District Launches Clean Restroom Hotline

Los Angeles city school officials momentarily brushed aside such issues as high dropout rates and low academic performance Thursday, announcing the creation of a 24-hour hotline to combat what students and parents say is the district’s most pressing emergency: dirty bathrooms.

Teresa Espinoza, a senior at Los Angeles High School, said she hasn’t used campus restrooms since 9th grade. “They’re nasty,” she said, “if I can hold it, I will.” The 17-year-old said the sinks are often stuffed with old paper towels, there’s no soap, the floors are dirty and the toilets are clogged.

The school district hotline, which began operation Thursday, is staffed during the day with operators who speak Spanish and English. They will register complaints about filth or missing supplies. The district will respond to hotline complaints within three days, said Los Angeles Unified School District Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller.

Conditions at city schools, he said, are unacceptable. “Clean, working school restrooms are fundamental,” he said.

Signs advertising the hotline carry the headline “Out of Soap?” and are being posted at campus facilities around the city.

Within hours of its activation on Thursday, the hotline started getting calls. Illustrating the scope of the issue, school district general manager of facilities Lynn Robert said calls also came from patrons protesting conditions at restaurants and gas stations.

“This hotline,” she stressed, “is for LAUSD bathrooms.”

Miller announced the hotline program during an appearance at 10th Street School in downtown Los Angeles. In addition, he said, the district will assign full-time restroom attendants at bathrooms in the district’s South Gate schools in a pilot program. Their job will be to clean toilets and stock supplies, with one assigned to each of the region’s eight elementary schools, and two each at local middle and high schools.

“It’s critically important to have facilities where students feel safe and comfortable,” said Robert. “When you have dirty facilities it says something about how we value our students.”

The new attendants, which will cost the district $17,000 each a year, are also expected to deter vandalism and smoking.

Conditions are so bad at Los Angeles High School, senior Christy Buena said, that students sometimes sneak into the teachers’ bathroom. “I haven’t seen it,” she said. “But I hear it’s nice.”

Like her friend, Teresa Espinoza, Buena said she doesn’t use the school bathrooms. The only time she goes into the bathroom is when a friend asks for help keeping the stall door closed. “There are locks on the stall doors but they don’t match up,” she said.

The hotline, she said, is probably a good idea. Students at the school complain among themselves about restroom conditions all the time, she said. She predicted that the hotline will be “packed with people calling and complaining.”

Janitors at the school said they are not to blame.

“Everybody wants to say it’s because of us, but nobody wants to say the kids are not being taught to be responsible.” said Howard Anderson, the school’s assistant plant manager. He said all members of the school staff should monitor bathrooms, just as they monitor the halls and classrooms. “You have to take the initiative to teach the children,” he said.

Robert agreed that the hotline is just one tool in the battle to maintain clean facilities. “Teachers must work with the students and get them to help us, so the bathrooms are not destroyed,” she said.

That is especially important, she said, as the district continues its installation of so-called smart bathrooms--equipped with electronic flush toilets, automatic faucets and hot air hand dryers. About 140 of the district’s 5,800 restrooms have been upgraded so far.

The Clean Restroom Hotline is (800) 495-1191.