North Alabama school removes bathroom stall doors to combat vaping

A Lauderdale County high school is taking a unique approach to dealing with teens smoking and vaping in bathrooms. This week, they took the doors right off some bathroom stalls.

Administrators say students at Wilson High School are breaking the rules by sneaking vapes into school.

To help stop students from vaping, some doors have been removed from the boys bathrooms.

It’s a trend sweeping the nation, especially in America’s youth. E-cigarettes, also known as e-cigs, vapes and e-hookahs, are a big problem in schools.

Teachers, staff and students at Wilson High School are seeing and smelling the problem right inside the walls.

Two weeks ago, a scary and dangerous situation happened to a student vaping in a bathroom. Principal Gary Horton says one of the students was found passed out in a stall after vaping.

He says every day a student is sneaking off to the bathroom to vape.

Horton says to stop students from taking smoke breaks, the best solution was to remove some of the stall doors in the boys bathrooms.

Some parents don’t agree with his discipline.

“Me, as a parent, personally, I think that’s a little excessive,” said Brandon Campbell.

“I don’t like it. They take their only private place in the school that they can do their business,” said Rachel Munsey.

Some parents believe the school could have come up with a better solution.

“Bad vaping problem, then you need spotters in the bathroom. You need someone adult to go in there to make sure there’s not any vaping going on," said Munsey.

“It’s a little over-excessive. Maybe they need to put a monitor in the hall, like they do. Usually they have a truancy officer or a police officer at the school. Have them monitor the hallway because a bathroom is for each individual person’s privacy," said Campbell.

Horton says the removal for the stall doors could be temporary as they work to figure out other solutions to students from vaping in bathrooms. He would not address why it wasn’t done in other bathrooms.