Since Mr. Williams has become our principal, he has introduced quite a few changes. These include Friday Fun Day, along with next year’s new grading system and schedules. In light of that, these are the top five changes that I would make if I were in charge.

Number five: Paint the lockers blue and/or gold. If you look around the school you’ll notice that the lockers are a reddish color. I think the lockers should either alternate between blue and gold, or all be one of the two since those are our school colors. I also believe that this would improve school spirit seeing more of the school colors around.

Number four: More books for the library. I feel that the Library has become more of just a hangout spot, rather than a library. Over half of the books that used to be in the library are gone and have been replaced with tables and chairs, so now only a few walls have books on them. Although not everyone uses the library for books, the lack of books has become a disadvantage for those of us who want to read because we have access to fewer books than before.

Number three: School starts at 8:00 and ends at 3:00. I believe that if we move back the start and end times of the school day, this will give students more time to get ready for school and could result in a decrease of tardiness. Although students will have slightly less time to work on homework, I believe that this will be beneficial because it could also discourage procrastination. Both of these ideas combined would result in a more productive student body.

Number two: Ban or lessen homework. I believe that homework is not beneficial to students anymore. Now that students have open access to the internet, it’s easier for them to cheat on homework assignments, which means homework no longer reflects students’ understanding of a subject. Then when students get away with it the first time they keep doing it and eventually stop paying attention in class. Also, since students get assigned more homework than tests and quizzes, they can still pass the class by getting all A’s on their homework via cheating and still failing every test and quiz. On the other hand, there are also students who pass classes by doing everything except for the homework. This creates a split between students who only do the homework, but not the classwork or never do the homework, but only the classwork. Due to this I believe that homework either needs to be banned or lessened so that students can’t pass their classes based on homework alone.

Number one: Seniors shouldn’t have to take core classes they don’t need. I believe that a student’s senior year should be their least stressful year as well, but since seniors are being forced to take core classes that they don’t need to take, they begin to feel stressed about teachers putting them at a higher standard since they have more experience. I believe that if seniors aren’t forced to take core classes that they don’t need to take then the mentality of just giving up on classes towards the end of the year, senioritis, will decrease as students will be doing class that they’re actually interested in, and if they want to take more core classes they can. I also think that this could decrease the amount of dropouts from kids feeling too pressured or getting tired of taking classes that they don’t need to take, but they’re being forced to.