When you are at school there are many rules and procedures that you have to follow. They don’t always make us happy to follow them, but we do. You can always make changes to those rules with good reasons. For the upcoming school year of 2024-2025, I asked students about the things that should be changed in South High School. I asked them for their opinions and thoughts about the rules they don’t agree with.
One issue that many students have is not letting us use the restroom during Titan Time. Alexa Alvarez who is a junior in South High believes that students should be able to use the restroom during Titan Time.
Alexa: “We should be able to go to the bathroom during Titan Time. Sometimes we don’t have enough time during passing period because then we have to worry about the holding room.”
Principal Rogers: “…basically I would rather not have is the first ten and last ten minutes of each block we don’t have passes out because that’s when we’re getting kids back to the day, back to the tardy carts or clearing the hallways or getting students in the holding room… I think by emergency obviously high school kids know when they need to go to the bathroom and so I tell teachers to accommodate that. We don’t want just freely passes going out during Titan Time, just because that should be the time where you’re collecting your thoughts, or you’re catching up on anything, or are sending emails to your teachers, or are you moving to get help, or are you in a club, or are you in an activity, and so on, so that’s what I kinda want the focus to be on.”
This problem also leads to the holding rooms, which many students also do not agree with.
I asked a student who prefers to stay anonymous and attends South for their opinion on the holding room and they said:
Student: “Besides stupid and rhetorical? Like not being able to eat in a cafeteria, and no phones even if it’s homework related but they encourage doing work. I don’t like it. It seems silly to keep students out of class entirely and miss that days lesson because they were late, instead of just giving them a slip and if they run out, giving them detention on another day.”
Principal Rogers: “Its apart of my job to make sure we look at data often, and in one of the data points we started to look at last fall was attendance and tardys and how many tardy carts, so we started to pull numbers and track that and we were averaging about 350 tardys a day at school. So that’s alarming because then you’ll look at supporting teachers that was roughly 350 distractions and interruptions to the teachers and it would happen at all the time in the hours… that’s kind of the why behind it, was we had a problem. A lot of the kids that were scanning in, they didn’t care, they didn’t care about serving their lunch detention… so we had to have a system change… we use to have a holding room years ago before you guys got here, before I got here, back when I was a teacher here, we had a holding room, and so we just felt after I got feedback from the staff that we needed to do something. If you recall we started December 4th, I don’t like starting middle of the semester or towards the end, I would rather start something either first of the year and if we have to maybe start something in January as we start second semester but I thought maybe be a soft rollout cause of what such a huge change… it has I think been a positive improvement because kids are running to class… we are averaging, so we went from about 350 tardies scanned a day on average, we average to about 140 now total for a day and about 80 of the 140 are during that 8-8:15 in the morning, where sometimes it’s a transportation issue, kids wake up late, they have to walk, they have to get their siblings to school, and so there’s a wide variety of things that maybe don’t allow kids to be here out of their control, so I want to work with kids.”
Mr. Rogers, the principal of South High also states “… I got some feedback from the staff like on what should this look like, and so that’s why we did the back of the cafeteria, we needed a big space because we never knew if there was going to be two kids or thirty kids… we don’t want earbuds, we don’t want cellphones, we don’t want them sleeping… we want it to be a place to where you don’t want to be in here anymore, so we want it to be a class… hopefully thats worked a little bit too…”
Another issue that many students have is that we should change South High’s headwear policy. A junior explains how they’re a victim of the hypocrisy here and tells a story that ended in their suspension:
Student: “I’m a very fashion-forward kid, I love dressing up and expressing myself through my clothing. One day I chose to wear an orange bandanna with my outfit just to give it a pop of color. I entered school and didn’t hear anything from anyone about my bandanna. So naturally I didn’t think anything of it. I made it all the way to my 2nd how class and before an administrator and a security guard pulled beside in one of the golf carts. They essentially told me to take it off or else I would be taken to the office. The guard then oddly and creepily brought up him knowing my parents, which made the atmosphere very uncomfortable. I proceeded to take it off and go about my day. As I walk from class to class throughout the day I see other students wearing things on their heads. Which confuses me because I was just confronted about the same thing but these people are walking to their next hours unencountered. Even at the end of the day the same multiple people who I seen earlier wearing scarfs and bandanas are still wearing them, and I start to feel a sense of targeting.”
Another student who is also a Junior feels the same about headgear.
Student: “I believe students at South High should be able to wear durags and beanies as it’s a part of their culture and being dress-coded is most times sexist.”
Principal Rogers: “Couple things to keep in mind, I think the biggest reservation the staff at South has is the earbuds, and so if we’re able to allow it we definitely want to have something in place for showing your ears or something during class because it’s so easy to put on a beanie and have your earbuds and then cover it and then yeah your in dress code but then your not putting your attention to the class or the teacher… if you ask the question does a hat or head covering have a direct impact on the ability for a student to learn, I would say no to that… that is something we could look at… I will say I survey the staff at the end of last year and they were very much in support of not allowing it… I think that’s something we could always take a look at and that’s something we might change in the future.”
These are just a few things that some students believed should be changed for next year.
