Page 28 - School Planning & Management, April 2018

FACILITIES A MOMENT OF PRIVACY
Privacy without anxiety. The photos in this article are of traditional school restrooms, but the graphic on page 27 is a new innovative design. This “all-user” restroom provides a private space for natural and necessary functions that is clean, safe and free from any stigma associated with their identity and eliminates the need for school board policy, state or federal legislation, or a sign on a door that that designates who is allowed to use the bathroom.
doors. There are six private toilet rooms accessible from the interior space with full length doors that may be locked from the inside. From the bathroom lobby, locked doors indicate “occupied” in red, otherwise they are designated “available” in green. The bathroom lobby is equipped with sinks and mirrors for everyone. Accessible toilets are provided for handicapped access and accessible handwashing facilities are also provided in the bathroom lobby.
There are several notable advantages
to the restroom design being used at Grant High School. All students, and for that matter all adults are afforded complete pri- vacy without the need to designate spaces for girls or boys. Students can be easily su- pervised by all members of the school staff as the restroom space is in a gender-neutral environment. Custodial services are
easier to schedule offering more frequent cleaning and restocking of paper goods by all members of the custodial staff. JoAnn Wilcox, a principal architect with Mahlum and a leader for changing school restroom design shared, “I hope in some measure
we can provide one example that works for school districts that are battling this issue.”
Offering additional privacy with individual rooms may raise concerns for
the well-being of some children since they have the opportunity to lock themselves
in a room. In this type of environment all teachers should have master key access and the capability, under appropriate condi- tions, to unlock a door. Technology could be introduced to provide an alert for any restroom door in locked position exceeding a reasonable time limit. In many ways this condition is not entirely unlike a locked stall door in a traditional group restroom with one major exception. The single stall approach lends itself much more to adult supervision by male and female adults. In fact, access to single stall restrooms can be monitored on the school’s video surveil- lance system without violating the oc- cupant’s expectation of privacy. This most certainly is not an option in traditional group restrooms.
With additional supervision, many other long-standing problems associ-
ated with school restrooms are more
easily resolved. Acts of vandalism or other forms of mischief are limited to smaller individual spaces. Identification of those responsible may be enhanced by witnesses to entry or exit from individual spaces. Wilcox explains, “with two ways in and out of the restroom, we can all but eliminate
the school restroom as a common location for bullying incidents.” Smoking can be detected by smoke alarms and more likely attributed to an individual. The social exchanges that occur in group restrooms, which prevent many children from enter- ing the room, are drastically reduced.
It is time to end the anxiety many children experience in school when they need to do something as basic as using the bathroom. All persons should be provided a private space for natural and necessary functions that is clean, safe and free from any stigma associated with their identity. With proper attention applied by the design community, school facilities can be constructed in a way that eliminates the need for school board policy, state or federal legislation, or a sign on a door that that designates who is allowed to use the bathroom. SPM
>> Andrew LaRowe is president of BAISCA LLC located in Winston Salem, N.C. He can be reached at andrew@baisca.com. Mike Raible is founder and CEO of The School Solutions Group in Char- lotte, NC and the author of “Every Child, Every Day: Achieving Zero Dropouts Through Performance- Based Education” He can be reached at mkraible@ theschoolsolutionsgroup.com.
28 SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / APRIL 2018
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