Stairs. For most, each step doesn’t take a second thought. However, for others, those same steps can be a barrier and source of frustration. 

According to the Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) special education department, less than 10% of students who qualify for special education have an orthopedic impairment. On a larger scale, only around 1% of students in special education departments in California have an orthopedic impairment, according to the California Department of Education. 

Amidst the chaos of high school life, accessibility issues often run silent, going unnoticed throughout the school. This is the case with *Olivia Hayes, a junior at Carlmont.

For Hayes, mobility wasn’t always an issue. It all started with a minor injury to her right knee during a typical day of Jiu-Jitsu in November 2023.  

“At first it was not that bad. I was walking with a cane or on crutches and that made it harder for me to carry things but I could still move around,” Hayes said. “It wasn’t a very severe knee injury, and I thought it was gonna be fine. But in the wake of my healing from it, I developed chronic pain.”

Over time, Hayes’s chronic pain slowly continued to spread to her ankles, hips, lower back, and, more recently, her hands and arms. According to Hayes, she can have a limb go completely numb, making it dangerous to walk or stand if she loses feeling in her legs.  

“I’m at risk for falling and can’t walk very far,” Hayes said. “My legs are pretty weak so when I do walk, I walk in pain.”

To assist her movement, Hayes has had to find ways to adapt to her surroundings and has since transitioned to a wheelchair daily. According to Hayes, she enjoys having a wheelchair more than relying on crutches because it gives a new sense of independence. However, her pain and exhaustion persist despite the wheelchair’s ability to limit the movement and energy needed to travel.

“The main thing that really worried me was how tired I got being in pain 100% of the time. I didn’t expect it to be a side effect, but it causes so much physical and mental exhaustion to be in this much pain,” Hayes said.

Despite these challenges, Hayes has been proactive in finding ways to adapt. She hopes there can be more recognition for those who are impaired so it is easier for them to find suitable support systems. 

“My situation is definitely not unique,” Hayes said. “I’m not the only person at Carlmont with chronic pain and I think it is a good thing for that to be acknowledged.”

For those with sports injuries, transitioning to walking around school on crutches or in a boot is not the easiest. 

Scarlett Buchanan is a junior at Carlmont and tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) playing soccer in her sophomore year, resulting in her needing to get ACL reconstruction surgery. 

“It took me around six months to when I could start running again and about a year to get back to playing my sport, so for around a month I was on crutches in a knee brace,” Buchanan said.

Due to being built on a hill, Carlmont High School’s campus design includes numerous flights of stairs. For students attending Carlmont, it is no surprise that the campus is not the friendliest to navigate.

According to Carlmont’s Comprehensive School Safety Plan, Carlmont has made adaptations for students with disabilities, including evacuation routes designed to create fluidity and accessibility for all, as well as provide support from adult aides and teachers. 

The campus also features many accessible parking spots and ADA-compliant additions like handrails, ramps, and elevators. 

Paige Andrews recently sprained her ankle while playing flag football, leaving her in a boot to minimize tension during recovery.

“Being injured has made me realize how difficult it can be for someone to get around school if they are hurt or disabled,” Andrews said. 

Amongst tight hallways and kids crowding to get to classes, passing through campus takes a lot of work, especially in limited mobility situations. 

“There are many stairs at Carlmont, which make it difficult to get around, so having ramps makes it easier,” Andrews said. 

As a wheelchair user, Hayes has had to find alternative routes to the many stairs connecting areas of campus, utilizing the school’s ramps.

However, with around 2400 students at Carlmont, it can be difficult for students like Hayes to reach the ramps and use them to their advantage. This demonstrates how while Carlmont’s campus provides accessible ramps, they are not always located in the most accessible areas. 

“Sometimes the ramps are my only option, but I can’t really use the ramps that are in the middle of the school because they’re constantly flooded with students,” Hayes said.

According to Hayes, some ramps can be very steep and slippery sometimes, making it more of a safety issue, especially when going down while using medical equipment such as a wheelchair or knee scooter. 

“I can’t get up the steep ramps and haven’t tried because I know it would be a terrible idea. However, I can get down the ramps, not necessarily safely, but very fast,” Hayes said.

According to the U.S. Access Board, ramps must be no steeper than one inch in elevation to twelve inches in length, and those with a slope greater than 5% require handrails. Due to the high elevation of Carlmont’s campus, many of these ramps have the maximum steepness they could be. 

To meet these requirements, schools in the district annually comply with the Facility Inspection Tool (FIT) and Fire Life Safety. According to SUHSD, a Certified Access Specialist (CASp) inspects the sites for ADA compliance during the design of any facility additions or changes.

Carlmont’s Administrative Vice Principal, Grant Steunenberg, oversees the facilities at Carlmont to ensure they assist student accessibility and ADA compliance while navigating campus.

“We are still ADA compliant and have elevators for people to get to different levels and ramps for people to go back and forth, but the way our school is built on the hillside makes it not easy to get around,” Steunenberg said.

Furthermore, Hayes points out that compliance doesn’t always correlate to full accessibility, a misconception that she finds many people have. This can make it frustrating because problems with accessibility for those with disabilities continue. 

“If you ask most able-bodied people, they would think that Carlmont is pretty accessible if they’ve never had to deal with the actual accessibility here because they see ramps and elevators and think they are, in an ADA sense, accessible,” Hayes said. 

