Mice jump from drawer to drawer and leave feces around the classroom; they creep around in every corner, and wait for students to drop bits of food.
“I had no idea that there were mice in the school, it’s honestly disgusting,” junior Andrea Vazquez said.
Most students are oblivious to the mouse infestation in the school.
“The school is surrounded by an open field and there is construction going on right next to the baseball fields, so mice easily find their way into the building,” custodial crew leader Eric Brown said. “It doesn’t take much, all there has to be is a tiny little hole and they can get in.”
Mice come into the building, especially during the winter, to keep warm and have a place to stay when there is construction going on.
“When I returned from winter break I notice that I had cracker “dust” all over my desk and I thought, who would do this,” math teacher Penola Edwards said. “Then, upon closer inspection, I noticed that the bag of crackers had been chewed open and that I also had mouse droppings on my desk and on nearby prep tables.”
Students and teachers leaving food and crumbs everywhere does not help the situation either, it actually keeps them in the school. If no food were available to them the number of mice would slowly go down.
There is not much anyone can do that works in the school. When there are infestations like this one the most the custodians can do is try to find the mice and throw them out.
“If any student, custodian, teacher, or assistant principal put any commercial brand spray or mouse traps it would be a huge fine against them, it is just district policy,” Brown said.
District policy does not allow custodians or even pest control to put poison or traps around the school to kill the mice and prevent more from coming in and living in the walls.
Even if a teacher brought in a spray or a mousetrap they can be majorly fined and put students in danger.
“I really wish that there was more we could do,” Brown said. “All we can do is try not to bring food into the classrooms and if you do, because I know students and teachers get hungry throughout the day and need a snack, to not drop any bits of food and to make sure they throw the trash away.”
Many teachers in all parts of the building have noticed some kind of mouse infestation either by physically seeing a mouse or finding destroyed items and a rotten smell coming from the ceiling.
STEM teacher Tyson Williams even had a mouse jump from his desk drawer and run out of the classroom.
“They look for somewhere warm to stay and the T-Stem building is the closest to the construction,” Williams said.
Female mice have up to eight litters of five to six babies per year; now imagine how many mice a school Akins’ size could contain.
“The school should do something about the mice,” freshmen Arianna Hernandez said. “The mice could easily come and bite a student and who knows what they carry.”
Mice carry Leptospirosis, which can cause liver damage, kidney failure, Salmonella, tapeworms, and even death on rare occasions.
Keeping the school as clean as possible would prevent the mice from striving as well as they have been on campus.
“The classrooms we are learning in should not be infected with mice,” sophomore Matthew Santiago said. “They are unclean and carry diseases, it is unsafe for us.”
A healthy and clean environment is something that the students feel the school needs to work harder on and that mice running around the floors and in the ceilings should not be a problem.
“If everybody put forth the effort to make the campus cleaner we would not have a mice infestation,” senior Ray Santa Ana said. “Nobody wants to be in a school with mice. It is disgusting.”
