Students taught responsibility by cleaning their school bathrooms

Posted 8:38AM on Sunday 11th August 2002 ( 22 years ago )

AVONDALE ESTATES - In some school bathrooms, Tom Keating discovered it was easier to find the toilet paper hanging from the ceiling than in the stalls. In others, the toilets were chronically backed up, obscenities were scrawled on the walls and cigarette butts littered the sinks. Everywhere he went, students told Keating they would rather hold it in all day than use filthy school restrooms. That's when he found his calling as ``the Bathroom Man.'' His mission: to get students to take on bathroom cleaning duty, learn responsibility and make school bathrooms a little less frightening. ``If you're here in a public place, you've got to learn some common responsibility. You don't pee on the floor someone needs to teach the kids that,'' said Keating, while walking through Avondale High School, just outside Atlanta. Traditionally, cleaning duties such as scrubbing toilets and taking out the trash are handled by custodians. Keating wants students to clean after themselves and help decorate bathrooms, while the schools pay for better supplies. At Avondale, the transformation was obvious. Students gave the women's bathroom a fresh coat of red paint, hung paintings and draped ribbons across the ceiling. Brightly colored flowers sat in fixtures on the walls. Obscene graffiti has vanished from stall doors and the restrooms almost smell pleasant. Many of the changes are more subtle. The signs above doors are changed from ``Girls'' and ``Boys'' to ``Women'' and ``Men.'' Newly installed soap dispensers are curved around the edges so it's impossible to balance cigarette butts there. Men's bathroom stalls now have doors, and heavy-duty toilet paper dispensers keep the paper stocked and prevent vandalism. Keating cites studies showing as many as four out of 10 students avoid their school restrooms completely and wait until they get home. While it's difficult to draw a direct link between cleaner bathrooms and academic achievement, Keating said students will pay closer attention in class if they're not concentrating on holding it in until school is over. ``Students didn't want to go in there they thought it was oppressive and horrible,'' said Avondale Principal Tim Freeman. Since Freeman started working with Keating and his group, called Project CLEAN (Citizens, Learners and Educators Against Neglect), students' attitudes have noticeably improved, he said. ``It doesn't teach anybody how to spell, but at the same time it makes the school more clean and appealing. It lifts their spirits a little bit,'' Freeman said. ``These fine touches, these mirrors and flowers, are crucial.'' Here's how Project CLEAN works: Keating approaches a school district and asks if they want help with their restrooms. He'll offer to inspect the bathrooms, draw up a report with proposed solutions and try to mobilize students and parents. Keating is paid out of school and government budgets, typically a few thousand dollars per school. Project CLEAN has caught on with some students, particularly those involved in clubs and extracurricular activities. ``Some of the restrooms, they were looking ugly. Now they smell better and look better and people want to use them,'' said Maranda Cooke, a senior at Avondale and member of the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, which has made clean restrooms one of its goals. ``Anytime I'm in the bathroom and I see trash on the floor, I pick it up and throw it in the trash can,'' said Allesta Brewley, a junior. ``If one person helps clean the bathroom, and other people see it, they'll probably do the same. We thought it was going to be a lot of hard work, but we made it fun.'' A common complaint among students about their bathrooms is the toilet paper. It's often single-ply tissue hung on a wall more than a dozen feet from the stall. In some schools, teachers must hand out toilet paper and students use it as a hall pass. The idea, school officials say, is that students will waste and destroy the tissue unless it's regulated. Jim Holloway, the school superintendent in Portales, N.M., who has worked with Project CLEAN, said he'd like to have enough trustworthy students and money to put indestructible toilet paper dispensers in the stalls. ``If the toilet paper is on the wall, and you find out you need a little more, how do you get more without totally embarrassing yourself?'' Holloway asked. ``And isn't it a little bit embarrassing to walk down the hall holding a roll of toilet paper?'' Keating hopes his clean-bathroom quest catches on beyond the several school systems he's contracted with so far. Tissue maker Kimberly Clark Corp. sponsored a restroom cleanup in Decatur, contributing toilet paper, paper towels and soap dispensers. A bill introduced in the Georgia Legislature's latest session would have required that school restrooms be kept stocked and clean. A publication from the Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation recently featured Project CLEAN in a 35-page pamphlet, which also discusses Parisi's Law, a simple theory about school bathrooms pushed by a sanitation-minded New York principal: ``Kids don't flush.'' Children need to learn to think for themselves, aim and flush, Keating said. ``Boys think they're firemen, and they think they're Michael Jordan throwing basketball hoops,'' he said. ``We haven't taught them self-discipline, so they go into that place and go bananas.''

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/8/191459