For years, the bathrooms at AHS have had issues. Examples include stalls not locking, leaks, vandalism, missing soap dispensers, and understocked supplies. The bathrooms frequently have multiple kids hanging out, skipping class or doing illegal activities. The commons girls’ bathroom in the morning, for example, always has at least 5 girls either getting ready or vaping, sometimes both. The girls’ bathrooms in the basement/science building are very dirty and old. The sink barely works and most of the stalls don’t lock. The bathroom by the library has two stalls that lock, and the rest don’t. Plus, one of the stalls that does lock has a leaking toilet.
Last year, almost all the bathrooms were closed because people vandalized or took things from them. This resulted in a strict bathroom policy for everyone. This year, however, there’s been fewer closures but more monitoring. In the boy’s bathroom there’s hardly ever a soap dispenser because someone stole it or there’s no soap. The bathrooms in the H building last year were in terrible shape, only one of the three girls’ bathrooms had a mirror, and to make up for it they put a tiny mirror that could fit in a locker in its place. The heaters were broken in the winters, there were constantly missing ceiling tiles, and lights that wouldn’t work. These issues weren’t fixed let alone dealt with. This year, since the building is under construction, they’re fixing these problems, they’ve replaced one mirror, but haven’t fixed any of the ceiling tiles or lights.
Also, there’s always one person vaping or smoking weed in the bathroom. The middle school has cameras outside the bathrooms to see who’s going in and out at what times and vape detectors inside all of them. The high school, however, does not. We would benefit from this a lot; we would have less unreasonable searches (which happens all too often). Students, especially girls on campus, have been called into the offices to be searched when they had no part in the things happening in the bathrooms. As well as less suspensions and/or expulsions, less activity in the bathrooms and probably less drug use on campus.
The middle school has newly designed bathrooms with more public open hand washing areas that discourage loitering. Ours are either locked or closed due to vandalism or flooding and there is usually at least one toilet clogged. There is always writing on the walls that doesn’t get cleaned even when they’re closed for vandalism. There have been times when students have had to go to four different bathrooms because they were locked or there were people vaping. When students are trying to find open bathrooms they often get in trouble with teachers since they were gone for long periods of time, this is not fair to the students given the fact they have no control over the bathrooms being closed or locked. These are just a few reasons why the bathrooms at this school need to be renovated or have things added to help stop these problems and fix them.
