Evidently, much progress has been made since the past school year when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic. More information is known about the virus and vaccination rates are much higher, leaving it safer to attend all in person school.

Despite the new advantages, people are ultimately still getting sick. The difference is students are no longer given the option to attend classes virtually when testing positive for the virus as they were last year. Personally, I see this as a big problem.

I do not believe that it should be an option to go fully remote or even hybrid just by choice, but I do think that there needs to be an online option for students who come down with COVID and are required to stay out of school for at least five days. Yes, five days is much less than the 14 day quarantine which was required for most of last year when the option was available, but five days is still a significant amount of time to miss.

It is not the students' fault that they are missing school as it is a very understandable requirement for the better health of the school and community. However, it is also not fair to the students because they fall very behind by missing classwork, tests, homework, and all of the other things that go on throughout the time that they miss.

Personally, I view missing five plus days of school as detrimental to the education of a student. Especially in the case where there was so much of last year missed, I think it is just lazy to not offer kids the opportunity to join their classes to stay caught up on what is going on in the case that they contract the coronavirus.

This online tuning in would not have to be anywhere near as involved as it was in the last year however. I think it should be just that, tuning in. Teachers would not have to create a lesson plan for the students on the call or even address them; it could be as simple as just having it set up so students could log on and get the information everyone else is receiving to be able to complete their work, prepare for a quiz/test, and just simply stay caught up.

Also, it would not be something that can be used as an excuse to take vacations or days off; it would be a strictly covid related system where a student that is required to not attend school and is eager to stay caught up can log on and receive their lessons. And since online school is not counted as real school time in Massachusetts, students that contract COVID and attend these classes online would still be considered to have an excused absence.

I am not saying this should be a forever thing, but I strongly believe that having this opportunity to attend classes online should be implemented into schools while the pandemic is still prominent. We are all living through this global crisis together and all efforts possible should be made to help everyone out.

The year 2020 was really rough for a lot of people for very obvious reasons. The COVID-19 virus hit the world by storm and forced people all over the world to stay inside and do their day to day tasks at home. One of the biggest groups of people affected by the virus were students. Students benefit from in person learning so it took a lot of planning and hard work to keep kids in schools, because remote learning comes with lots of technical difficulties it makes it hard to learn, and the last thing we would want is to have to go to remote learning because people don’t wear there masks properly.

It is up to each and every one of us to keep ourselves safe and the best way to do that is by wearing masks, and wearing them properly. At the end of the day wearing a mask is simply about the safety of yourself and the students around you. Not to mention if you get the virus you could easily pass it on to a family member, and that family member shouldn’t have to deal with a virus just because you didn’t want to wear a mask.

Although almost 60% of students in Burlington High are vaccinated, there is still a large number of students who are unvaccinated and at risk of getting the virus. Keeping a mask on prevents you from getting COVID through your respiratory system which is the main source of getting the virus.

There are also numerous studies proving that even if you have the COVID vaccine you can still be a carrier and pass on the virus to others. An article from the CDC states, “Vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others, although at much lower rates than unvaccinated people.” So regardless of BHS’s vaccination rate, COVID still poses a risk and spreads from person to person, and not wearing a mask puts everyone at risk.

The other problem that has sprung up recently is the new variant, the Delta virus. The delta variant is everything COVID is but a lot worse. The CDC has stated that, “The delta virus is 2x more contagious than the previous virus and causes a more serious illness.”

With the number of unvaccinated people still at a large percentage, the delta virus still poses a major risk to all people’s health and security. It is very important to ensure we do not go through another major outbreak like we did in 2020, in order to do so we all need to follow the guidelines laid out for us. We have all of the materials and right planning to make sure we keep each other safe, we all just have to follow along and work together a little longer.

We as a community have gone through a very tough time in the last few years, but the more we work together to get rid of this deadly virus the more hope we can have for our future. The world may never go back to the way it used to be but we can learn to live with the way things are now. Remember that masks are not also a replacement for social distancing and to keep 6 ft. away at all times.

