Mayor Nutter Taking School Toilet Paper Requests on Twitter

Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter took to Twitter last night, telling people to let him know which schools needed bathroom supplies. The mayor!

The above tweet, from Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, was sent last night. It’s a laudable idea: Some schools don’t have enough toilet paper, hand soap or paper towels in the bathrooms, so the mayor has volunteered his Twitter page for schools to put out an easy alert when they need bathroom supplies.

It’s also a laughable idea: The mayor has to go to Twitter to ask where best to direct bathroom supplies to schools. This is a city where the Constitution Center just honored Malala Yousafzai for advocating for girls’ education, and we can’t even get enough toilet paper for our schools.

Actually, it’s worse than that: Not only do some schools not have enough bathroom supplies, but we don’t even know which ones they are. The mayor had to go to Twitter and ask.

This is not a new issue, of course. In August, teacher Diane Reznik told CBS 3: “You have to make sure you bring your own toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer.” Parents have sued the state, saying their complaints about “squalid and insufficient toilet facilities” have been ignored by the Education Department.

The apparent new idea to get adequate bathroom supplies into schools, I remind you, to have people at schools without toilet paper direct their complaints to the Twitter account of the mayor of a city with 1.5 million people. Eh, it’s worth a shot I guess.