Last school year, bathrooms were periodically closed due to the “devious licks” trend. This year, FHS has had problems with faucet functionality. As many of you are aware, “the bathroom sinks don’t always work.” The third-floor girls’ bathroom in particular had become an issue because none of the sinks were functioning.

Both teachers and students were dealing with the inconvenience and had to go out of their way to maintain basic hygiene. Some teachers had to allow their students to go into the teacher workroom and wash their hands there. Other students chose to go to different bathrooms. Senior Emory Bartenstein said, “I had to go down to the second-floor bathroom and I have a sprained ankle.” The difficulty of going somewhere else is a deterrent to hand washing. Some people looked at the situation from a health concern standpoint. “We’re still in an epidemic and everyone is supposed to be washing their hands regularly, [also] it’s good hygiene to wash after using the bathroom, but girls can’t do it.” said 3rd floor English teacher Traci Mellor. Senior Isis Collins agreed, “Especially with Covid and now Monkeypox going around, it’s concerning.”

In an interview with Principal Kelican on Friday, August 23rd, he said, “[the sinks] are actually solar powered, so they have to have the lights on to keep them charged. During the school day, that’s okay, but when you get to the weekend, there’s no light in the bathrooms to charge them.” Kelican also said “There’s a module in them that has to be replaced,” which was an additional reason why specifically the third floor wasn’t working.

When asked about the timeline of them being fixed, Kelican said, “We have put work orders into maintenance to have them fixed, [but] maintenance is short-staffed right now.” Although it makes sense that the solar panels need to recharge, that doesn’t explain why the boys’ bathroom was not having trouble. Out of all the floors in the main building, only the second floor has all of the sinks working, maybe because the second-floor sinks don’t have solar panels on top.
Within three days of interviewing Mr. Kelican about the issue, the third-floor girls’ bathroom sinks were fixed. Three out of the six sinks are now functioning, meaning students won’t have to go out of their way to be clean!