From the perspective of two high schoolers with jobs, the answer is yes! When you have a job, it teaches you to be more responsible, able to manage time, and able to learn the value of a dollar. Not only does a job help you with all that, it also gets you money! If you ask any person, from a toddler to an adult, they will say that the more money the better, and the same applies for teenagers. When you look beyond high school you may see college, a house, an apartment, or a car, but there’s one key component to get all these and it all comes back to money.

According to CNBC, "In 1979 about 60% of American high schoolers had a job, and this number has dramatically decreased in the past years; now about 35% of teens have a job." We understand that the workload in high school has also increased since 1979, but a job doesn’t mean all day everyday; it could be 2-4 hours on a weekend, or maybe a job for summer. If you get a job at a younger age it teaches you how to budget and handle money in the future which can be really beneficial when you’re living on your own.

Many teens may say, “but my parents can pay for that shirt, food, or college.” Have you ever wanted to buy something and your parents say “NO why do you need it?” or “You won’t ever use/wear that”? If you have your own money, you have the freedom to buy anything you want without your parents saying anything because you can say back to them “It’s my money and I earned it.”

Also, when you have a job and you earn your first paycheck you get this feeling of being proud of yourself. When you buy something for the first time with YOUR money, you can say “I put my hard work into this clothing, video game, hamburger, etc.”

In the state of Massachusetts, there are laws that you can attend school, do homework, and not be too stressed. They are made to make sure that you can still be doing adequate work in school. The laws are broken up by age, 13-15 and 16-17. For kids under 16:

• they may work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m during the school year

• only between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m during the summer.

Kids 16 and older:

• They can only work between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. (on nights preceding a regularly scheduled school day).

• They can work between 6 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. (on nights not preceding a regularly scheduled school day).

• Exception for restaurants and racetracks: only between 6 a.m. and 12:00 midnight (on nights not preceding a regularly scheduled school day).

Some people may say that work adds a lot of stress on top of the stress we have about school, but if you're feeling stressed with school then you can get a weekend job or a summer job. You may think a job for the summer isn't worth it, but if you work a few shifts a week you can get around $108 if you work two hours a week for four weeks; minimum wage in MA is $13.50 an hour.

Having a job will teach you to be more responsible in life. It will teach you how to be a better family member by learning different skills that you can use to help your family. Also, having a job at such a young age could teach you to be more responsible when you are living on your own and how to manage your time. It can show you how to work with money and teach you how to be able to do different things that your parents never taught you.

If you find yourself struggling with homework and mixing up different policies for every class, you're not alone. The new homework policy for the 2021-2022 school year is causing many students to procrastinate more, fall behind, and ultimately confuse policies.

Some feel as though the grading scale for the different departments is unfair as homework takes up the majority of their time for such a small portion of their final grade. However, almost every class has a different grading scale, which can cause confusion. For example, during the 2020-2021 school year, homework for an honors history class counted for 5% of the students final grade, while the 2021-2022 school year has increased many classes’ homework percentages up to 20%.

As for the English department’s grading policies, many teachers do not include homework as a crucial part of a student's grade. Instead, they have categories like speaking and listening, language, critical reading, composition, and learning process.

Obviously with COVID, many teachers and departments decided to lower the value of homework to ease stress for students during unprecedented times. With coming back to school full-time, many students are still in the mentality that homework has barely any value after having a minimal amount of work that was being required after remote learning.

Another new addition to homework policies is the “no zero” rule. This isn’t necessarily a school-wide policy, but instead specific to different departments. This means if a student fails to complete an assignment, it will be put into Aspen as a 50% instead of a zero. This policy was established in hopes of helping students stay above a failing grade letter, but instead it has caused students to lose motivation to complete their homework because they know a zero will not be put into Aspen and ultimately sink their grade.

Most students dread going home and doing their homework every night, especially after sports, clubs, and other after-school activities. Many have the mentality that homework is too stressful, especially for AP or honors classes that often come with several hours of homework. This has been a reoccurring issue over the years, not just recently with the new homework policies. For example, according to a study conducted in 2018 by the Better Sleep Council, homework stress is the biggest source of frustration for teens.

