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Student Name

Professor Padgett

English 100I

18 October 2021

Sanitation Issues in High School Bathrooms

Dear the Principal and faculty of Greenwood High,

I would like to bring your attention to a current issue that has been seen to be plaguing

this school: the sanitation issues in the school bathrooms. I am currently a junior in Greenwood

High, and it has been my hope ever since my first year here that the bathrooms would become

cleaner, but that has not been the case. For the 3 years I have been here, I can only recall the

bathrooms ever being clean a total of two times. From trash strewn across the floors with graffiti

being more prevalent than empty stall space to used feminine products littering the ground, there

is much room for improvement. It has gotten so bad over the years that I have noticed students,

including myself, avoiding the bathrooms altogether. The bathrooms are always trashed, and I

feel like it needs to be addressed and considered for how frequent this happens.

For example, I walked into the bathroom the other day as one does, going in expecting

the worst due to this issue being a daily occurrence. Let me tell you, it was the most trashed I

have ever seen. There were paper towels all over the floor, some even stuck on the ceiling by

God knows what. Puddles of water everywhere, and when I walked into one of the stalls, there

was a mess made on the seat of the toilet, sharpie graffiti on the walls, and used feminine

products on the ground. I tried the next stall, almost the same thing except somebody did not

flush. When you are not in the stalls suffering from the lack of cleanliness, you are in the main

area where the sinks are, where it is just as bad. Most of the time, the soap is out and so are the
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paper towels since…they are all on the ground. Day after day similar incidents like this one

happen and I can’t be the only one who is sick of it.

For a solution, I believe that the bathrooms should be cleaned once a day, restocked, and

regularly checked on multiple times a day, and that would help the case at hand. Students would

actually be willing to use the restrooms without being paranoid about there being some sort of

disease lurking on the toilet seats. Since this problem happens at almost every other school as

well, this solution could be used district-wide. In this one study done by Oxford Academic:

School of Public Health, they noted that, “Functional toilet and handwashing facilities for

children are important to minimize the incidence of infectious diseases in both developing and

developed, 9 countries; for example, the promotion of good hand hygiene was an important

component of the public health response to the 2009 influenza pandemic in many countries.

Even where infectious diseases acquired through poor hygiene are relatively minor, they are

often accompanied by absence from school, which may affect a child's engagement with the

school and with learning.” (Reeves, et al.). So having the school restrooms cleaned more often

would improve the education of the students overall, since they wouldn’t get sick or anything

like that as often as they do here. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

recommends following the list of steps they have created for the cleaning process, and also made

a good point saying, “Cleaning and disinfecting are part of a broad approach to preventing

infectious diseases in schools.” (CDC). If the bathrooms are cleaned on a regular basis, then it

could also help prevent the spread of viruses when they go around at schools.

Sanitation in schools, especially in school bathrooms is really important because it could

end up being a breeding ground for a lot of bacteria and other things. If bathrooms were cleaner,
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it would encourage more students to use them in the first place and not feel gross about it. It

would help the students feel more comfortable about the school’s general sanitation as well.

I hope this letter finds you well and encourages a movement as well as motivation to help

the school bathrooms get cleaner instead of them just being cleaned at night, or just once a day.

Thank you for your time and patience,

Student Name
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Works Cited

“How to Clean and Disinfect Schools to Help Slow the Spread of Flu.” Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 Sept. 2021,

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/school/cleaning.htm.

Reeves, L.M., et al. “School Toilets: Facilitating Hand Hygiene? A Review of Primary

School Hygiene Facilities in a Developed Country.” Academic.oup.com,

https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/34/4/483/1529054.