4) Research

Bathrooms a reflection of school's climate

Monday, February 28, 2000
By Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
There's a saying among school administrators that, if you want to feel the pulse of a particular building, one of the first things you should do is stick your head into the restroom.

Find clean floors and walls and adequate soap and paper towel supplies, and there's probably a high degree of school pride, as well as a general feeling among students that they're safe.
But if you discover squalor -- years-old graffiti scribbled on the walls, tobacco chew in the urinals or thick cigarette smoke -- chances are students feel threatened.
"When we think about school safety, we tend to think about metal detectors," said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services in Cleveland and author of "Practical School Security."
But issues of cleanliness, graffiti and even soap and paper towels, he believes, tell you as much about the climate of a school as the strength of its academic program and number of extracurricular activities.

Restrooms smell bad

Safety concerns aren't the only reason some students are reluctant to use the school restrooms. It's also because many of the restrooms are downright dirty.
"They smell. None of the doors on the stalls shut if they even had a door. There's cigarette butts everywhere, and people don't flush," freshman Alex Steinberg, 15, said of the restrooms at Mt. Lebanon Senior High, particularly those on the fifth floor.
His twin sister, Liz, said the girls' rooms were just as bad.
"There's ashes on the toilet seats and writing all over the walls. ... It's pretty gross."
The cleanliness issue, of course, is hardly unique to a particular school district or even this generation. Teens' smoking in restrooms has always been a problem, though it may be worse today, according to administrators, because so many teen-agers are hooked.
Paula Pellefone, an instructor at Deer Lake's East Union Intermediate Center, remembers that part of her daily duty when she first started 20 years ago was running "potty patrol."
"You'd go in the bathroom and head to the stalls, and smell the smoke and see two or three pairs of feet under the door."
So, if the problem is so pervasive and has long been, why not crack down on bad behavior in the bathroom? In a word, say school officials, the answer is privacy.
Surveillance cameras in toilet areas are considered intrusive, though some districts, such as Ringgold in Washington County, place them outside in the hallway to monitor youths going in and out of the bathroom.
But there's another reason, too, said Lou Baldassare, director of the Center for School Safety and Violence Prevention.
"It really comes down to consistent control. The only sure-fire way [to keep bathrooms safe and clean] is to monitor them on a regular basis."
Though most schools require certain faculty members to spot-check bathrooms during hall duty, it is impossible to monitor every child, said North Hills Junior High Principal Joseph Belotti. "It's a situation of being in the right location at the right time."
That is true even in districts where extra security guards have been hired to counter smoking or vandalism in the bathroom. Shaler Area and Chartiers Valley high schools are in that group.

Pride, involvement

As for teachers, they are often kept from hall duty between classes (when restrooms are used the most) because students stay after class to ask questions, pointed out Pine-Richland High School Principal Robert Johnson.
Even if they are in the halls, they might not go into the bathrooms as often as administrators would like.
"Teachers just don't like to go into bathrooms and get into that kind of confrontation," said James DeTrude, principal of Avonworth High School.
One solution might be to hire someone to sit in every bathroom throughout the day, but DeTrude doubts anyone would apply.
There's also the privacy issue. "You've got three or four teen-age boys using the bathroom and there is some adult standing there watching them. ... There's a certain comfort level there."