By Ivy Thai

October has marked the start of the new locker plan in action. After remaining closed for over a year, school administrators are in the process of distributing lockers, which are in demand, back to students. 

The new locker plan has a late start because the school admin originally decided to continue not issue lockers to students back in August just like the year before. 

Jordan Loey, the Abraham Lincoln High School assistant principal who is in charge of building and grounds, shares that his thinking aligns with SFUSD’s mission of individualized learning and digital devices as of Vision 2025, a plan that ensures every student is challenged to kindle her or his unique spark, chart a course for a meaningful future, and build the knowledge and skills to achieve it. 

“This is a perspective and shift that we’re making in education because when you are in college, all you need to do in college is to show up and bring the device with you, and that’s it,” says Loey.

He also shares that the school site has purchased more resources including technology and extra materials, and has them in teachers’ classrooms. They also encourage teachers to allow students to leave their things in the classroom, so they don’t have to carry them back and forth. Thus, he and other school administrators didn’t see the need for issuing lockers back to students.

In reality, however, there are still a lot of Lincoln teachers who like to do things on paper. 

“Some teachers are not digital people, so they still prefer physical textbooks and stuff so the new digital environment is not for them,” an anonymous senior shares.  

Sara Falls, an English teacher at ALHS, believes that depending on digital copies is a disadvantage in case an unexpected problem occurs on school laptops. She further emphasizes the importance of learning on paper. 

“There are lots of good reasons to read on paper. Study proves that students read better with paper. Students can more easily take notes and annotate on paper. Blue light isn’t good for students. Lots of time spent on screen isn't good for a developing brain,” says Falls.

 On top of that, Loey also has been receiving emails from students and families with demands on having lockers back. He shares that most of the students and families who were emailing him are almost exclusively all freshmen because they had been having the hardest transition from middle school to high school. 

“I’m always open to coming up with solutions to support students. I have always been open to changing it and addressing it if that’s what the students need,” says Loey.

Loey is collaborating with counselors, case managers, and advisory teachers in issuing lockers back to all freshmen and students from other grade levels who have already emailed him in response to the need. 

In order to not get flooded with more emails related to lockers, he will focus on giving access back to lockers to these students first before reaching out to the rest of the Lincoln population with an email containing steps that they need to follow if they also need a locker. 

“I’m gonna email advisory teachers of all freshmen and other students who have already emailed me with a list of assigned lockers and a combo to open it,” says Loey. 

Students wandering around the halls is one of the many unsolved problems at Lincoln. Going to their lockers to get their stuff may be another excuse for students to leave the classroom. The school will issue 1100 lockers from the first floor to students because this area has always had an adult or security available to monitor student activity. 

Through a quick interview with some freshmen students on what they think about having access back to lockers, responses varied. Some students are excited when acknowledging this news while others said  they probably will not use them.

“I think it’s good because you can use it but it's kind of inconvenient because the school is so big and you have to run around to get to it but it’s better than having to carry a lot of things in your backpack.” Qina Lai, a freshman student at Lincoln who had accessed lockers last year at her middle school, happily says

Another freshman student, Emily Li, shares her thoughts, “They’re okay but when we open the locks, the lock is kind of confusing. I prefer just carrying around my backpack than using lockers.” 

Published on 10/27/2022

By Sophia Truong

Abraham Lincoln High School, 2022 school year—The arrival of a new semester, new teachers, and a new school-wide hall pass policy. In a change from former years, the new policy has called for a crackdown on hallway minglers, class skippers, and other students who are out when they’re not supposed to be. 

What prompted this?

“I don’t know the exact number, but I believe that a lot of students, including me, were absent,” Briseis Portillo, a junior, stated. “Or they would come, for one class, and leave for the rest.” 

“On a good day, during San Francisco summers,” one anonymous new building teacher stated, “You could easily see about 50 or more kids just milling about in the breezeway.” 

In the aftermath of Covid-19, many students, coming straight from online learning, felt that school “wasn’t real,” or was “optional,” Portillo explained. The pandemic taught the world the power of uploading documents—with all their assignments now digitized, many students found it easy to do the work from home, and still manage a passing grade. 

