Pride Club Serious About Cleanup : School: Program funded by philanthropist helps students keep Memorial Junior High restrooms clean and learn chess too.

Combining chessboards, school pride and the goodwill of philanthropist Sol Price, one San Diego city school has almost eliminated vandalism in its student restrooms--a problem that has plagued practically every district school, big or small, for years.

For the past three months, 45 Memorial Junior High students have taken turns monitoring the restrooms during the school day, equipped with cleaning kits to wipe away any graffiti on the spot.

Their presence alone has resulted in zero repairs to toilets and towel and soap dispensers, items formerly vandalized regularly.

Before the school’s Pride Club started, district maintenance employees were called to the Barrio Logan site regularly. Last year’s restroom repair tab alone ran about $35,000, Principal Tony Alfaro said. (Total district costs run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many restrooms have no usable soap or towel dispensers.)

“Now I can walk by one of the restrooms (outside of) my office without complaining how bad it stank,” Alfaro said. “I used to tell the kids that it was what you would expect in a prison.”

But how did Alfaro get so many students to sign up for the Pride program, to the point where he now has a long list of eager teen-agers waiting to take part? After all, participants must agree to take their daily hourly physical education class after school, because they watch over the restrooms for an hour during the school day when they would otherwise be taking their regular PE class.

That’s where well-known businessman and philanthropist Price entered the picture. Last year, Price, through his corporation’s charity, gave the school $50,000 so that its fledgling marching band could have spiffy new uniforms.

This year, in talking with Alfaro about ways to encourage students to play chess as a way to hone critical thinking skills, Price also learned about the horrible state of school restrooms, Alfaro said.

The upshot: during the time that the restrooms are not being used, the student monitors play chess--using sets donated by Price--in the school courtyard, and several have joined one of four campus chess clubs that have been set up.

And, at a special assembly today, as a reward for sticking with the Pride program, the 45 students, with their parents looking on, will each receive a $50 gift certificate to the Price Club. The $2,250 cost of the awards is part of $9,600 provided by Price for the entire school year.

“I really think the program has had the effect of diminishing vandalism all over the school grounds,” Alfaro said. “Our custodians say things are better.”

Alfaro emphasized that the students do not report names of anyone found writing on restroom walls or stopping up toilets but simply take immediate steps to clean up.

“The kids are not there as security people; we’re not putting them in any danger,” he said. “But their presence alone has stopped a lot of things that used to go on, like trash fires.”

Ninth-grader Salvador Rosales signed up in part “because I need the money to help my mother” and in part because he became tired of going to the nurse’s office and asking to use her restroom because it would be clean.

Both he and his partner, ninth-grader Sonia Lopez, believe they have made a difference on the campus.

“Some of our friends tease us by making the sound of a spray can with their mouths, but I haven’t had to paint over graffiti more than three or four times,” Rosales said.

Rosales already knew how to play chess, having learned from his uncle, and Lopez is playing the game for the first time.

“It’s interesting, you really have to think what your moves are going to be,” she said. “I’ve even beaten Salvador once.”