At South High, finding an open bathroom has become a daily struggle, with most boys’ restrooms being out of order. This leaves boys desperately roaming around the school to find a bathroom before the bell rings.
Freshman Dylan Ariston gave his opinion on the lack of open boys’ restrooms. He said even the ones that are open are not in great condition.
“The bathrooms here are gross and smell very bad,” Ariston said.
Many students, boys and girls, have expressed frustration and displeasure with the bathroom situation at South High. However, currently there are no girls’ restrooms that are closed–all the closed and broken restrooms are boys’.
“When I walk into the bathroom and see a Mountain Dew bottle in the urinal, it greatly discourages me from using the bathroom,” said freshman Patrick Hill.
Assistant Principal Eric Wilhelm is in charge of the building construction and conditions at South High. He gave more insight about why so many bathrooms have been closed.
“We have also had issues with people breaking sinks off of the walls. So standing on sinks, that, again, creates a problem,” Wilhelm said. “People are also using the bathrooms as places to smoke or to do things they’re not supposed to. And so when that happens, we close down the bathrooms to try to clear out the smells and things like that.”
Wilhelm said that one reason the bathrooms take so long to reopen is because of a lack of maintenance staff.
“The problem is that the Parkway School District has two plumbers for 29 buildings,” Wilhelm said. “And the business bathroom right now has a sink and a toilet that are both broken and all of the parts have been ordered, but because there is essentially one guy that works on this side of the school district for all of the buildings in the South area. We have to wait for him to have enough time to take apart the current toilet and the sink, take those off, and then repair the new ones, so the hope is that he will have time when there aren’t other major things going on around the school district to do during summer break.”
Wilhelm also commented on the problems the school has been having with the boys’ restroom in the World Language area.
“There is also a problem where something was flushed down the toilet in the World Language bathroom, and since the pipes are in the walls for that bathroom, it is a whole different problem for the school to deal with, so those bathrooms might be closed for a while,” Wilhelm said. “The hope is at least the business one will be back operational before students return from summer break.”
