Page 27 - School Planning & Management, April 2018

GRAPHIC COURTESY OF MAHLUM ARCHITECTS AND PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
It is time to end the anxiety many children experience in school when they need to do something as basic as using the bathroom.
boil down to one common denominator, the lack of privacy.
Traditionally, the way school restrooms are laid out is intended to reduce privacy. While we have a cultural expectation of privacy, the design of school restrooms has always been driven by the need to super- vise. The youngest children, and in certain cases children with special needs, are usually provided single stall restrooms ac- cessible from their classroom. Otherwise, all students are expected to use communal bathrooms designated for girls and boys. Architects have been designing “gang” toilets in school buildings for years. It is an economical layout that complies with building code and relies on a centralized plumbing chase serving multiple toilets, urinals and hand wash sinks.
Besides being cost-effective, group restrooms, (the term “gang” has gradu- ally been replaced for obvious reasons)
are considered to be an efficient way for large groups of children to take a bathroom break in short time frames. They also offer a degree of direct supervision as teachers can observe groups of students as they enter and exit. Once inside of the restroom facility, there is generally no supervision, particularly in the higher grades. Aside from a closed stall door on a line of toilets, or a small partition between urinals, pri- vacy is nonexistent.
Ironically, single-stall restrooms are provided for adults throughout the build- ing usually designated for women or men. These facilities are generally locked and unavailable to students. The state of Cali- fornia now mandates all single-stall public bathrooms must be open to all genders.
Last year, New York City required that
all public schools must have at least one single-stall restroom available for student use by January 2018. While this may be a step in the right direction for students who prefer more privacy, the plan falls short in dealing with many of the issues associated with school restrooms. The restroom may not be accessible and could also be located in a remote area of the school challenging the child’s between-class time constraints.
The civil rights of transgender children have created a renewed interest concerning restrooms in our public schools. Almost without warning, school districts have been subjected to a very different challenge related to the designation of “girls” and “boys” restrooms. In 2015, a transgender
student brought suit against the school board in Gloucester County, Va., asking the court to order the school to allow him to use the boy’s restroom. What followed has been the subject of a national debate and goes well beyond the control of local school district administration. Meanwhile, all children continue to attend school every day and the issue of where they should use the bathroom is largely left with principals, teachers, and the students themselves. It has opened
a conversation about a design concept
that literally has not changed in decades. Ultimately the issue returns to those who design, build, and operate schools.
Grant High School in Northeast Portland, Ore., is currently undergoing a $116-million dollar modernization project which, among many improvements will convert all of the restrooms on campus to “gender-neutral.” Principal Carol Campbell states, “rather than calling them gender- neutral, we are calling the new design all-user restrooms or toilets because they are for everyone.” The innovative design
of the new restrooms (see graphic above) was created by Mahlum Architects. Group restrooms are located at corners of inter- secting corridors. Signage for “girls” or “boys” has been eliminated and the main entrances from each corridor do not have
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