Nowhere to go: High school turns to portable toilets

Supervisor Wally Covington spent $10,000 of his discretionary funds Tuesday to buy portable bathrooms to battle overcrowding at Brentsville High School.

The portable bathrooms, which will have sewer hookups in a trailer, will help serve a student population that is 422 students above its capacity, leaving teens in need of the bathroom too few places to go in their breaks between classes.

“We’re putting fancy outhouses outside,” said Covington, R-Brentsville. “This doesn’t solve the problem, but it should cut down on having to hunt down a bathroom from the [classroom] trailers.”

Plans to open a long-awaited high school to alleviate rampant overcrowding remain three years away after they were delayed last year by a budget crunch.

The county school board had been planning to buy a bathroom trailer at the high school and is about to ask for bids for the project, spokeswoman Irene Cromer said.

“Supervisor Covington is pitching in to help make that facility available soon,” she said.

When schools add portable classrooms to accommodate growth, necessities like bathrooms and cafeteria space can lag, said school board member Don Richardson of the neighboring Gainesville district.

The population growth in the western end of the county outside and south of Manassas has long taxed the school system. Ten county schools in the western region are serving at least 20 percent more students than they were built to hold.

As a result, portable classrooms have become a mainstay, with about 4,800 students learning primarily in temporary buildings. Even the school board meeting is held in a portable building at the Independent Hill administration campus.

The schools have a similar trailer bathroom to serve students being taught in temporary classrooms at Yorkshire Elementary School during a construction project.

dgenz@dcexaminer.com