To prevent students losing motivation and skipping homework, each department should make their homework policies similar, if not the same. The “no zero” policy can be beneficial to many students, but students should understand that they still need to submit their work regardless of the fact that they won’t receive a zero. As a community, it’s important to change the connotation around the “no zero policy”.

Note: This article was written before the bathroom policy was changed.

Take this for example: a student will ask their teacher to go to the bathroom, scan the QR code (assuming it even works), then fill it out as they depart on their search for an open place to relieve themselves. Sometimes it takes five minutes just to get into the bathroom! And other times, no bathroom is even open. All students want to do is use the bathroom, which is a human need!

The BHS bathroom policy is the most infuriating system at this school. This policy was instilled for COVID, but it has stayed even as guidelines have eased.

The bathroom policy comes in three parts. First comes signing out of class, which is pretty easy. Secondly, teachers are put on ‘Bathroom Duty’, where they spend a class period sitting in front of the bathroom and make sure there isn’t any ‘funny business’ (i.e. vaping and vandalism) going on. Thirdly, and most importantly, some bathrooms are locked, leaving only the Main Lobby, History Hall, Math Hall, and Cafeteria bathrooms open. However, the latter two points in the policy have loopholes and internal issues that cause larger problems that students are upset about.

This issue of the bathrooms is not only a student body issue, but a faculty issue as well. During each period, there is at least one teacher watching each set of bathrooms. They are there only to monitor activity, and to make sure that there are not too many students in a given bathroom at one time.

Teachers are contractually given both a preparatory period and are supposed to take a period for a duty each day, examples being study hall and the bathroom monitoring. However, the new BHS bell schedule can drop teachers’ assigned prep time. Since it is in their unionized plan, the teacher can drop their duty period to take their prep. This can lead to a certain bathroom being locked, and all of the issues included with that. This is all according to the newspaper advisor, Ms. Eshelmen

The bathroom issue spans the entire school, is unnecessarily difficult, and it is overall a waste of precious time for students and teachers alike.

Furthermore, for a student who is scrambling to get to a bathroom for some much-needed relief, having a bathroom be restricted for them is an indescribable nightmare. When you need to go the most, seeing the opportunity being denied to you is comparable to nothing else in this world. However, for countless BHS students, it has become a reality. The general consensus is that going to the bathroom at school is a no-go for the vast majority of BHS students. Ask around in the hallways and you will find that many dread going to the school bathrooms, whether it be for the long entry wait times, the crowdedness during popular hours such as lunchtime, or the fact that they’re inaccessible for a good portion of the day.

In spite of this, it is not as if students hate the bathrooms! It is an agreement that going to the bathroom when you need to go is an absolute must. The natural process we go through, for every student, is too crucial to be disregarded because of one incident. Regardless, with current bathroom regulations in place, these processes are impeded in a manner that is nearly torturous to students.

Every person needs to use the bathroom. It is as simple as that. Literally. One human need is being constricted and taken from us students, while the small prep period is being taken away from teachers. It is extremely harmful to both a healthy community and a healthy learning experience.

BHS, keep the bathrooms open and trust the students. Have them sign out with working QR codes, then let them use the bathroom. How are we supposed to trust your policies and moral grounds if we cannot even use the bathroom?

The Burlington High School 2021-2022 bell schedule is extremely confusing for students, and we have also heard staff members express their confusion about it. Not only is it confusing because it changed from last year, but because of the structure of it as a whole. With the class times, lunch periods, and the new Advisory/homeroom periods alternating day to day, it is the perfect recipe for disorientation.

As of this year, BHS started a new aspect of the schedule which leads class times to alter each day: red and blue days. This makes the schedule extremely confusing to follow because it makes it very difficult to memorize what the timing surrounding classes are.

