Whether it’s to touch up on one’s makeup, chat with friends, or simply answer nature’s call, bathrooms are used frequently by each of Berkeley High School’s 3,200 students every day. However, BHS students and custodians alike know that bathrooms often have trash littering the slippery floors, a lack of products, graffiti, or broken machines; one study by the Jacket observed these conditions in three out of four girls’ bathrooms in the C and H Buildings at the end of a particular school day. This makes using the bathroom unpleasant and sometimes impossible, with students sometimes having to go to a different building or floor just to use the restroom. This issue also impacts custodians, who have to clean up the mess every day.
According to some BHS students, bathrooms are frequently broken or understocked. Sharmila Shaik, a BHS sophomore, described bathrooms with broken door locks and sinks or missing toilet paper, seat covers, and paper towels. “There’s a lot of different things that are wrong,” she said. According to the previously mentioned survey, 7 out of 14 sinks in the girls’ bathrooms in the C and H buildings were broken when checked at the end of the day. BHS junior Neko Ikels said that she found the main issue to be maintenance problems such as these, rather than temporary messes caused by students. Issues in bathroom cleanliness have been reflected nationwide as well, as nearly two-thirds of respondents to the 2019 Healthy Handwashing survey stated restrooms at their schools are inadequately maintained or unclean, with 40 percent of students reported limiting the number of times they use campus restrooms because they are “usually dirty or smell bad.”
BHS custodial staff pointed to student misconduct as the primary cause of these maintenance issues. Custodian Edwin Asis, who has been working at BHS since 2014, explained that students treat the bathrooms irresponsibly, sometimes breaking the soap and paper towel dispensers and throwing unused materials on the floor or even out the window. He has had to replace four paper towel dispensers on one floor in a month because they kept getting broken. According to Asis, this unnecessary waste makes the amount of materials needed surpass the estimate for the year, causing the supplies to run out. “As much as we want to put something in (the bathrooms), we cannot do it because we don't have any supplies,” Asis said. According to Berkeley Unified School District's Annual Plan required by the Berkeley Schools Facilities Safety and Maintenance Act of 2020 (Measure H), the projected cost of maintenance supplies for 2025-2026 was $378,000 out of an estimated $8,876,300 for total expenditures.
When the custodial teams identify that they are in need of supplies, “we notify our appropriate contacts and they come through,” BHS Principal Juan Raygoza wrote in an email to the Jacket. “We have an awesome custodial and facilities crew at BHS and in our district that work very hard to keep our campus clean and safe,” he continued.
John Opoku Mensah, a BHS custodian, emphasized the repercussions of the students’ wasteful behaviors, explaining that it is costly for the school district to keep restocking supplies, especially when it could be simply avoided if students were more conscientious with them. “Maybe (our jobs) would be a little easier or maybe we would be able to make more money if (students) didn't waste so many things,” Floreni Arévalo, a custodian who works at many BUSD schools, said. She is not a permanent custodian at BHS.
The littering and trashing of bathrooms causes inconveniences for both custodians’ tight schedules and students’ daily routines. Custodians’ shifts are timed out to the minute, meaning that schedules are extremely tight and don’t allot time to take care of extra issues like vandalized bathroom walls or broken paper towel dispensers, Frank Hernandez explained. Hernandez is a maintenance engineer and the president of the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees (BCCE), an union that represents the non-teacher, non-admin staff in the district. There is one custodian working during the school hours but most custodians start working at the end of the school day, with each custodian cleaning a designated floor, he continued. According to Hernandez, short staffing and tight schedules make it difficult for custodians to thoroughly clean bathrooms and classrooms.
Indeed, beyond being an inconvenience, intentionally trashed bathrooms can represent an attitude of indifference and disrespect for those who clean and use them. BHS custodian Donald Sterling explained how he wishes students would show respect towards custodians by taking care of the restrooms, urging students to “treat others how you want to be treated.”
Even though students dirty bathrooms, custodians are still “doing our best to clean it up,” Asis explained. Sterling and Asis explained that most students do respect them and the bathrooms, but they’ve noticed a couple students mess it up for everyone.
Despite the issues that custodians face with dirtied bathrooms, they described mostly positive experiences around their job. “I love my job, I like what I do. I like to clean,” Arévalo said. Arévalo’s children also attend BUSD schools, so she thinks of them while at work. “I would like the environment ... (to be) a space that is in every way nice for my kids,” Arévalo said.
“The bathrooms are always dirty and in my opinion, I always say that education starts at home, and sometimes in the bathrooms part of this education is reflected,” Arévalo said, adding that she’d seen food and bottles in toilets. She explained that school isn’t “only numbers and letters,” but also about learning values of respect towards each other. “(School) is where (students) spend the greatest amount of time, where they’re being educated. I think they should see school as their second home,” Arévalo said.