Spring, 2023 - Editorial

A look into how COVID-19 hit Newton High School

by Christine Ahmad

This past March hits the three year mark of when COVID-19 first ravaged the world. March 13th, 2020 was a day many will remember for the rest of their lives. Jobs were lost, lives were lost, and many got sick. March 13th, marked the day the world went into lock down.

As a freshman in high school, it seemed like a fun two week break from school at first. There was less work and I got to spend most of the days going on bike rides and enjoying the break. The two week break turned into a long dreaded seclusion. Holidays were spent only with my immediate family, vacations were canceled, and the usual summer activities could not happen any longer.

School came my sophomore year and once again we were virtual. Waking up to stay in bed and “go to school” via Zoom was depressing. I missed my friends and I felt like I was missing out on my high school life. The school eventually opened a hybrid schedule meaning certain days certain people could go in. However, going into school was simply not worth it. The teachers still, understandably, had to teach on Zoom for those at home. Most of my classes I had to join the Zoom call while I was in the classroom. When the teachers were not in school you sat in the cafeteria with multiple other classes trying to hear your teacher.

Now that I am a senior, I am glad to be back in person and have all the experiences that a typical high school student has. Prom, graduation, school trips and just being in school is something I am thankful for. Although my high school experience was anything but typical, it will be something I always remember.

Although, there was an upside to seeing how the community came together in a time of need. Even when the world was shutting down, everyone was there for one another. Families made it clear that if you needed something they would be willing to help in any way possible. The world will always have been impacted by COVID-19 but continues to work past it each and every day.

Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Newton High School prides itself on many things. One of them being its Theater Department. Each year, hundreds of people come to see and support the department. However, there is a major flaw that needs to be addressed. The auditorium is not wheelchair accessible. There are no real seats or areas for people to sit who are handicapped. This is an issue that needs fixing, and it needs fixing soon. It is not fair that everyone gets to have an enjoyable experience in the theater, except those who are handicapped. They can either sit in the very back or very front, neither option comfortable as they are cramped into a space that was not made for them.

So what is the solution? It’s as easy as taking existing seats out to make space. Why this issue hasn’t been addressed years ago is beyond me. Everyone should be able to enjoy theater, and everyone should be able to enjoy it comfortably.

Sincerely,

Allison Iliff

Our schools are under attack: The reality of American schools

by Jordan Short

From May 15, 1970 to March 27, 2023. 53 years. 2,069 school shootings. 684 deaths. 1937 injuries.

School shootings have taken over America in the last 24 years. On April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, 12th graders Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold committed one of America's worst and most memorable school shootings. The two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide.

People were terrified. This was the first time something like this had ever been widely publicized. This tragic event prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the gunmen. In the aftermath of the shootings, many schools across America enacted “zero-tolerance” rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students.

However, this didn’t stop the shootings. On December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and murdered 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and the other six were adult staff members.

Life stalled that day. The deaths of those 20 young children left a lasting mark on the way students, parents and officials around the country view school safety. In addition to resparking debates over gun control and mental health care, it helped pave the way in an era of "active shooter drills" and difficult conversations about safety for even the youngest kids.

The problem is that we shouldn’t have to be teaching children from the time they start school to the time they graduate how to survive in a place where they are supposed to be safe and thrive.

Administrators think that implementing these drills will teach kids the best way to survive when this happens, but the problem is that not only are we training kids to hide but we are training the shooters to find. 43.1% of school shootings the shooter was a current student at the school. How are we supposed to feel safe when we are teaching the shooters where we hide, where to find us, how to kill us?

I have many opinions on gun laws, but that doesn’t seem to be the concern of the government. The government is so focused on protecting our school from the dangers of curriculum , gender affirming bathrooms, and certain books in our libraries that they are getting away from the violence inside our schools.

