Central has everything! Metal detectors, digital hallway passes, and they just recently introduced the 8-period schedule to improve students’ ISASP testing so that they get even more money from the district. The only problem is that the students just walk through the metal detectors without a security guard nearby, and for the digital hallway passes, they don’t let students go to the bathroom most of the time because the limit is filled with students who went over their time. The 8-period schedule, most of everyone in the school hate it, including students and teachers. These are all good improvements in general, but I feel like the lack of security guards is selling the teachers, students, and the improvements themselves short.

The metal detectors at Central High School are meant to ensure the safety of students and make sure no one brings in anything dangerous or unrelated to school. Usually, there is a security guard to make sure all of the students who go into the building hand over their Chromebooks and walk through the metal detectors. Then the security should stop the students and look in their bags if the detector beeps even after the Chromebook gets taken out. Now that does happen most of the time, and most of the students do have to go through the full security procedure before entering the school, but if a student shows up late, or has classes in the middle of the school day instead of start to end. Then there will be a chance that a security guard won’t be there to go through the full safety procedure. This makes it easier for students, who may be a potential threat, to bring a lethal weapon into the building. Then even if the metal detector beeps, it’s still not likely for the people in the office to bat an eye or even notice because they haven’t before with students who walk through a beeping metal detector. Besides all a potential threat would have to do to get a better chance of sneaking a weapon in the building is show up late in the middle of a class period and walk through the metal detector that may or may not even be turned on at that time.

The digital hallway passes are supposed to make monitoring the hallway traffic during class easier and are supposed to prevent students who use a paper passes to skip from skipping. The pass does this by using an app or the website. It works by displaying the digital pass with the students time spent in the hallway on the app/website, and when the student goes over the set time limit on the pass, then it notifies the teacher and security is supposed to find the student and make sure the student gets back to their class. It also has a limit on how many students can be in the hallway at once. What I find happening often is that students who would like to use the bathroom quickly and respectfully end up not being able to. This is usually because the limit on how many students can be in the hallway is already reached. This wouldn’t be a problem at all if security made sure that the students who went over their time got sent back to class after their time on the pass was up. But students go over their time on the pass while using the bathroom and stay there until the end of the period without any security guard making sure they go back to class; therefore keeping the limit of students allowed in the hallway full and preventing anymore students who want to use a bathroom pass from using a bathroom. Now teachers found a simple and a very logical solution to this problem: they will just let the students go to the bathroom without a pass, putting their trust in them that they will come back after they’re done using the bathroom. But if teachers are doing that to get around a problem that the digital pass brings, then why introduce the digital pass and all of its problems to Central anyway? Then the teachers could get in trouble for letting students go to the bathroom, making the teachers have to keep students who have to go to the bathroom in class. So if the new implemented rules for a limit on how many people can be in a hallway at once with a school that has a thousand students doesn’t work, then no one should be getting in trouble for it.

The 8-period schedule is the newest addition to Central that they added to Central and, for that reason, is the topic that deserves the most focus. It was introduced as an option to Central High School for the purpose of improving ISASP scores for students. This is because the 8-period schedule increases daily exposure to subjects and improves knowledge retention. It also provides greater course variety, but is it really the best decision to switch from a 4-block schedule to 8-periods in a school that already has plenty of fights a year? lcmbearfacts.com found that the benefits stated in favor of the period schedule are true, but also the number of discipline referrals to the office reduces 25 to 50% when a school switches to a block schedule. But my real complaint about the period schedule comes more from the examples we see inside of Central High School of students being late, having bad grades, teachers not having enough time to attend to students who need help or have questions, stress from not having enough time to get work done on students and teachers. Those are all just the problems that come from the time crunch of an 8-period schedule. The 8-period schedule also causes students and teachers to have to be around twice as many people as they had before in a 4-block schedule or more. This makes it more likely for students and teachers to get sick and call out of school, or worse, come to school sick because of assignments or work that needs to get done and spread whatever they had to other students/teachers. Being around more students could cause more anxiety and stress for students and teachers, causing more fights, or just more aggressive behavior from both teachers and students which makes it hard to learn and focus on class.

The 8-period schedule is a big change, and even with a year or two of preparations, still seems like it came out of nowhere and that no one was truly prepared for it. It seems like this schedule has caused plenty of fights requiring more security guards and seems like it has made it easier on the students to skip, especially combined with the digital pass. With all of these new changes in such little time, it seems that security is needed the most, but it also seems like they can’t keep up, especially with all of the fights happening in the hallway and loud students skipping during class. That’s why Davenport Central High School needs more security.