” or “just don’t worry about it.” Say “that sounds really uncomfortable, that’s a fair thing to be upset about.” Then reach out to your school’s administration or PTA to ask about simple fixes like the curtain trick. It doesn’t require a big budget or a full renovation.
For other teachers, if you’re looking for a quick win to make your students more comfortable, try the tension rod trick. It’s low effort, low cost, and it doesn’t create any actual safety issues—we still unlock doors from the outside if a kid doesn’t come out after a few minutes, same as we always did. The gap never was that useful for safety anyway. If someone is having an emergency in the stall, you can unlock the door, you don’t need to peek through a gap to see it.
We’re presenting the idea to our PTA next month to fund curtains for every bathroom in the school. There’s already some pushback from people who say it’s a safety hazard, that it’ll let kids hide and do things they shouldn’t. I get the concern, but I also know that we’ve had zero issues in our bathroom for two months, and we’ve had a whole lot more kids comfortable enough to use the bathroom when they need to, instead of holding it all day and ending up with a painful stomach ache.
It’s not a perfect fix. We still have the gap at the top of the doors for taller kids, and the main hallway bathrooms that get used by passing classes still don’t have any coverage. It’s one of those small, messy changes that doesn’t fix everything, but it makes things a little better. And that’s most of what teaching and parenting is, isn’t it? Fixing the small stuff that no one else thinks about, to make kids feel a little more safe and comfortable in their own skin.
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