That’s not to say that the Lincoln of 2021 had heavily regulated hallways. 

“They weren’t super strict about it, ” Sara Falls noted, a teacher who has been a part of the faculty for roughly 21 years.  “I’m not sure how serious they were about enforcing it,”  

Randomly pulled fire alarms were frequently a part of a student’s weekly routine, occurring during both lunch and class, disrupting the entire school as students shuffled back and forth in and outside the building. 

With all these factors laid out, it is clear to see why the school has announced its decision to enforce stricter rules on any hallway stragglers. 

Yet, evident change remains to be seen. 

“They’re probably saying that it's actually really important,” Portillo stated. “But I don’t think it’s actually doing anything.” 

The low number of hired security guards patrolling the school grounds might also contribute to this problem. In a recent sweep of the school, during the middle of the 6th period, from the third floor to the edges of the new building, only one could be found—Carl Jacobs, located by the main entrance. This isn’t an issue individual to Lincoln—other high schools in the district, such as Mission, Balboa, and Washington have also experienced a shortage of guards on their own campuses. 

“They haven't hired any more security from last year,” Falls noted, further pointing out that the Dean of students, Joel Bolzer, is currently on medical leave, leaving a more significant gap in the school’s security system. “They didn’t replace him. So in fact, we’re down a person.” 

Though Lincoln has made efforts to put an end to the unprompted fire alarms, the problem persists, with sometimes up to three or four occurring within an hour. The same student wanderings have continued too, with many milling about despite promises of harsher repercussions, and in some cases (such as the fire alarms), warnings of fines, and expulsion.

“I just see that there are no changes in terms of the hall pass policy,” Ivy Thai, a junior, observed, before explaining that she had not even realized a policy was being enforced. “Everything is the same.” 

“There’s always gonna be students that skip.” Portillo stated, “They just get better at hiding.”

Published on 10/27/2022

By Andre Partin

SFUSD schools, including Lincoln, have recently faced a slew of teacher shortages. As these challenges have spread across the school, they’ve affected many programs, namely Biotech.

David Frischer and Gianne Souza, Lincoln’s two Biotech teachers, both left at the end of last year.  Frischer taught three Biotech 1 classes and one section of Biotech 2.  Souza taught one section of Biotech 1. Lincoln initially hired someone to take Frischer’s position, but due to scheduling issues, that person did not take the job.  

Consequently, Lincoln Biotech classes have shrunk to only two Biotech sections, with 56 students total. This has left many kids that wanted to take Biotech or Biotech 2 in the dust. 

“Fortunately we have Mr. KC Jones who took some classes over. We are in the process of trying to recruit so that we have a teacher for the next school year,” says Shari Balisi, the school principal. “We started trying to recruit teachers already.”  

The school mainly had former college professors applying, teachers accustomed to a two day work-week schedule. 

“We did hire someone, but because of the schedule that they wanted and the schedule that we have in high school, it didn't work out,” said Balisi.

On the bright side, the Biotech classes that still remain seem to be running smoothly. “I found it easy to take over the Biotech program” says Jones, who is currently the only Biotech teacher. “I ran two high school Biotech programs at other schools and have taught Biotech at Lincoln for several years.” Jones also ran a Biotech outreach program for three years in San Diego that reached 5000+ students, on top of teaching Biotech workshops to teachers in Hyderabad, India. “Right now, classes are going well.”

“Long story short,” says Balisi, “it's just trying to find qualified teachers, and we could not find them….By December we talk to teachers and ask if they would like to take the class on, and if they have the credentials. It is also [posted] in human resources that we are looking for teachers, and we’re just hoping that we can find somebody.”

Balisi explains, “Things are on the up and up. Teachers left and we can’t find a teacher; it’s pretty straight-forward.”

Published on 10/27/2022

By Briseis Portillo

         Teacher shortages are prevalent across the nation. Chron 4 reports that San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), has 100 certified teacher positions and over 150 paraeducator positions open as of August 2022.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, many teacher positions have been left unfilled, stunting the pace at which students are learning. This not only delays the process of students receiving quality education but also negatively affects those that are temporarily filling the vacant positions.

