COVID regulations at DDHS disappointing

Posted Dec. 15, 2021

By Ethan Donahue

Staff Editor

David Douglas, while having clear rules surrounding COVID, isn’t upholding the regulations in place to protect the school body.

While I understand that it is hard to monitor a student body of around 3000, I feel that there could be more of an effort made by staff. Throughout hallways it's common to see students with their masks pulled down below their noses if not off entirely. Many teachers, security officers, and other staff members will see this but very few will make a comment and even less will insure the student pulls their mask up. Along with students, some teachers also seem to have trouble remembering to keep their mask pulled up which shows the students that it isn’t an important rule to follow. While I can understand someone pulling their mask down while outside a building, someone pulling their mask down while in a crowded hallway is dangerous for the person and those surrounding them. The hallways are’t monitored as strictly as they could or should be, there are staff standing in hallways but they seem more likely to tell a student to stay off their phone or to hurry as to not be tardy to class than to follow the school wide safety protocols.

At the beginning of school there were many memos sent out describing how the student body would be spread out, but any student who has to walk between classes can attest to how crowded the hallways and lunchrooms are. While sitting at tables in the lunch rooms there are stickers placed on the seats to show where students are able to sit, but walking in or through the lunch rooms involves bumping into multiple people, enclosed spaces, and having to shove your way through groups to get to your destination. The crowds are worse when there is a table set up in the lunch rooms, leading to traffic stopping at the table and a cluster of people making it hard for anyone to get through. The lunch lines are faster due to the free lunches but that doesn’t seem to actually make the lunch rooms any less crowded. Hallways are very similar to lunch rooms, packed full of students. It’s almost impossible to get from one classroom to another without bumping into multiple other students and running into at least one student who is wearing a mask incorrectly.

Another concern is the busses, each bus seems to be held to different standards. Some busses have assigned seats or a way to track students' locations while some have no method to the madness which makes the contact tracing process extremely questionable. The seemingly optional mask mandate is even less enforced on busses. There are multiple students on my bus that consistently wear their mask incorrectly and, on a couple occasions, boarded the bus without a mask. The driver made no effort to stop or correct any of these students, when there were comments made the student will usually pull down or take off their mask once their in their seat. Busses, even more than classrooms, need to have set COVID protocols. Especially as the weather gets colder, the colder weather will lead to closed windows and heaters. COVID spreads most easily in heated environments and with the windows closed everyone on the bus is then in danger of contracting it.

Sanitation in classrooms does seem to have improved, with each classroom having at least one hand sanitizer and box of tissues, but outside it can be questionable. The water fountains have been blocked off to help stop contamination and make it so students can only fill their water bottles, which would be good if students didn’t just drink from the water bottle filler. Even with the improvements made inside the classrooms the most expensive implement, the air purifier, is actually turned off by some teachers during lessons.

“My teacher has turned the air purifier off or to a lower setting multiple times, saying that its noise was interfering with their teaching,” said an anonymous senior.

When the school year began the protocols were upheld by both students and staff, though as time has passed the fear that many felt has faded and people have grown lax. But with at least one COVID exposure every week I think both students and staff have to take the restrictions more seriously, and punishments for those who don’t need to be more severe. Hallways should be monitored along with some kind of plan put in place to make hallways less crowded, maybe an alternate route map could be given to students showing all exits and entrances so students could figure out ways to get to class with less foot traffic. What the entire school population has to remember is that those who don’t follow Covid restrictions are putting everyone else at risk.