In other years, we have been able to go day to day knowing exactly when each of our classes begins and ends without having to refer to the schedule, but that is not the case this year. Having different days completely over-complicates the process as it is making students and staff follow multiple schedules which just creates extra stress where it is not needed.

For example, if the order of classes goes 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and it is a red day, period seven would begin at 8:35 AM and end at 9:45 AM, then period six would begin at 9:49 AM and end at 10:55 AM, followed by the next class or lunch (depending on if the student has first or second lunch). However, if this rotation of classes were to be on a blue day, period seven would begin at 8:35AM and end at 9:39AM, followed by flex at 9:43 AM - 10:13 AM, and period six would be from 10:17 AM -11:17 AM.

Though these changes are not huge, they are unnecessary time changes that cause a lot of confusion. If this was a change that happened every once in a while, it would be understandable as we already sometimes switch around our days for different occasions such as common planning days or half days, but these two time frames switch back and forth everyday causing it to be nearly impossible for us to ever feel completely used to the schedule.

Lunch is also a widespread source of confusion for the BHS student body. Lunch is supposed to be a time where students interact with each other, but many students would rather sit in the library, a hallway, or in a classroom because they don’t know anyone else during their lunch period. With the alternating day colors and schedules it only adds to the confusion as students have different lunches on different days. Those who have first lunch always mention how much longer the afternoon feels, while students who have second lunch wish they could have it every day.

Homeroom and Advisory are also sources of unnecessary confusion and distaste, with flex time only happening twice a week, and only one of those times being an actual “flex” period, it defeats the entire purpose of the time altogether. It can also be confusing because on our blue days - Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have the built in 30 minutes of “flex” period. On Tuesdays, we go to homeroom, while on Thursdays, we go to Advisory. This can be confusing because it, once again, makes it nearly impossible for us to ever feel completely used to the schedule.

Though there will always be some confusion no matter which schedule is being followed, there are a few main things that we think would improve the distress caused by the current one. First off, get rid of red and blue days. Having every other day alternating class times is extremely confusing, unnecessary, and adds extra stress to our days. It over-complicates day-to-day school life; it would be much easier to just follow and be able to get used to/memorize one schedule.

The next thing we believe needs to change is lunch. Holding two lunches is fully understandable as it would be very hectic having everyone in the Cafeteria at once, but having to switch between lunch one and lunch two depending on the rotation of the classes causes much confusion and distress to students.

Many of my classmates, as well as myself, have gotten worked up and very worried over not knowing which lunch we have. Even to the point of going to our next class to figure out if we have class then or not, causing us to miss time out of our lunch. There is also no clear way for students to be informed of which lunch they have; we feel it should have at least been added into our personal schedules on aspen so there would be an idea of where to go.

We feel that every student should have the same lunch period every day; all freshmen and sophomores should have lunch one and all juniors and seniors should have lunch two. With the current schedule, this cannot occur due to the constant rotating of the order of class periods. So, we think the schedule should potentially change to where we have all seven periods each day without rotating to avoid the confusion over interchanging lunch times.

Another change that could be made to address the confusion over lunch would be having one period locked in during the middle of each day which other classes would rotate around. This change would make it so every student has the same lunch each day therefore limiting the confusion of switching day-to-day solely based on the rotation of the classes.

The final thing we believe should change is the homeroom/advisory situation. These cause much confusion as they are inconsistent and happen only once a week each. To avoid confusion I think there could be a change where we have homeroom/flex block occur everyday at the same set time and have advisory in place of that for one day each week.

This would be much more understandable than having two random times out of our day every other day where on one day we go to homeroom and the other advisory. It feels unorganized and almost like a waste of time as it is just causing extra confusion and adding another thing to our plates.

We took a poll for students asking them about their experience with this year’s schedule. Only 22% of those who responded said that they totally understand the current schedule and many expressed their confusion with the rotating days when asked what they do not like about it. One student even said, “[they] still don’t know where [they’re] going half the time”.

It says a lot that students still do not know when their classes are even though we are about six weeks into the year. This just goes to show that many students find the 2021-2022 bell schedule extremely confusing and something needs to be done about it in order to benefit everyone.