Currently, SFUSD is assigning “Teachers on special assignments” (TSA) to fill the vacant teacher positions temporarily as new teachers are being hired. TSAs are certified teachers with credentials, who cover part-time for teachers long term. These teachers only get placed on an assignment outside of their credentials if they volunteer for it. Others mainly apply for assignments that only fall within their credentials.

  With the school district desperate to fill needed positions, many TSAs were assigned new roles. Beatrice Tesorero, previously a CSU Expository Writing teacher at Abraham Lincoln High School, states she took the role of a TSA voluntarily after being a full-time teacher for six years. She wanted to keep herself grounded in the classroom, prompting her to apply to be a TSA. 

Tesorero’s assignment was to cover for Chris Cary, the previous AP Psychology teacher at Lincoln. However, Tesorero explains, “Majority of us [TSAs], if not all, did not receive an official notice of where and what we would teach until 5:00 pm the Monday before school started. With that being said, it was difficult to prepare for the class many TSA’s have been assigned without much time to prepare.”

Tesorero explains how she did not have background knowledge of teaching AP Psychology. She had to rely on her background as a Child & Adolescent Development major in college to help with some of the content.

Although she is not an official AP teacher, Tesorero feels that she is trying her best to support and prepare students in the same ways an “official” AP Psychology teacher would. 

“I do believe that having a teacher with more content knowledge, whether they are a new teacher or not, would of course be so much more beneficial to students and their learning of the content,” Tesorero says. 

The teacher shortage is widespread across the nation and is noted as a “crisis”. There are temporary positions like having long-term substitute teachers, and TSAs, but if it's noted as a crisis there need to be long-term solutions, not just temporary solutions. 

Gabriela López, the former president of the SFUSD school board, explains how educators are crucial to the education of students. “How can someone do really hard, important work if they're not even getting their basic needs met?” López says. 

López’s background is in Elementary education; however, she states how difficult it is to be an educator when there is no support and little to no pay. Many teachers also left the district due to late, or sometimes nonexistent, paychecks. Living in San Francisco, this causes many issues for teachers. San Francisco is notoriously expensive, and teachers have voiced that living expenses can hardly be sustained by being a teacher alone.

López’s long-term alternative solutions, rather than the current solution with TSAs, include having more community-based resources so that parents and community members willing and interested in teaching can receive their credentials.  

“I think [an] initiative that really works is getting people who are community members in different schools jobs in the school district,” states López. 

Published on 10/27/2022

By  Isaiah Murillo 

As of the 2023-2024 school year, SFUSD high schools must start and end at the same time excluding block days. With the new schedule, Lincoln has added a nutrition break after advisory. Since the start of this school year, many students and teachers have asked “Why did  SFUSD decide to do this?” and “Will we ever get a different schedule for the years to come?”

On April 27th 2022, Abraham Lincoln high school announced to students about the new bell schedule with four schedules to choose from.  Even though students had received a message that asked them to fill out a survey, the popular choice still didn't make a difference.

Students were to choose from the two most popular choices. One of the options was to have every class every day, but still have a short day on Wednesday. Ultimately, it didn't matter because our schedule would be changed again sometime before summer ended.

Nicholas Glasser, a history teacher, explains, “The district said all schools by next year must go to one early release only. Our school along with other schools that had two early releases had to get rid of one.”

This was a problem because certain subjects and classes such as physics, biology, Green Academy, and Teacher Academy needed the extra class time on block days. Due to not having that time, Green Academy and Teacher Academy were just going to shut down. 

Some of the ALHS faculty stood up to this and wanted to make it to where those classes could still be up and running. They did so by attending multiple meetings with LEAD (Leadership Equity Achievement Design) to make sure that we can still have block periods and at least one early release day.

Thankfully, LEAD kept the block day schedule; in return, they made Thursday a regular release day. Some ALHS students and faculty seem to dislike the new schedule as it puts them at a disadvantage. 

Others have spoken up and communicated the dread they feel towards the schedule and their preference for the old schedule over the current one. Most students wish to have two days of early releases like last year when we got off at 2:57 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Teachers are also heavily affected by the schedule change. Mark Matsuzaki, a physics teacher, states, “This is my second year, so compared to last year’s schedule, this year has been a lot harder on me just because on Thursdays I have three of my block periods, plus advisory.” 

