CRISP cares

A group of sixth-grade girls at Wasilla Middle School broke the cardinal rule of public-restroom etiquette Wednesday: They invited boys into the girls' room. And they had their teachers', even their principal's, blessing as they did.

The girls call themselves the ladies of CRISP, Committee Responding to Improve School Pride. They spent the past three weeks renovating a girls' bathroom that had suffered from years of neglect and vandalism.

They unveiled the re-vamped room at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday and invited other students, including boys, to see the fruits of their labor.

"I hope the kids in our school will see the bathroom and appreciate the work we've done and not vandalize it like they had done before," said 11-year-old Shelbi Anderson, one of the ladies of CRISP.

Shirie Drath, the sixth-grade teacher who served as the advisor to CRISP, said the bathroom looked so shabby before the renovation that students no longer used it.

The walls of the stalls were covered with black spray paint that had been used to cover graffiti, and the grout between the tiles was stained with mildew. The stench of urine permeated the air.

"I asked the girls if they wanted to do anything about it, and they said, 'What can we do? We're only kids,'" Drath said.

Though they doubted at first that they could make a difference, Drath says once the girls started discussing it, they began to believe they could.

They formed CRISP and made a list of everything that needed to be done: painting; cleaning tiles and scrubbing grout; replacing toilet seats; repairing leaky faucets; sanding all metal stall parts; replacing a broken feminine-hygiene dispenser; replacing mirrors and soap dispensers. The list was long, but the students were eager.

Once the list was complete, the ladies of CRISP formed committees to tackle the various parts of the project. Then they drafted a proposal for a renovation project and met with the school's principal and head custodian.

"Their proposal was well thought out and reasonable," Amy Spargo, WMS principal, said. "They were sixth graders, and I knew they'd stay in our school for the next three years. I knew I'd get a lot of mileage out of this experience."

Spargo approved CRISP's plan and put the group in touch with Connie Lutz, the school district's executive director of curriculum and assessment and the head of the district's One Percent for Art program, a program that uses federal funds to promote art. Lutz served as CRISP's artistic consultant for the design phase of the project and helped get the girls organized with their plan.

"They had all their different ideas, so we worked through them to see what would make a unified theme and what would work for a bathroom," Lutz said.

Anderson, who served on the decorating committee, said the girls had all sorts of wild ideas for decorating the bathroom.

"We came up with things like Smurfs and Scooby Doo and a 9-11 remembrance wall," Anderson said. "But Ms. Lutz said, 'Don't go over the top--it's a bathroom.'"

Lutz said she wanted the group to consider the durability factor, since it will likely be years before the bathroom is renovated again. The girls settled on a red-and-white color scheme -- the Wasilla Middle School colors -- and stars for accents.

"We had these big ideas, but it turned out to be something pretty simple but really cool," said Anderson.

Before the girls could decorate, though, they needed to clean.

"Every girl had a part in the scrubbing," said Drath.

She says they went through a whole box of green scrub pads and several toothbrushes. The girls scrubbed every tile and every bit of grout in the bathroom. They even scrubbed the toilets.

"At first it was really embarrassing because it was like 'We're going to go in and clean the bathroom, eew!'" said Anderson.

But as the work continued and the girls began to see the improvement, Drath says their enthusiasm for the project grew. So much so that students outside of CRISP began talking about starting other renovation projects.

"It's starting to spread," she said. "Some of the boys are even talking about renovating the boys' room."

That's just the sort of response from students that both Drath and Spargo said they'd hoped for when the CRISP project first got started.

"We want to communicate to kids that not only can they make a difference, but that there is honor and gratification for people who make positive choices," Spargo said.

Anderson seems to have gotten that message. She says it was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

"It's pretty cool that girls that come here their first year can do something so big," she said.

One of the other ladies of CRISP, 11-year-old Victoria Douglas, said other kids can feel that way too. And not just kids at her school,.

"I hope kids in other schools know that they can do [things like this] at their schools too," she said.