Victoria Woo is a student at Lexington High School and reporter for The Musket.
“When you’re on crutches, people don’t really notice when you’re in the crowds,” said Daniel Saptari, a senior at Lexington High School who used to use crutches and now has a prosthetic leg. “You can get pushed over or something and people won’t even notice. It’s not even their fault. It just happens.”
Accessibility Issues on Campus Today
The current LHS building, constructed in the early 1950s, follows standards that were in place at that time. It is now outdated, and fails to fully meet accessibility requirements from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Massachusetts Architectural Access Boards (MAAB).
“We’re not as accessible as I wish we would be,” Andrew Baker, principal of LHS, said.
Skip Avery, an administrator for the LABBB program for special needs students, agreed with Baker that the campus is out of step with current norms.
“There’s one ramp that’s a little bit steeper than it would be now with ADA compliance… things like that make it more challenging for our students with disabilities to navigate the campus,” Avery said.
In addition to that ramp, LHS’s accessibility issues include, by modern ADA and MAAB standards, cracked and narrow walkways, improperly equipped toilet rooms, restrictive drinking fountains, non-compliant slopes, and long distances from parking lot spaces to school entrances. Several doorways in the school do not meet accessibility requirements for wheelchair approach, and are considerably damaged. The school’s automatic doors do not always function efficiently.
“There have been times where the automatic door isn’t working… I know the one in the science building, sometimes you have to give it a little head start before it’ll actually catch up,” Saptari said. Saptari also expressed concerns about LHS’s open campus, which includes multiple buildings, often requiring students to walk outside between classes.
“From a mobility standpoint, it’s definitely a little harder to navigate than having one single, large building, partly because of the size of it, and just having to go from… the end of the main building all the way to the math building,” Saptari said.
New England weather adds to the problem.
“Whenever it rained, or it was snowy, it would always be really slippery inside the buildings right by the entrances, and I’ve slipped and fell before,” Saptari said.
Baker pointed out that older staff members who suffer from joint issues may also be inconvenienced by wet floors and insufficiently salted pavement. It does not help that the LHS halls are narrow and overcrowded with people, leaving little room for crutch or wheelchair users. Baker described the presence of ‘choke-points’ around school.
Existing Accommodations at LHS
LHS has been retrofitted to support students with disabilities in various ways, including automatic doors; railings marked with tape for those with visual impairments; and dining commons with special seat-less tables. Some students with disabilities are provided with personal aides to help them navigate the school.
Lexington’s physical education program is also inclusive, something that Baker attributes to the school’s large field house and gym.
Certain classrooms at LHS contain technology such as radio fitted microphones for those with hearing impairments. But only a few classrooms have those built-in accessibility features, creating difficulty in scheduling students who require particular accommodations. There are around 25 students who need customized class schedules for accessibility reasons.
“We have to make sure that we’ve mapped out routes. We have to work with the nurses to do emergency evacuation procedures with those students,” Baker said.
Accessibility in the New School
LHS is legally required under MAAB standards to include an unobstructed accessible route at least 36 inches wide with no steps, hi-low drinking fountains, accessible signage (for emergency exits), and stair and ramp handrails, among other accessible infrastructure.
All classrooms, deemed ‘places of assembly’ under the MAAB’s 521 CMR 14 regulation code, are required to have a permanent assistive listening system and one accessible seat per up to 25 people. Although LHS does not meet these requirements yet, other schools in the area that have recently undergone reconstructions have made every classroom accessible.
“For people with visual impairment or hearing impairment or other forms of impairment, the rooms have been fit with technology and with sound treating measures… allow everyone to participate,” Baker said.
The new school designs being considered focus on vertical, rather than horizontal space, and feature more access points and stairwells. The current buildings are shorter than these designs and have one elevator each, some of which have broken down in the past. LHS is legally obliged to have elevators for accessibility, but Saptari proposed that new elevators be specifically put in strategic locations so as to minimize the movement required to reach them. He and Baker both expressed support for a more compact campus.
“I think if anything, more floors is better, because that way you don’t have to travel a far distance,” Saptari said. For other students though, such as those at LABBB who tend to stay in separate classroom areas, a facility with fewer stairs and more classrooms on one floor may be more suitable.
Both Baker and Saptari also hope that the new school has more reliable automatic doors and wider hallways to account for large crowds of people. The building layout must accommodate LHS’ 2,300+ population in addition to its students with disabilities.
There has been significant debate about the costs of LHS’s reconstruction — which could end up being the most expensive high school building in the country to date.
“I actually live in Lexington, so I am also a taxpayer, so I understand the importance of trying to keep the cost as reasonable as possible, but I do feel that everybody in the community would benefit from a new high school — all of the high school students, all of the LABBB students, and the bigger community in general,” Avery said.
The School Building Committee has carefully considered the matter of accessibility in designing the new LHS, acknowledging the old campus’s inadequacies.
“The architects have met with myself and a couple of my colleagues several times to look at the current layout of our classrooms, what our needs currently are, and what we see our needs to be in the future,” Avery said.
Baker has high hopes for the new campus.
“I hope that [the new LHS] is a place that students and teachers will be proud of,” Baker said. “We’ve come a really long way, and we still have a very long way to go… but this school was built 75 years ago,” he said. “We’ve made strides as a society.”
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