Fairfax County schools work to add bathrooms to athletic facilities

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. - It’s been a stinky situation in Fairfax County Public Schools: 15 of it’s high school athletic stadiums don’t have permanent bathrooms.

School Board member Megan McLaughlin says the district spends $7,000 per school per year on maintaining port-a-johns at the school’s stadiums.

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There have been upgrades made at the schools where stadiums are, but for one reason or another, some athletic fields have been left bathroom-less.

"For so long, our renovation queue has been backlogged for 35 years. So when we go in and renovate our high schools, the focus was certainly on the building itself first. Our athletic complex and our facilities had to sort of take a back seat," McLaughlin told Fox 5.

Other than an inconvenience, Robinson Secondary School Athletic Booster President Rob Jones tells me there’s an economic impact to this as well.

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"At Robinson, we’ve actually lost some large events, which are opportunities for the boosters as well as the Fairfax High School community to highlight itself, because we don’t have plumbed facilities," Jones said, "That’s a huge characteristic that they’re looking for, and the fact that we lack them is a problem."

McLaughlin tells Fox 5 surrounding districts all have bathroom facilities.

There’s movement, though.

This week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Fairfax School Board both passed resolutions urging their executives to talk and come up with a funding formula with leftover money from this fiscal year to pay for facilities.

The expected cost of adding 15 bathrooms to 15 schools is about $15 million.

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If an agreement is reached, both the School Board and Board of Supervisors will need to sign off.