Tampons and pads: free hygiene items in the girls' toilets at school

Created: 05/09/2022, 16:22

By: Andreas Beschorner

In the future, free hygiene articles will be made available free of charge in the secondary schools in the Freising district.

© IMAGO / Shot Shop

In future, tampons and pads will be made available free of charge in the girls' toilets at schools.

The committee came up with different solutions.

District – The school committee decided on Thursday to provide free hygiene items for schoolgirls in the secondary schools for which the district of Freising is responsible as the material expense bearer.

In contrast to a similar application by the FDP, the cheaper solution was chosen and the appeal of the youth group followed.

He had suggested placing baskets with hygiene products in the girls' toilets.

Costs per year: around 2500 euros.

The FDP would have endorsed vending machines, which would have cost the district 25,000 euros.

The current practice in many schools, of handing out tampons and sanitary napkins upon request in the secretary's office, according to the justification of both motions, takes too little account of the pupils' sense of shame.

The girls' toilets - both applications were similar in content - were the right place to provide these articles.

basket or machine

The main discussion was whether the "basket solution" or the variant with machines should be preferred - without telling the schools how to actually implement it in practice.

The costs played no role in the decision.

The administration in the person of Florian Plajer would have preferred the FDP variant because the effort is less and the handling is easier and this saves the cleaning staff time.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

But the majority of district councilors saw it differently: Leon Eckert (Greens) spoke out in favor of the basket variant.

Hans Sailer (FW) suggested implementing the "small basket solution" first.

You can always buy vending machines later.

Joana Bayraktar (Greens) shared this view.

Melanie Hilz (AfD) asked whether there was already experience that the hygiene articles were being "cheated".

The denied Plajer.

Also: "Even with toilet paper, people make a mess of it, and yet we supply our schools with it."

"stigmata"?

For Bönig (Greens) this is “complete nonsense”

Samuel Fosso (FSM) and Martin Pschorr (SPD) were clearly in favor of implementing the decision of the youth group: After all, these are the people who are at stake.

The young people would no doubt have given their thoughts to that.

Eva-Maria Oberloher (CSU) and Eva Bönig (Greens) were against baskets and vending machines: Picking up tampons and pads in the secretariat has proven to be a good idea, according to Oberloher.

Using words like "stigmata" to argue like the FDP is "complete nonsense," said Bönig.

It is "a very natural subject" and should be treated as such.

In the end, the FDP application fell through with 0:13 votes.

The decision of the youth district conference was accepted with 11:2 votes.