Students may have noticed a change this year besides the new science addition. Since students are discouraged from walking outside of the school building now, congestion has increased in the main building’s hallways. This has become a problem with students struggling to get to class, the bathroom, or their lockers on time.

It’s “very hard” to get to class on time, Hunter Williams (’16) said. “[The congestion] is a pain in the butt.”

“I think that the hallways are really tiny for the amount of people we have in the school,” said Taylor Williams (’19) “When everyone’s rushing to class there are too many people in the hallways. On the first day of school I was walking to my homeroom and the main stairs were really congested and I ended up falling and dropping all my books. The upperclassmen were laughing, but luckily I had friends there to help me up and laugh with them.”

Being able to access and use the main building bathrooms has also become a struggle for students. Hunter said he sometimes has a problem with “not getting out of the bathroom in time” to get to class.

“I’ve been late to some classes some days because of the congestion,” Taylor said. “Or [I was late on] days I have to go to the bathroom but I can’t reach the bathroom because there are so many people.”

Students that get dropped off for school frequently complain about not being able to walk across the road to the gym. “When I get dropped off, it takes me awhile to get my bags out and the teachers are already rushing me so the cars can keep moving on,” varsity athlete Lauren Litsinger (’17) said. “I always ask if I can go right to the gym, but instead I have to go up the steps, [to my] locker on the second floor and I have to unpack first because if I don’t I’ll probably drop everything. So then I drop my stuff off in my homeroom and then I have to go down to the gym to put my field hockey stuff in the team room, so once I finally find a place to put it, I have to go all the way back to homeroom which I’m probably already late for.”

Students with injuries, also face unique challenges. “”It’s really really hard to get around. I always run into people,” Rachel Williams (’17) said. “The [new wing] hasn’t really made it better. It’s still congested. I’ve had to take the stairs to several classrooms because there aren’t elevators there. [I’ve] definitely [been late].”

“I don’t think [the new wing] is making much of a difference” to make the hallways less crowded Jordan Pumphrey (’17) said.

“It made it kind of worse,” Assistant Principal William Brown said. “We only have single halls, so if you are on the second floor everyone is coming over and in that “T” it is horrible.”

Principal, Joe Jira also agrees that even though the new wing, “has added 11 new science rooms,” it has made the hallway congestion a lot worse. “We never said anyone could not go outside we just said the doors would be locked,” Jira said. “On one hand, we want everyone to stay inside and be safe, but on the other hand we get that the hallways are tight and there are a lot of people in the building, so we are trying to do the best of both worlds. I would be more than willing to put a committee of kids together if you wanted to study the problem with kids and teachers to see if see if we could stream line in some way shape or form.”