The new schedule has also created transportation issues for schools across San Francisco. Now that public high schools in San Francisco get out at the same time, everyone who takes MUNI has to deal with overcrowding, delays, and a more difficult time getting wherever they need to go.

Published on 10/27/2022

By Betzy Velasquezgomez

Since September of 2021, Abraham Lincoln High School bathrooms had been closed by staff. All of a sudden, the bathrooms were locked with no explanation. Only the ones by the main office remained open, and the ones in the new buildings were open only occasionally. Because of this, students had to deal with long lines in the bathrooms and being late to their classes. After a year of waiting, the Lincoln staff have finally decided to open more bathrooms. 

Bathrooms were initially closed due to vandalism. “People were ripping out the soap dispensers, and we had to control it.” Principal Shari Balisi says. This was the main reason why the bathroom was closed. The Lincoln staff wanted to make sure students were not vandalizing the bathrooms. 

Earlier this year, students began flooding the first floor bathrooms again, leading to the reopening of the second floor bathrooms. Briseis Portillo, a current Lincoln student, says,  “It’s annoying that not all bathrooms are open because they still do get crowded, and I'm still on the third floor and have to go down to a different floor to use the bathroom.” She continues,  “The problems with the bathrooms are still there, but they are getting better by not just having two bathrooms open for the whole school”. 

Something that all students I’ve interviewed said in common was that they were happy they didn't have to spend so much time waiting for the bathrooms during passing periods and being late to class. Another Lincoln student, Abigail Garcia, says that she will “finally have peace” when all bathrooms are open.

Lincoln is also home to many non-binary students. In contrast, there is only one gender-neutral bathroom.  “We are planning on opening more gender neutral bathrooms,'' says Balisi. “What we are waiting for right now are gender neutral locks”

In previous years, there have been incidents regarding gender neutral bathrooms. Balisi says that in order to prevent these incidents from occurring again, the Lincoln staff will monitor those coming in and out by “putting cameras outside the bathrooms.'’ 

  “With the whole pandemic we don't know when we will be getting them but we are hoping soon,” says Balisi. 

Published on 10/27/2022

By Kei’maya Gates

Abraham Lincoln High School (ALHS) is facing a huge disturbance problem involving students wandering the halls. “Wandering is harmful to everyone,” says a member of the Wellness Center that would like to remain anonymous.

Students have been running through the halls yelling, screaming, cursing, fighting, and making a ruckus. Some of the more impactful things they’ve done are pulling fire alarms, flooding bathrooms, and setting a trash can on fire.

“During one of my classes, my student came in, and they [his friends] held the door on the other side, locking him in. I had to physically push the door open,” says Sean Gresen, the music teacher.

The Wellness member says, “They [the Wellness center] get a lot of students; some that just need a break from class.” The Wellness member adds, “[The Wellness center is] always willing to help students, however, when you have a lot of students in the Wellness center, it does make it really difficult to support [every] student.”

Fortunately, there are always available teachers at Lincoln that students can go to. “Byrns welcomes students in his class, as long as they agree not to be disruptive,” says Mia Rossitto, a senior. They will still be marked absent in their class, but at least they can be educated, instead of wandering.

Julian Byrns, the CSU expository writing, Yearbook, and ELA teacher, adds, “The wanderers that come into my classes end up participating as well.”

Another problem teachers are facing with wandering students is the smoking in the bathrooms. “The smell [from smoking in nearby bathrooms] is so pervasive that I’ve had students complain about having a headache,” says Gresens. 

School policy states that students, who are found and caught with marijuana, will have the substance confiscated, but that hasn’t stopped students from engaging in these illegal activities.

Gresen mentions that the school needs to provide more support for students, but students also need to take responsibility for their actions of skipping class to disrupt other students’ and teachers' class time.

“There’s both a lack of support from the administration team and the district,” an anonymous main office staff member adds, “That trickled down to the teachers, deans, and other staff [members] feeling hopeless, and then in return, apathetic towards the situation.”

Published on 10/27/2022