Student Name 1

Student Name

Professor Padgett

English 100I

18 October 2021

Sanitation Issues in High School Bathrooms

Dear the Principal and faculty of Greenwood High,

I would like to bring your attention to a current issue that has been seen to be plaguing

this school: the sanitation issues in the school bathrooms. I am currently a junior in Greenwood

High, and it has been my hope ever since my first year here that the bathrooms would become

cleaner, but that has not been the case. For the 3 years I have been here, I can only recall the

bathrooms ever being clean a total of two times. From trash strewn across the floors with graffiti

being more prevalent than empty stall space to used feminine products littering the ground, there

is much room for improvement. It has gotten so bad over the years that I have noticed students,

including myself, avoiding the bathrooms altogether. The bathrooms are always trashed and I

feel like it needs to be acted upon addressed and considered for how frequent this happens.

One day, For example, I walked into the bathroom the other day as one does, going in

expecting the worst due to this issue being a daily occurrence. Let me tell you, it was the most

trashed I have ever seen. There were paper towels all over the floor, some even stuck on the

ceiling by God knows what. Puddles of water everywhere, and when I walked into one of the

stalls, there was a mess made on the seat of the toilet, sharpie graffiti on the walls, and used

feminine products on the ground. I tried the next stall, almost the same thing except somebody

did not flush. When you are not in the stalls suffering from the lack of cleanliness, you are in the

main area where the sinks are, where it is just as bad. Most of the time, the soap is out anyway
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and so are the paper towels since…they are all on the ground. Day after day similar incidents like

this one happen and I can’t be the only one who is sick of it.

For a solution, I suggest believe that the bathrooms should be being cleaned once a day,

restocked, and regularly checked on multiple times a day, and that would help the case at hand.

Maybe even checked on multiple times a day. It would improve the usage of the bathroom and

how often they are used. Students would actually be willing to use the restrooms without being

paranoid about there being some sort of disease lurking on the toilet seats. Since students usually

avoid the bathrooms altogether despite their grossness. Since this problem happens at almost

every other school as well, this solution could be used district-wide. In one school, Marjory

Stoneman Highschool, they have a custodian protocol that is explained here, “‘The custodians

are responsible every night for cleaning the bathrooms, restocking the toiletries, making sure that

there is running water and so on and so forth,’ Porter said. ‘So they have a protocol that they

must go through in order to ensure that those restrooms are clean and suitable. When there is

damage to the restrooms, they close those restrooms down… They are responsible for making

sure that those restrooms are clean and ready for opening at the beginning of every school day.’”

(Newman). This is a really good example/idea for our school to use, except it could be during the

day instead of mostly at night. I think this strategy would be very beneficial because then the

bathrooms would get a regular cleaning, kind of acting like recent COVID-19 regulations. In this

one study done by Oxford Academic: School of Public Health, they noted that, “Functional toilet

and handwashing facilities for children are important to minimize the incidence of infectious

diseases in both developing and developed, 9 countries; for example, the promotion of good hand

hygiene was an important component of the public health response to the 2009 influenza

pandemic in many countries. Even where infectious diseases acquired through poor hygiene are
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relatively minor, they are often accompanied by absence from school, which may affect a child's

engagement with the school and with learning.” (Reeves, et al.). So having the school restrooms

cleaned more often would improve the education of the students overall, since they wouldn’t get

sick or anything like that as often as they do here. Another solution is made by the CDC The

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommends following the where they made

a list of steps they have created for the cleaning process, and also made a good point saying,

“Cleaning and disinfecting are part of a broad approach to preventing infectious diseases in

schools.” (CDC). If the bathrooms are cleaned on a regular basis, then it could also help prevent

the spread of viruses when they go around at schools.

Sanitation in schools, especially in school bathrooms is really important because it could

end up being a breeding ground for a lot of bacteria and other things. If bathrooms were cleaner,

it would encourage more students to use them in the first place and not feel gross about it. It

would help the students feel more comfortable about the school’s general sanitation as well.

I hope this letter finds you well and encourages a movement as well as motivation to help

the school bathrooms get cleaner instead of them just being cleaned at night, or just once a day.

Thank you for your time and patience,

Student Name
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Works Cited

“How to Clean and Disinfect Schools to Help Slow the Spread of Flu.” Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 Sept. 2021,

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/school/cleaning.htm.

Newman, Lauren. “Student Survey Brings Attention to School Restroom Sanitation

Issues.” THE EAGLE EYE, 2018,

https://eagleeye.news/5891/news/student-survey-brings-attention-to-school-restroom-sanitation-i

ssues/.

Reeves, L.M., et al. “School Toilets: Facilitating Hand Hygiene? A Review of Primary

School Hygiene Facilities in a Developed Country.” Academic.oup.com,

https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/34/4/483/1529054.