January 2019
Volume 93
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Issue 4
Is the tadry line causing tardies?
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Katelyn Gwennap Reporter Here at Thomas Jefferson for security reasons the doors lock at 8:10 and anytime after that you have to sign in and out of school. Some kids come to school 2 minutes late, but because of the huge line of kids that are trying to sign in, that two minutes could turn into half an hour. The question, is there a better more efficient way to get kids into classes faster? For the students that are never late to school this issue doesn’t involve them, but for the following kids that find it hard to make it here by 8:10 every morning, this issue can be a big one. Kids are lined up about 20 deep just 7 minutes after school starts. With just one administrative assistant signing these students in it can take a good amount of time. Our teachers here at Thomas Jefferson have something called a Fob, it’s a little thing that they can put on their lanyard that they scan and the doors unlock and they can come right in.
Students standing in line to get a pass to go to first hour after they show up late. Photo by: Katelyn Gwennap
If we have an efficient way for our teachers to get into the school why don’t we have a more efficient way for our students? The 2017-2018 school year a bunch of changes happened, the doors began being locked during the school day instead of being left unlocked. Mrs. Windham got asked why this decision was made? “We just wanted to make sure that our school was safer and we could have a little more control over who comes in and out of the building” stated Mrs. Windham.
She didn’t mention one of the issues that the school seemed to face during the 2017 - 2018 school year, many students were leaving during school hours to go either get lunch or to simply skip a class. The way that this tied into locking the doors is, with the doors unlocked it made it easy for students to roam in and out of the school so they simply started locking the doors. Another issue that is correlated with locking the doors is lunch hours, kids were leaving
during lunch to go get outside food and with us having a grant to give everybody free lunch this endangered this opportunity. If someone were to walk in and see all these kids having a range of Raising Cane’s, Taco Bell, McDonalds, etc. Our grant could be taken away. So the decision was made to lock the doors, which solved old problems but created new ones. “I think it is about as efficient as we can make it at this point, it would be better if kids just simply got here on time” said Mrs.
Windham. People have mentioned an alternative, which was giving students something similar to the fobs that the teachers have, but Mrs. Windham said that it was simply too difficult to get the teachers these devices so it would be nearly impossible and way too expensive to give all of the students something similar to it. For this new year lets try and get here on time so you don’t get caught in the long line of students waiting to get into the building.
Caffeine is not the healthest for teen bodies Katelyn Gwennap Reporter
Drinking caffeine as a teenager has bad effects on your body. “The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends teens’ caffeine consumption be limited to no more than 100mg of caffeine per day,” according to verywellhealthy.com. Just one small iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts has 198 mg of caffeine in it. Which is 98 mg over the recommended consumption for adolescents. Caffeine can cause a lot of issues for your body, including insomnia, restlessness, difficulty concentrating, increased blood pressure, headaches, irritability and so much more. Verywellhealthy.com stated “Caffeine may disrupt the formation of key connections in the brain. During adolescence, when the brain has the most neural
Drinking to much caffeine as an adolescent can have bad lasting affects on your bodies. Photo provided by: Www.flickr.com
connections, caffeine may make the networks less efficient,” Caffeine can affect how your brain develops and that can cause a lot of different issues. One of those issues might be difficulty comprehending things, and for some kids that is already difficult
enough as it is. Does caffeine do more harm than it does good? In the article medicalnewstoday.com they stated “Even moderate doses of 100-400 mg can cause symptoms in children and adolescents,”
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In one can of the energy drink called monster there is 86 mg of caffeine in it. Which is only 14 mg away from the maximum dose that teens’ should be consuming in one day. “Studies have indicated that 83.2% of teenagers consume
caffeinated beverages regularly,” according to medicalnewstoday. com. Just one 8-ounce cup of brewed coffee contains 95-200 mg of caffeine. “Caffeine is a drug; a readily available, widely used, legally accessible and socially acceptable psychoactive substance,” Caffeine is not just in energy drinks and in coffee, it’s even in hot chocolate. Hot chocolate has 5 mg of caffeine in it. Even though it is a very low dose it can still rack up your caffeine consumption when you drink multiple high caffeinated drinks instead of the lower ones. So for this New Year lets try and lower our caffeine consumption, and make better choices for our bodies.