| Faculty locks plague faculty (11/07) | | Print | |
| Written by Caitlin Furney | |
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Recent construction decreased the number of faculty bathrooms and caused a series of problems with doors and locks. According to union building co-representative and science teacher Katherine Melvin, the Americans with Disabilities Act construction project calls for all of the teachers’ bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible. Workers had to remove the “privacy walls” around toilets to allow for wheelchair accessibility, and the faculty bathrooms now have only one toilet. Workers also added new doors that open with only five pounds of pressure. “However, at the beginning of school, the doors were not adjusted and some wouldn’t latch when the doors were closed,” Melvin said. “Sometimes you would have to physically pull the door to get it properly latched. When the door was closed, there was no way others could tell if the bathroom was occupied, and they could easily unlock the door.” According to Melvin, workers are still adjusting the bathroom doors. New locks on the doors indicate when a bathroom is occupied, which should help ensure privacy. “When the bathroom is locked from the inside, the lock on the outside has a knob that will stick out and act as a signal that the bathroom is in use and their key will not turn in the lock,” she said. Although the bathroom locks now work, not all of the keys do. “I don’t know if it is just wear and tear, but some of the older keys have had many problems opening and locking the bathrooms,” she said. “All of the locks do open, but sometimes teachers have to spend a while wiggling their keys, pulling at the doors and twisting the handles to get them open. Assistant principal Janée Montelongo and the construction company have called out workers to come fix them, but some teachers are still not satisfied.” Montelongo, the assistant principal in charge of buildings and grounds, declined to comment for The Lowell. |
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