Roaches and Lack of Soap, Paper Towels Peril Student Health

A lack of soap and paper towels in restrooms at many San Diego city schools could lead to more illnesses this winter among the district’s 115,000 students than might otherwise be the case, a UC San Diego pediatrician has warned. Those communicable diseases could range from the common cold to the flu to salmonella to infectious hepatitis.

In a strongly worded letter to city schools administrators last month, Dr. Jeff Black--the district’s special health consultant--said he was told that “soap and towels are conspicuously absent in the student restrooms” at many schools. Black said he had checked several elementary school restrooms and found no soap or towels.

“Hand washing with soap and running water for 15-30 seconds, and drying with disposable paper towels, is the single most important technique for preventing the spread of communicable disease,” Black wrote in bold, underlined lettering to administrators of the nation’s eighth-largest urban school district. A school nurse brought the problem to Black’s attention.

In a related health matter, spraying for insects has stopped temporarily at all schools because new state environmental regulations require custodians and gardeners to have special training and/or education before using pesticides. The halt has brought roach and ant problems in many classrooms, several principals have reported, although cafeteria and food-preparation areas are not affected because they are sprayed under contract with professional pest-control firms.

Continual Vandalism

The soap and towel problem stems from continual vandalism of the dispensers, and the reluctance of individual school custodians to keep replacing them, said Darrell C. Rogers, the district’s custodial and gardening supervisor.

But in his letter, Black said problems related to vandalism and lack of supervision for bathrooms “should not be managed by methods that could harm students’ health.”

The district’s health services director agrees, and has ordered a survey of how many schools feature such ill-equipped restrooms as well as directing that copies of Black’s letter be distributed among principals and supervisors at all 180 district educational facilities. Distribution began last week.

“I understand that there is a vandalism problem in some schools,” health director Ed Fletcher said. “I’ve been a principal, too, but I think we should not solve the vandalism problem by setting up another problem. The most feasible thing is to work out some kind of supervision of restrooms and work with young people to make them understand the importance of paper towels and how diseases can be transmitted if they don’t wash their hands.”

Decisions about whether to replace paper towel holders and soap containers are the responsibility of individual principals, who have day-to-day control over custodial activities, Rogers said.

“We have a general policy that there should be paper towels in all restrooms but the vandalism can become real costly,” Rogers said. A dispenser costs the district $8.60, he said. Rogers has already completed a survey of the district’s 40 secondary schools in which he found that some schools had few or no soap and towel dispensers missing, whereas others had 15 or more missing.

“The towel holders are very easy to rip off the wall,” Rogers said. “And our soap is a Borax-type hand soap, and, if someone unscrews the dispenser and fills it up with a little water, the soap hardens and the device won’t work.” Also, towels are sometimes flushed down toilets and stuffed into sinks, causing flooding.

Washrooms Closed

To solve the problem at Hoover High School in East San Diego, Principal Doris Alvarez last year instituted a policy that closed all but one set of restrooms because of vandalism and placed a security guard to stand outside the remaining two facilities.

Although students dislike the lack of privacy, the Hoover student newspaper said last fall that the policy is well-deserved “until students decide whether or not to behave in a manner that will regain the use of the restrooms.”

At the district’s three newest schools--Zamorano and Bethune elementaries and De Portola Middle School in Tierrasanta--electric hand blowers were installed in place of towel dispensers and have proven vandal-proof so far, Rogers said.

“We have tested them, attaching them to support beams on the wall, Rogers said. “And they are made with heavy-duty, quarter-inch pot metal that doesn’t break.” But, although blowers are now targeted for new schools, the $500-per-blower cost--$250 for the blower and $250 for installation--makes their placement in existing schools problematical when the average annual elementary school budget for soap, towels and toilet paper comes to $2.52 a student, Rogers said.

Several years ago, in a time of budget cuts, the district eliminated towel service for physical education classes in junior and senior high schools. Coaches say today that fewer than 5% of all students take showers after gym class, and many schools no longer have working boilers to provide hot water for those students who do wish to shower.

The lack of regular pest-control spraying as of Jan. 1 has brought problems of cockroach and ant infestation at various schools. Valencia Park Elementary School Principal Carolyn Dubuque reported to fellow principals last week that the carpet used to seat kindergarten students for reading “was crawling with 150 roaches” when she and her custodian flicked on the light switch one recent evening.

Rules on Pesticides

The new state regulations prohibit district workers from spraying either indoor pesticides or garden and lawn herbicides without specific training, Rogers said, and in some cases without special clothing.

The pesticides fall into two categories under state regulations. Category 3, the least toxic of chemicals, requires custodians and gardeners to know the active ingredients, the antidote if exposure occurs and treatment for any emergencies. A category 3 pesticide for indoor use would typically involve a spray can-type of chemical with little residual effect.

Category 2 pesticides, which have longer and more potent killing properties, can now be used only with special clothing and other apparatus, and only after sufficient notice to building occupants.

Rogers is proposing a special district spray team be established, at an annual cost of $60,000, to handle Category-2 problems for schools. “But that will have to go through the budget process with the board of education,” Rogers said.

In the meantime, he concedes that problems may be developing at various schools, especially since food is often kept in many classrooms despite regulations prohibiting such storage.

“There’s a lot of eating that goes on in classrooms and that creates problems,” he said. “And roaches will eat paper, or general clutter as well, and are having a field day.”

Rogers is willing to address any emergency problems, despite a lack of funds budgeted for unanticipated insect infestation. “Any principal can come to me if they’ve got a major problem,” he said.

School district health director Fletcher said he has only heard about possible insect problems in the last few days but said, depending on how bad a situation becomes, he would even consider contacting the county Department of Health Services for help.