Have you used school restrooms at Farrington? The school has restrooms that students can use before school, during recess, after school, and during class with a pass from the teacher. There are restrooms located in A building by the registration office, by the security office, and the cafeteria for girls; A building first floor, J building first floor, and also the cafe for boys. The school faculty try their best to keep their restrooms clean and able to be used by every student, but there are difficulties in the process.
Mr. Hartwell Lee Loy, Farrington’s Vice Principal, spoke about the school’s hardships in maintaining the availability of school restrooms. “We have a shortage of school staff who can monitor the bathrooms. We monitor the bathrooms and provide the necessary supervision to keep our bathrooms safe and secure. But, we still need to do a better job monitoring our bathrooms consistently for class cutting, graffiti, vaping, and vandalism,” said Lee Loy. Routine checks on the bathrooms are done daily by checking if items need to be restocked and the restroom cleanliness
Mr. Kalfred Centeio, the Head Custodian at Farrington, is at the forefront of operating how the
school monitors and keeps their restrooms clean and functional. Most of Farrington’s bathrooms closed down because of toilets not functioning and sinks being broken. In greater detail about why our school is understaffed on custodians, Centeio said, “We only have two plumbers for the state’s facilities, and they have 63 schools to do repairs on, so it kind of gets busy. Sometimes they don't come out for like two or three months.” To mitigate their slow repairs, Centeio has made efforts to put in all the work orders to get new toilet seats and other things to provide more restrooms for the students.
Bathrooms take around 20 to 25 minutes to do the necessary procedures for disinfecting and restocking; however, students can sometimes make it more difficult for custodians to do their jobs. Centeio shared, that if the students and everybody in the school take care of what they have, the stuff they have will take care of them.
The staff and custodians that oversee Farrington’s bathrooms believe that the school has room for improvement and they are willing to put in their hard work and patience to give back to the students. As students, we can give back to our school staff too; we can make sure that as we use the bathroom, we remember the hard work that goes into keeping it clean for others to use.