During the 2020-2021 school year, students across the district had to spend the entire school year on Zoom, which came with a bunch of difficulties for everyone. Thankfully for the 2021-2022 school year, students and staff are back in the building and there are things that have changed but a lot of things that have stayed the same. There has been more than enough time to make policies and set rules and expectations around the school to make sure that the well-being of the students and staff are being protected and students are still getting the education that they need. Even though rules and expectations have been set in the district, when it comes to actually being in the building, not many of those expectations are met. The school is not telling students and staff about new protocols around the school, the people who work here and learn here should be informed on the important things and changes that are going around the school that are affecting them and their experience back into the building. The pandemic isn’t being taken too seriously across the school and it’s starting to show little by little. 

     Now that we are back in the building, the school has become very strict with the nurses office and people going to the nurse. Before COVID, students would be able to ask to go to the nurse and go there and get taken care of. Now, there is a new protocol that states that appointments need to be made to go to the nurse. From an administrative point of view, I understand why this was put into place but for people who have emergencies, it’s pretty hard to set an appointment. I’ve had an experience with this new protocol that I was not aware of and a lot of other students and staff weren’t aware of as well. I was feeling very nauseous and I had a headache at lunch, so I thought it would be a good idea to go to the nurse because I wanted to lay down and make sure I was okay. I went up to one of the staff members to ask to go to the nurse and she said “I don’t think you can go because you have to make an appointment but I don’t know how to make one”. I was very confused as to why I couldn’t go. Isn’t there some protocol that staff need to follow if a student tells you that they don’t feel well and want to go to the nurse? She then told me to wait in the hall while she asked another staff member about how to make an appointment. He told her he didn’t know and then I completely gave up after that. I just went back outside and got some fresh air before returning back to class. Throughout the day, there are a bunch of students who need to go to the nurse but they can’t because they have to make an appointment and have to wait to go. 

     Masks are really one of the only things that can keep everyone safe in the school from catching and spreading Covid-19. A lot of staff try to stay on top of the students by keeping their masks on and encourage them to keep it above their nose. Most students don’t like the mask but they still do wear them in order to keep themselves and their families safe. Once students are in the cafeteria, the masks are not encouraged to be kept on even after eating and there is no sort of social distancing. There are a lot of students who are in the cafeteria for each lunch and most of them walk around without masks on and they are super close to their peers. As new variants start to spread and cases begin to rise again, lunches should become stricter to prevent a large outbreak from happening and staff would need to really think about the best possible way to do it. 

     There are a lot of things that the school needs to work on if they want to keep everyone in the building and off of Zoom for the most part. Being a senior, I don’t want to spend the rest of my year on Zoom again because it will actually drive me crazy. Being back in school has brought me at least a tiny piece of “normal life” back and it feels so good to just have that and be around my friends in the building. There are many other students who feel the same way, I just don’t want this being taken away from the seniors and everyone in the building in general.