Late, By the Bell!
Noor Ul Huda, Lucky Sherpa, and Sonia Hamouche
OPINION: Change the one minute late bell
Being late to class – a common issue among students at our school but are we really late if it’s because of the bell system itself? The main cause behind this is the One Minute Late Bell, which we – Lucky Sherpa, Noor Ul Huda, and Sonia Hamouche – believe should be extended so we can all get to class on time. Some students get caught in the traffic and that makes them late to class. The classes are separated at lunch (03/04 away from 01/02) which forces students to interact with their friends in the hallway since they won’t see them at lunch. These interactions cause the hallway traffic to be at an all time high, and then people are late.
One way to solve this problem would be to organize the hallways better for example by labeling things with signs; however, that would cause students to interact less with each other and people they know leaving them isolated. By adding the signs and assignment one side of the hall to one direction could create more organization and more isolation. A better solution would be to extend the late bell to three minutes which would allow students to interact with each other and also reach their classes on time.
If the administration is worried about taking away time from class they can take time from advisory instead since advisory isn't as important as getting to class on time. We asked school administration about the late bell and here are their responses:
Try going through this in under a minute!
Noor: Would you consider changing the late bell?
Ms. Votinelli:Well this is the problem, our late bell ends one minute after the period ends so what Mr.Frangella and I did was we tried to put classes for scheduling as close to each other as possible. So if someone has class 507 for math maybe they have to go to 502 for ELA, so we try to shorten it cause it's only a minute. However, there are sometimes where someone has to go from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor, or the 5th floor to the 1st floor for, let’s say, band [class], even so we don't mark anybody late because we know it's only one minute. We don't have too much wiggle room, that's the problem.
Noor: Would you ever consider changing the timing of the late bell?
Mr. Fava: Yes, I would consider it, but it's hard to because we wanna fit if you want class lengths to be what it is you have to have the late bell as one minute that's why the classrooms are situated the way they are so I understand you guys just came from lunch I’m not gonna mark you all late, but the 8th grade classrooms are right above each other. You should be there within the minute to 2 minutes. That's fine, the reason the late bell is a minute is a minute is so we have 47 minutes. That means probably around 45 minutes in class to do content we wish we could have hour classes, but it doesn't work with our schedule or what we’re providing.
Noor: Okay, but like for example what about other classes like theatre because theatre is on the 4th floor or like gym on the 3rd floor, what about those two?
Mr. Fava: So you guys want a later late bell? Is that what you're asking?
Noor: Yeah, a lot of student were saying two minutes..
Mr.Fava: Okay, we can consider it. We can bring it up to Mr.Frangella, but the reason the minute was so we could have this length of time start on the 10 starts on the starts on the 55 starts on the 20 that kinda why we did a minute but yeah we can consider doing 2 minutes.