Student finds many unaddressed problems at Brownsville
If my parents and I would attend a school board meeting, there are many issues at Brownsville Area High School that we could complain about. Where we should begin is a hard question. Using the restroom at this school can sometimes be a very hard and unpleasant task. A few teachers seem to think that using the restroom in their classroom more than three times within a 45-day time period is reason to give a student detention. Until recently, at certain times during the day, there were no restrooms open at all in the school.
After managing to get out of class and to a restroom, you hold your breath in anticipation of the smoke-filled room you are about to enter. Some of our security guards know the “smokers,” yet they let them get away with it. So there you are in the restroom, stall door closed, pants down, and you look at the wall and realize there is no toilet paper. Move to the next stall, you notice a wet puddle on the floor, and hope it isn’t what you know it is. Afterward, you walk to the sink only to discover there isn’t any soap, which doesn’t really matter because washing your hands would be a waste since there aren’t any paper towels either. Thank God for the water-less hand sanitizer in your purse.
Because the junior high students attend the high school with us this year, there is a very large number of students and a very small number of classrooms. At any given time you can find several classes in either the cafeteria or the auditorium. These classes include a woodshop class -go figure – a woodshop with no machines.
Phys-ed was always a fun class, right? Perhaps you can play a full court game of basketball, volleyball, or kickball.
These games would be hard to play, though, because the gym is split in half by a giant wall that separates the younger and older students. Brownsville may hold the record for most school-wide class disruptions.
Because the junior high has nine classes a day and the senior high has only four, bells are ringing all the time: around 38 bells per day.
Since the junior high and senior high share the same PA system, everyone hears every announcement.
In addition, a fun part of all this madness is to see one of your favorite teachers, who doesn’t have his own classroom, moving from room to room pushing his four-wheeled cart that carries all his supplies. And if you are lucky, you may get to see a student knock everything off of the cart, then run down the hall laughing.
Another problem with all this is the fact that there are rarely enough substitutes. I can think of several times when my classmates and I have sat an entire hour and 20 minutes without seeing one adult. You see, we couldn’t tell anyone in the office because walking through the halls without a signed pass will cause you to receive a $300 trespassing fine.
Also, coming to school in the morning requires a lot of strategic timing. By this I mean that if you want to be in school by 7:15, you have to arrive at 7:10. If you come to school after 7:10, then you can’t get in until after 7:15 because security won’t let any cars in until after the buses have left.
To drive to school on a snowy morning is crazy unless you have a four-wheel drive truck since, and I quote, “Plowing the student parking lot is last on our list.”
I find this extremely unfair, since students must pay to park there. I know a student who has come early to plow the lot so that other students wouldn’t get stuck.
Although we do have some positive qualities here, we would be a much happier lot if someone would take note and fix these problems.
The problems I wrote about are just a few of the things that are wrong with the school. There, sadly, are many more.
Chantel Curcio is a sophomore at Brownsville Area High School.