Another challenge Hayes has encountered is the need for more curb cuts at the top of campus to get onto the sidewalk when leaving school from the Performing Arts Center (PAC). While the PAC has both an accessible ramp and an elevator, there are no curb cuts to transition from the street to the sidewalk when leaving the area.

“Whenever I’m going down the PAC side, I have to go down by the road, which is very dangerous because cars cannot see me,” Hayes said. 

This challenge makes it difficult for those with disabilities to leave the Belmont side of campus. According to Steunenberg, Carlmont has compensated by allowing for more accessible exits on the San Carlos side of Campus with a roundabout accessible through the quad. 

Carlmont’s campus features five elevators spread throughout the school. For Hayes, these are convenient for her to avoid ramps, but issues remain with the elevators. 

According to Steunenberg, all the elevators have the option to lock down, and they need a key to open them. In the past, Carlmont students who needed to use the elevators used to have a key that could open any elevator, but new problems arose, so this system was discontinued. 

“It was turning into a nightmare because people were losing the keys and other kids were giving elevator rides to their friends so we switched to opening all the elevators,” Steunenberg said. “The quad elevator is the only elevator that requires a key. For whatever reason, I can’t get the maintenance people to fix it.”

As someone without the Quad elevator key, Hayes cannot access the elevator, which is in a crucial location at the center of campus. 

Furthermore, without locking the other elevators elevators, students who do not need the elevators can now use the elevators, making it harder for students who need them to access them quickly. 

According to Hayes, she has only ever seen enforcement by teachers to limit non-disabled students using the elevators once throughout her three years at Carlmont. 

“We put signs up to limit people who aren’t injured from taking the elevator, but at least once a year, if not multiple times, a bunch of students get into the elevator and they start to jump which makes the elevator stop and get stuck and we have to call the fire department,” Steunenberg said. 

According to Steunenberg, KONE elevator company certifies the elevator every year and can come to service elevators if needed. However, the elevators usually only get extra servicing if they are older and start to break down. 

Thus, according to Hayes, the elevators are often left without regular cleaning for long periods, making them less appealing to ride and discouraging her from using them.

“If you’re gonna bother cleaning the rest of the school, then please clean the elevators,” Hayes said. “It feels weird that a space that’s intended for disabled people is also one of the dirtiest spaces on campus that I can find.”

While there are many challenges in navigating inaccessible spaces on campus, Carlmont has aimed to support students like Hayes. 

“We really should have a responsibility for taking kids who have an injury and having trouble getting around,” Steunenberg said. 

One way Carlmont’s administration has helped Hayes is by allowing her dad to drive up to the top of campus to get to her first-period class quickly. Her counselor has also helped her simplify her class schedule to limit her time moving around campus daily. 

Another support system that Carlmont has been using to help students get around campus is rides on carts to drive students between classes. According to Steunenberg, students typically report to the office when injured and can request these travel accommodations.

“Going distance, depending on their injury, can be hard for some because of the long walks in between classes, so we give students rides and transport kids on golf carts,” Steunenberg said. 

However, this system could be better, as there are still a limited number of carts, according to Steunenberg.

“We have four campus security people with carts and can distribute them out. But I’ve had upwards of nine kids we were giving rides to, so it’s like a taxi service. When we get a lot of people, it might take some time to get everyone to class by carts,” Steunenberg said.

The cart system has other ups and downs for students to decide whether to participate.

“Riding in the carts is a little embarrassing. I know people who are five minutes late to class every day because they don’t want to ride in the carts,” Buchanan said. 

According to Steunenberg, students who choose not to ride on the carts are still allowed extra time between classes, but this can also take away time from class time for students and instruction time for teachers. 

“I didn’t leave class early so sometimes would get to class late and my teacher would be okay with it until I was no longer on crutches. But when I was off crutches and had my brace and was still late, my teacher was not okay with it even though I was just as slow as I was on crutches,” Buchanan said. 

Within the classroom, Hayes has been provided with roll-under desks, allowing her to remain in her wheelchair during the class rather than have to get out of the wheelchair. 

According to Hayes, there are many things regarding accessibility that people don’t think about until they have been affected by those same problems. She hopes that Carlmont can increase accommodations for students with disabilities in the future. 

“Accessibility for disabled people affects accessibility for able-bodied people. If you make it better for disabled people, it gets easier for everyone,” Hayes said. “People have to understand that it isn’t special privileges, but accommodations.” 

Hayes emphasizes that disabilities can affect anyone, and even if they aren’t always visible, it doesn’t downplay their effects on a person.

“I can occasionally stand up and walk and a lot of people are surprised because when they see my wheelchair, they just assume paralysis, which is not the case,” Hayes said. 

Hayes strongly advocates for better accessibility at school for the benefit of future students. She hopes that when the next generation comes, they will have more accommodations and opportunities for support systems. 

“There is a lot of shame around being disabled, which leads to disabled people not talking about their disabilities which makes it harder for younger disabled people to see themselves in other people,” Hayes said. “It feels like nobody talks about it, but then at the same time, somebody’s got to do it.” 

Often, it’s hard to understand the experiences of people with disabilities or mobility issues, whether they are permanent or temporary until you are affected yourself. 

“I really didn’t know that Carlmont’s accessibility was so bad until I got hurt,” Buchanan said. “There are so many stairs, and as a normal able-bodied person, they’re just stairs, but after I got hurt, every stair became an obstacle.” 

*This source’s name is changed to protect them from social consequences. For more information on Carlmont Media’s anonymous sourcing, visit Scot Scoop’s Anonymous Sourcing Policy.