Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 11, 1995                   TAG: 9509110071
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SHORTAGE OF RESTROOMS HAS PUPILS TAKING A HIKE

Rita Slate says the priorities are wrong.

The modular classrooms at Westside Elementary School are air-conditioned, but they have no restrooms or running water.

And that has upset Slate and several other mothers of second-grade pupils at the Roanoke school.

Pupils in three second-grade classes have to go outside and walk to the school's main building to go to the restroom.

"I hate to think what it is going to be like this winter when it is cold and rainy," Slate said Friday.

Principal Sharon Richardson said the teachers take the children to the restroom four times a day. She said it is a short distance and the children are almost as close to a restroom as they would be in the school building.

"Ideally, every classroom for small children would have a bathroom and sink," she said, but that's not always realistic.

"We make sure that the children go to the bathroom as often as they need to. If there is an emergency, we make sure that someone goes with the child."

Richardson said Westside is not alone in its plight.

Richard Kelley, assistant superintendent for operations, said other temporary classrooms are not equipped with restrooms - because of the expense and because "it would take up valuable space that is needed for the classrooms."

Restrooms also would create noise distractions, because the walls in the modular units are not soundproof, Kelley said.

The cost argument doesn't convince Slate.

"If they can afford to pay a retirement consultant fee to [former Superintendent Frank Tota], they can afford to put bathrooms in the classrooms," she said.

Slate said the pupils' convenience and safety should be the top priority for the school system. She worries that a child might fall on ice in the winter walking to the restroom.

Kim Nance, another mother, said the second-graders are too small to have to walk outside to go to the restroom.

"I wouldn't mind it if they had fifth-graders out there, but these are 7-year-old children," she said. "We pay taxes, but this is not what we pay taxes for."

Westside has used modular classrooms for its magnet school classes for several years, and a temporary unit for some second-grade classes was installed last year.

Slate said the children stay in the magnet classes only 45 minutes at a time, so they don't have to go back and forth between the modular classrooms and restrooms several times during a day.

Kelley said the school system has been forced to use modular classrooms at several elementary schools because of the state's desire to have smaller classes in schools with high concentrations of children from poor families.

The move to smaller classes began last year, and there wasn't enough time to add classrooms to the schools, he said.

If enrollment patterns continue, the city will build additions to the elementary schools and eliminate the need for modular classrooms, Kelley said.