by Shannon Naas ’26

To avoid a repeat of last school year when there were often closures of bathrooms during the school year, the administration is taking steps to prevent the school from having to lock bathrooms because of student misbehavior. The measures include closing bathrooms at certain times of the school day, as well as more frequently monitoring the bathrooms.

“We have been doing a better job of security and other staff periodically checking those areas and if we find students that are hanging out and not using the facilities, we immediately are moving them out,” explained Principal Tim Britton.

Thus far this school year, there has been an improvement from last year when as many as five bathrooms were closed at some point, according to Britton. The decision to close bathrooms last year, particularly in the K-wing, resulted from several factors including incidents of vandalism as well as students breaking toilet seats. Britton said that occasionally there were some students who were held accountable but other times it was difficult to identify the student doing the damage to bathrooms.

In the most recent effort to identify concerns about restrooms or issues in the hallways, Security Team Leader Dom Dixon has placed QR codes inside various display cases around the building. Britton sent out information to teachers, parents, and students that the QR code will pull up a Google survey form that will allow the person to anonymously identify a problem or issue. The intention of this effort is to allow for administration and security to follow up more efficiently and if a name(s) is provided, proper consequences and better safety can be accomplished.

Britton said that the school put in a maintenance order with MCPS “to have doors and gates on all bathrooms so if something would happen, we could temporarily lock it down [for as long as needed].”

This would correct the problem in past years when the school had to use a bolted wood plank to prevent entry to a closed bathroom. For example, the boys bathroom in the upper C-hall was boarded up for nearly eight months last school year.

Although there has been overall improvement from last school year, some problems have persisted. In late September, Britton emailed teachers that staff bathrooms would be locked because students were entering them. He stated that teachers should unlock and then again lock the staff bathrooms when using them.