Over the past year or so many states have been passing bills to “protect our schools,” but not from gun violence, instead they are focusing on laws concerning LGBTQ+ topics. Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the controversial "Parental Rights in Education" bill otherwise known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed the “bathroom bill” last April preventing transgender students from using the bathroom of the gender they identify, which later came to include additional restrictions on sexual orientation or gender identity discussions through fifth grade.

Laws like this have been passed all over the country, but when a school shooting happens all anyone can say is, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims and the survivors.”

“Thoughts and prayers didn’t bring my mother back after she was gunned down in a hallway at Sandy Hook. It is beyond time to take action,” Erica Leslie Lafferty, whose mother was killed in the massacre in Connecticut in 2012, said on Twitter.

“Thoughts and prayers” are not going to save us. They are not going to put a stop to this violence that everyday becomes more of a common occurrence. Telling us to hide in a dark corner in the dark classroom is not going to keep us alive. Action needs to be taken. How many more kids need to die before change is made? How many more teachers need to die protecting their students? How many more families need to bury their loved ones?

I remember the first time I was scared to go to school because I was worried I wouldn’t be coming home. I was in the fourth grade. Now I sit in my high school fearing the same thing. 7 years have passed and I still walk the school halls fearing it might be the last walk I take.

Over the last month Newton High School has become a place where I no longer feel safe. Multiple threats of violence have been made against our school. I have deep respect for our administration, but I feel as though they have dropped the ball in some safety situations.

On February 23, 2023 at around 2:00 PM, we were put into a shelter in place after a meme had been sent to two students saying there was an active shooter on our campus. Now from the surface this could seem like proper protocol, but in reality if we were in fact in an active shooter situation we would have been having a very different conversation.

After speaking with some staff and students, there may have been an assumption there was a wild animal outside because the general idea of a shelter in place is that we aren’t supposed to leave the school building. At the time of this shelter in place, I was in a classroom with the door wide open and students still able to leave the class. Multiple classrooms were in this same situation with doors open, lights on and unlocked classrooms.

Teachers were not aware of the situation and after reviewing the red folders by the door, I realized how vague the instructions for a shelter in place were. The documents said that staff and students must remain in the building and classroom and were vague on the rest of the information about what should be done in the classroom. The document did not state that teachers should shut and lock the doors and in an instance of an active shooter the doors should have been closed and locked.

According to Mr. Waldron during the assembly we had about these threats, administration and police operated as though there was a serious threat on our campus, but I beg to differ. If they were truly acting as though there were a real threat, we should have been placed in a lockdown. Operating in a shelter in place during what could have been more than a joke could very well have been life threatening due to the lack of protocol for said shelter in places.

I truly believe that the administration does have the best intentions in their hearts, but I do think they chose the wrong protocol in this situation. I do not claim to know better than the professionals, but as a teenager who has lived through these situations, I believe they need better insight. I think protocols need to be updated and the proper calls need to be made in these possible life or death situations in the future.

I think the administration needs to conduct a thorough formal review of all school safety policies and procedures to ensure that school safety issues are adequately covered in current school crisis plans and emergency response procedures and provide crisis training and professional development for staff based upon needs assessment. I also think students need to be more involved in the conversation. We need to speak with administration and attend board meetings; we need to speak out about our safety concerns and I know our administration will listen.

Here at Newton High School, we have amazing hands-on-instructors who are willing to do what they need to do for our safety and in my opinion they have the foundation to keep us safe, but as a community we need to help with building the blocks. I put my full trust into our administrators to consider these steps and learn more about what they need to do to correctly protect our staff and students.

Change needs to happen and it starts here.

We need meaningful actions to keep our schools safe, actions that address what we know about gun violence in America’s schools. It’s time for government officials and school administration to work together to form bills that will protect us kids from what really threatens their safety. We need to advocate and push for more counseling at schools and encourage help for and normalize mental health issues.

There are so many bad things going on in the world, the last thing we need to continue is the cycle of children and teachers dying by the hands of guns. We need to stand up and make and change as a community, otherwise we might not have one to protect.