Central Speaks

by: OLIVIA HALE staff writer graphic: J. Doerr

High school can be tough. Between school, sports, clubs, social life, family responsibilities, work, and other obligations, it’s a stressful life, and sometimes there are little things that can get under our skin or brighten our day. Central Speaks is a forum for students to share their thoughts about the ups and downs of the “Central” Life. Here’s what students like you had to say. Paying $25 for a parking pass seems a bit much. If all that money is being used for something productive then that is one thing but I think a sticker on your car that says you can park in the parking lot of your own public school that you are required by law to attend everyday should be at most $10. Or if they are going to charge that much, people should at least be able to sit in their cars during lunch to use the parking lot they’re spending that much to park in and it should probably be adequately plowed in the winter so it’s safe. -Siiri Asiala ‘20

Central is a wonderful high school with great academics and extracurricular opportunities, but one of its major shortcomings is shared by many schools in the area: its schedule. School begins on the first Tuesday after Labor Day in September, and ends around the second week of June. Due to this calendar, students are forced to take their winter break at the end of December, return to school for one week and then take exams. They’re expected to take two weeks off and return with all the semester’s material still fresh in their mind, yet somehow also use the break to relax and refresh. However, the looming exam deadline forces teachers to pile loads of homework on their students to complete over the “vacation.” If the school year began at the end of August and ended at the end of May, students would be able to take their exams before going on winter break and enjoy a true work-free vacation. -Brynna Wesley ‘20

I think it’s really dumb that students are not allowed to sit in their cars at lunch. Some upperclassmen don’t want to leave campus, but also don’t want to sit in the cafeteria for lunch. People who want to sit in CPL and eat their lunch should be allowed to because it’s their own car. Everyone else just goes and sits in a park for lunch in their cars. Isn’t it better if they’re on campus?? -Sylvie Shane ‘20 Academic Awards and Honor Roll have a negative impact on students. Students who are motivated to do well in school will do so, but there is no need to push down other students who aren’t succeeding in high school academics. The way that the education system is built is only built for one type of learning process. This pushes all of the different learning processes that students have into one narrow box that they are expected to succeed in. It could be argued that with enough effort anyone could succeed in boundless amounts of homework and standardized testing, but should it really have to come to that? Students who excel in academics will be awarded by getting into good colleges and self success. Adding the honor roll creates a discriminatory and elitist society in the student body that is toxic for those who don’t make the honor roll. Students who don’t make honor roll question their academic merit. If honor roll is a student’s motivation to do well in school, that is a problem. Motivation to succeed should be an internal drive. Putting students neck to neck against each other creates nothing but toxicity between students. Enough pressure is put on us in high school, is it really necessary to rank students? -Grace Bartley-Schroeder ‘20

If you would like to submit your thoughts for the next issue, send your message to bgq@tcapsstudent.net!

IN RESPONSE TO SYLVIE SHANE: “I’m a pretty big component of kids not being able to eat lunch in their cars. Number one, it’s a safety thing, because when we have kids sitting in their cars and we look out and see them sitting there and don’t even know who it is. The other piece of that is, other than security, is that it is creepy when we have people just sitting in the back of the parking lot. We have gone out there and it’s been adults who don’t even have any kids here, and it’s like “I don’t know why you’re here! That’s weird!” The other thing is the sense of sharing a meal with friends that you can’t experience if you’re just sitting in your car. We try to be inclusive and have places for students to eat if they don’t like the cafeteria like outside the auditorium and the library.”

IN RESPONSE TO BRYNNA WESLEY: “A bunch of teachers have talked about this, we have actually thought about what it would look like to give exams the week before winter break, with the idea of wanting to give kids two weeks off to relax after exams versus coming back and immediately taking exams. Our calendar is set at the district level so that’s not something I as a building principal get to control, but I will say that we have a teacher leadership group that this has come up in a few times. We think about how we could possibly tweak the schedule to allow teachers to be able to give exams the week before winter break if they wanted to. The biggest problem, because of our district calendar, is that we would have less instructional days in the fall semester and more instructional days in the spring, so figuring out that balance. AP teachers have the best go-around because their exams are in May, so that is the end of their year, but it would be harder for some of the other courses.”

IN RESPONSE TO GRACE BARTLEY-SCHROEDER: “I think that academic cords and academic recognition are really meant to motivate students, I have looked at them as a way to honor the hard work that students have done, and knowing too that it isn’t the end all be all. Grades are just one piece of the puzzle that we measure a student by, there are lots of other components. When I look at our honors convocation in the spring, we often invite students who aren’t even getting academic awards and are being recognized for something else like scholarships or other awards based upon their kindness to others, their work ethic, their integrity, so we do try to capture some of that, and you‘ll see it more in the spring. We always have a handful of seniors who get specifically invited to that night and they are not getting honors cords but they are getting some other special recognition. I do think that we could probably do more with that, I would love for students to come up with ideas for us to do that. We have thought about having more of a student voice in graduation, and it not just being about how you did in your classes. We as a district moved away from doing a valedictorian and the saludetorian because we wanted to open it up and recognize more people. When you have a class of 350 kids, saying one of them is the ”best,” what is it based on? Somebody then has to choose because if I go based on GPA, some students have a higher GPA but don’t have as rigorous a class schedule. Or it could go on SAT scores, but that is just one test. So I am glad we don’t have to have those discussions, we do say what you have to have to have a gold cord and to have a silver cord, and here are other ways to get a service cord or other recognitions, but I am always looking for ways to expand that, too. I typically try hard to write cards to kids to honor things they do that are outside of the GPA or their grades.”

IN RESPONSE TO SIIRI ASIALA: “Parking is definitely a privilege. We use the $25 cost to offset the security, both the personnel and the cameras and the surveillance. It has also allowed us to have a security guard on staff until 4pm, which has been nice for students who need to wait a little while after school to be picked up or to get rides. It helps us monitor the lot, both for people who shouldn’t be in the lot for the safety of our students and staff. Also, in case there is an accident or a fender bender, we are able to pull tapes and figure it out. It doesn’t go to plowing through, it offsets security costs.”

Central Speaks

Back As busy the administrators at Central are, they always have an open ear to listen to what is on the student body’s mind. Here’s what Principal Houghton had to say in response to our Central Speaks forum.