During the 2022-2023 school year, students’ bathrooms have been inconsistent. Crowds gather at those that remain unlocked.

At a time, there are usually no more than two or three bathrooms unlocked for each gender. They’re often not opened for use until after 1st period, which ends at 9:55 am. This results in many students being crowded in one bathroom at a time, making the process slow and inconvenient.

A CCSD maintenance expert, who prefers to remain anonymous, responded, “Lack of care and concern. You know, they are communal spaces. They are necessary communal spaces. And it’s unfortunate. People can’t take care of it and go out of their way to damage them.”

Bathrooms have to be locked daily because of vandalism, up to four acts of vandalism a day. There was a recent incident in a gender-neutral bathroom, where a sink was ripped off the wall.

“Pipes were broken. Hoses were broken there. It was flooded. Tiles ripped up from the wall, so there’s wall damage It’s going to be one of the bigger restroom fixes,” the CCSD maintenance expert said.

The repair is estimated to cost around one thousand dollars. How are people who commit these acts going to be held accountable?

“And so I think part of the effort to kind of offset that is trying to target the kids who are exemplifying these behaviors, and then having serious conversations with them, giving them consequences, and then try to, you know, hopefully, hope that we can partner with their parents to talk through it and say, ‘Hey, don’t, please don’t do this, you’re impacting the school in a very negative way,” the Assistant Principal Bruce Jones, who supervises discipline safety, said.

Student bathroom vandalism not only impacts our peers in the building but also heavily the school itself and those who have to take care of it.