By Cooper Gregg/Editor

     Whether it’s rules about passes and when students are allowed to go to the bathroom or new legislation pertaining to transgender students’ bathroom use, school bathrooms have previously fallen under heavy controversy.

     Looking more specifically here at the high school, a different problem arises: bathroom closures during lunch periods.

     When a school already only contains two bathrooms per gender, any sort of closure becomes major. While closures are inevitable as things break and messes happen, consistent closures are a different story all together.

     Having the lower restrooms closed every day during lunches is equivalent to not having lower restrooms at all for periods which make up roughly a third of the day. This fact on its own is a rough statistic, but when you look at the actual numbers, things only get worse

     The International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAMPO) publishes the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) among other codes and resources by working “in concert with government and industry to implement comprehensive plumbing and mechanical systems around the world,” as per their website.

     Table 422.1 located on pages 38 through 42 of the 2024 UPC gives requirements on minimum plumbing facilities per the number of people occupying the building.

     Located on page 39, there are the minimums for the high school as shown in the row for type of occupancy E which is described as “Educational occupancy- private or public school.”

     Starting with the male statistics, according to the Institute of Education Sciences’s (IES) National Center for Education Statistics, there were 873 male students enrolled in the 2023-2024 school year. For males the UPC requires one water closet (flush toilet) per 50 males. 

     Rounding down to 850 male students, according to the UPC’s minimum requirements, Stow needs 17 water closets for male students to adhere to code. There is an additional requirement for males, that being one urinal per 100 male students. Along with this, every urinal above the required amount, which Stow does do, allows for one less required water closet as long as two thirds of the original requirement are still present. This bumps this required number down to roughly 11 rounding down slightly.

     Looking at the reality of the situation, there are two in the upper restroom and three in the lower, adding to a total of five, which on its own is a little under half of the requirement. 

     When accounting for the lower restrooms daily closure, there are only the two upper water closets remaining, which is a measly 18.18 percent of the minimum amount. 

     The UPC requires slightly more water closets for female students, with one per 40 females. According to the IES, Stow had 850 female students enrolled in the 2023-2024 school year. This means that the UPC would require a minimum of 21 (rounded down) water closets for females. 

     In total, the two girls restrooms have 13 water closets, with eight of those being located in the lower restroom. With both bathrooms open, the girls have it slightly better, as their total is roughly 62 percent of the UPC minimum.

     With five water closets in the upstairs female bathroom, the girls statistics are only marginally better with 23.81 percent of the minimum being fulfilled during lunch periods when these upper restrooms are the only option.

     One simple change that could be made to aid in padding these statistics a small amount is by closing the upper restrooms during lunch and instead keeping the lower bathrooms open. These statistics are still low and far beneath the minimums; however, this small change does help a bit with the boys percent during lunches going from 18.18 to 27.27 and the girls from 23.81 to 38.1. 

     It is more than likely that these codes do not apply to high school legally as the building was made far before this more recent code was put in place, and buildings typically are exempt to the codes that were around at the time. Regardless of it being a legal issue or not, it starts to become an issue of safety as we fall so far below what is now considered the minimums, as these codes “are rules that provide for safe and civilized living” according to the IAPMO website. *

     As of at least 2012, the UPC has had the same minimum requirements for schools when it comes to bathroom facilities. Even if the school isn’t breaking any rules, it is still cause for concern that Stow’s restroom count is so far below today’s accepted minimums.

     When speaking with administration about the school restrooms, assistant principal Jayson Yeagley stated that he believes new policy has helped cut down on unsavory activity taking place in the bathrooms.

     “We’ve assigned teachers and various staff members to be outside of the restroom to make sure that they are first on post. If anything’s odd or they see trends or they smell something or hear something, they say something,” Yeagley said.

     According to Yeagley the reasoning for closing the lower restrooms during lunches is because of a lack of “human capital.”

     “Staff were taking their lunches, and we weren’t able to consistently cover it during lunch, and it only made sense to close that just because we couldn’t be consistent with the way that we were applying these adjustments,” Yeagley said.

     Yeagley firmly believes, while not totally ideal, that these changes implemented have been successful in their intended goals.

     “The adjustments we’ve made, obviously, have been a little bit of an inconvenience for students, [and] for staff, but the data shows it is helping in a lot of important ways,” Yeagley said.

     When discussing the aforementioned statistics with Yeagley, he was unable to share any actual numbers or statistics other than his statement that, “[the data] is definitely trending in a better way.”

     Not only do these closures conflict with international, universal code, but also with the schools own internal systems.

     The colored hallways each have their own distinct colored pass which is in an effort to stop students from wandering the school by keeping them confined to their own colored hallway matching the pass being carried. 

     This system in itself is very intelligent. It allows for easy monitoring of those who are not where they should be due to the passes being the wrong color; however, this system completely falls apart when you are required to leave your floor to use the restroom. 

     During periods where the lower restrooms are closed, students from the two lower hallways have to go up to the second floor to use the upper restrooms, which means they are bringing different colored passes into the different colored upper hallways.

     With all four colored passes converging in one restroom, as well as the chaos of lunches, the monitoring power of this pass system is completely lost.

     High school officials are potentially compromising safety by lowering the already lower than minimum amounts of bathroom facilities as well as sabotaging its own hall pass system, all to solve an issue that can just as easily be fixed by placing a staff member outside of the restroom.

     School officials need to look at their priorities and decide what they believe to be a bigger issue–having to find an additional staff member/members for three periods of the day, or sitting more than halfway below what is seen as the minimum requirements for restrooms for a major portion of the school day.