Recently due to COVID-19 restrictions, the ability for seniors to head down to the library for study without a pass has been restricted. This restriction is inevitably going to cause more harm than good, as busy seniors need as much downtime in productive areas as possible due to schoolwork, college prep, and much more.

Picture this: you’re a senior in high school, sitting in your English class. You have college essays due, work after school, and hours worth of homework. You have a busy schedule, and there’s nothing you need more than time alone, in peace, to get some work done.

You plan to spend the period in the library for senior study. However, as you look at the new email notification that was just sent out, you realize that senior study in the library is no longer an option. Unless you have a pass, of course.

For many years, the seniors of BHS have looked forward to their senior study in the library. It’s been a tradition for seniors to go down to the library freely, with attendance being as simple as signing in online. But this year is different; with an influx of non-seniors sneaking into the library, library rights have become much more strict.

Last year, the library was not open at all, so this year would have marked the re-implementation of the policy. But because students who weren’t seniors spent time in the library during studies, and other students skipped class to go to the library, the ability to go freely has been taken away. A lack of staff free-time with the new schedule has made it hard to regulate where students are at all times.

“As you know, we have study in the cafe,” Assistant Principal Northrop said. “In previous school years, we allowed seniors to go to the lower library during study.”

According to Assistant Principal Northrop, however, they found that this year students were going to the library without permission or without checking in.

Now, passes are required for all students if they want to go to the library, regardless of whether or not they’re a senior.

The question is this: should the misbehavior of a few students result in the restriction of everyone?

The cafeteria definitely isn’t the worst place to have a study hall. The tables are bigger, which makes it easier to complete projects and it’s safer to social distance since there is the whole area to spread out. However, these perks can hardly be used because of how loud it is in the cafe.

However, studying in the loud cafeteria is hard, especially for the seniors who have complicated, hard work. With preparing for college on top of their other work, it’s incredibly hard to focus.

We also can’t forget that for some students, study is held in the auditorium. The auditorium is dark, crowded, and has no table space. There’s no desks or tables, so you have to prop your homework on your legs. The library is simply the best alternative, with open tables, more free space, and a quieter, calmer atmosphere.

But now, in response to the school’s inability to manage the location and attendance for underclassmen in the COVID-19 crisis, the right has been altogether restricted instead of worked around.

Burlington High School was a pioneer when it came to the library policy; allowing seniors more freedom during study was a privilege that every underclassman would be excited about for years prior. By filling in an online form, all seniors could have some down time in the library to unwind and relax.

“I understand why they don’t want a million people in the library at one time,” Mrs. Tharp, a math teacher at BHS said, “but I know it’s frustrating for seniors because you’ve waited four years to be able to do what you want to do.”

Another issue comes into play with the fact that some teachers refuse to give passes at all. Though students might not need to go to the library, it is a much-needed and deserved downtime that is surely well-earned after three previous years’ worth of restriction during study. Requiring passes is the easy solution. But it is not the right or the best solution.

COVID-19 has caused an incredible toll on the mental health of students globally. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “The shuttering of the American education system severed students from more than just classrooms, friends and extracurricular activities. It has also cut off an estimated 55 million children and teenagers from school staff members whose open doors and compassionate advice helped them build self-esteem.”

Students, especially seniors who have incredibly high workloads, deserve a much-needed break. The last thing seniors need right now are more steps, rules, and restrictions when it comes to spending time in a quieter and more comfortable place.

“It used to be just electronic,” Mrs. Tharp said, “and now they went back to paper, so there might be a more efficient way to do this electronically.”

It is important that we are cautious during these trying times. But after years of new, flawed policies in response to COVID-19, we have to do better when implementing new rules; there is no more time for half-baked policies that cause more problems than they solve.

“I think we’re working on it now, trying to figure out and problem-solve how to get a teacher to be there at all times, because then they can check the study sign-in,” Assistant Principal Northrop said.

COVID may not be going away any time soon; it is time that we start solving problems now.