MANAGEMENT
MASTER PLAN
Your Restroom and Changing Zones
Your Restroom and Changing Zones
As someone who visits schools on a regular basis, I often feel as though I’ve stopped at an old highway gas station where you have to go get
the key from the attendant and walk around to the back to the restroom. And in many cases restroom would be a pretty generous title. Germ and Filth Factory (GFF) might be a more accurate title to what you’d find.
You don’t want your restroom to bear any resemblance to what I just described. For less than $1,000 you can have your restroom’s toilet and sink replaced, the walls painted and the floor polished or replaced. I highly recommend this.
Just like all other zones in your school, you want your restroom to be clean, sanitary and organized.
If your school’s restroom is anything like a GFF or at all reminds you of a gas station restroom at 4 am, take these measures quick:
- Overstock with toilet paper and use a new TP dispenser
- Use touch-free soap dispensers or at least the kind you pump
- Dispense paper towels rather than sitting them on the sink to get wet
- Plug in air fresheners and replace them often
- Spot check the restroom throughout the evening to make sure the toilet, floor, wastebasket and sink are clean
Locker rooms are often the preferred changing areas in many schools, but there are some potential problems that may arise.
Who supervises the activity in the locker rooms? If young boys and older men are changing together, what security is there for the child?
Imagine the temptation for a molester to find a martial arts school where young boys routinely undress in a locker room, especially a locker room with some privacy. If he enrolls for class, he could get access to the boys.
If you have locker rooms, people should come and go through them with such frequency that no one can expect to have even a few minutes of certain privacy to do anything to anyone.
If students are not constantly moving in and out, instructors or staff ought to.
For legal and security considerations, the type of one-person changing rooms found at most clothing stores is ideal.
The door should be low enough so a small child can change with sufficient privacy, and high enough to afford similar privacy to very tall adults. This solves many potential problems, including molestation concerns, theft of student belongings, staff knowing who is in the school at all times, and slip-and-fall accidents in tiled locker rooms.
Naturally, students will need someplace to put their clothes, and near floor cubbies or lockers are ideal.
An inexpensive alternative is simply designating a place on the floor for students to put their equipment bags. Be certain to keep it away from the workout area so students do not trip or stumble over them during the workouts.
Even if your school has a designated place for students to change, you can still encourage them to arrive dressed as often as possible.
But either way, your designated changing area for the students must be neat, clean and smell-free to follow suit with the professional theme your school is following.
Action Steps: What to do now
1. Evaluate your dressing area and decide if you would convert it to changing rooms.
2. Brief staff on spot-checking dressing rooms and keeping them clean and picked- up.
3. Create or purchase a shoe holding box or for students.