A Yelm Middle School eighth grade student is still recovering from an incident she described as stressful and embarrassing.
Byllie Eighinger-Lemm, 13, asked her teacher if she could use the restroom Tuesday, Oct. 15, explaining to her teacher that she was having her period and was bleeding through her clothes. Her teacher denied her permission as Eighinger-Lemm had used her three restroom passes given to students each quarter, and the student texted her father, Bill Lemm, explaining the circumstances.
Lemm told her to stand up and leave the class to address the issue without asking for permission. When Eighinger-Lemm exited the restroom covered in blood, another teacher met her in the hallway and escorted her back to her classroom to retrieve her belongings before escorting her to in-school detention. She sat there for 15 to 20 minutes in her soiled clothes before her father picked her up from the office.
“When I got picked up, I was crying and tearing up because it was very stressful, and I felt embarrassed and dirty,” Eighinger-Lemm said. “When I came back into the classroom to get my bag, the whole class was looking at me. There was some chatter and definitely a lot of looks.”
She didn’t return to school for the rest of the week, but when she returned on Monday, Oct. 21, her teacher apologized to her and claimed that she didn’t know the extent of her situation. But Eighinger-Lemm said she did explain the severity and was still denied. The first day back to school was a day she feared having to eventually face.
“It was very embarrassing seeing a lot of the kids that were in that class when that happened, and it was stressful because I had a lot of students come ask me why I was gone,” she said.
Lemm said he contacted multiple school and school district officials, including Superintendent Chris Woods, about the situation. He visited the district office in hopes of filing a formal complaint, and he claims that the receptionist laughed at him and refused to give him the paperwork. Lemm said he was told to write down the issues leading up to the complaint and either drop it off or email it.
In an email, Yelm Community Schools (YCS) Human Resources Director Doyla “DeeDee” Buckingham told Lemm the school district has no specific form for people to fill out for a complaint against a teacher.
“I’m not a vindictive person. People have asked me to throw the teacher under the bus or go in and shame her in her classroom. I’m not that kind of person,” Lemm said. “That’s the school’s job to deal with the teacher part. My part about it is policy. With as many people that have jumped on this bandwagon, I’m going to take this as far as I can until something changes.”
Teri Melone, YCS’ communications director, said in a statement that the district is investigating the incident.
“We are aware of the situation and are investigating the incident. District and building administration have been in contact with the family, and we will follow up with the family when the investigation is completed,” she said.
Lemm posted to several local Facebook groups about the incident and received hundreds of responses from parents who had children who dealt with similar incidents around the area. One parent said that her daughter, who was in the same class as Eighinger-Lemm, spoke out to her teacher and defended her classmate, and her family received a call to her home later that day. The extent of the call was not immediately known.
“I don’t know what she said, but when I found out that she stuck up for me, it was very nice. I was very thankful for a lot of the comments saying how people can stick with each other and support each other,” Eighinger-Lemm said.
Eighinger-Lemm is putting aside her embarrassment and humiliation for the opportunity to prevent this dilemma from happening to other girls in the district. She wants the district to understand what she went through and how it made her feel. She believes that the restroom pass system should be abolished because students can’t control when they need to use the restroom.
“It shouldn’t be something that could happen to someone younger than me because that specific teacher teaches younger grades, and it would be really stressful for younger kids to have to go through that,” Eighinger-Lemm said. “I put myself out there so it would stop and it wouldn’t have to happen to anyone else.”