The discussion of building a new school has begun, and some people outside of the school community have questioned why we need a new one. There are a lot of things that are broken and need to be fixed as soon as possible. My mother, Kristie Eaton,  graduated from Pentucket in 1996, and said most of the things here haven’t changed. When talking to her she said, “When I came to Pentucket to dismiss you I noticed that nothing has changed since I have been there.” As you can see from the pictures above, there are many problems with our school and they either need to be fixed, or we need a new school. The school has broken water bubblers, holes in the floor, broken and missing lights, missing tiles, and many broken lockers.

Many of the lockers in the school do not lock anymore. This is a problem because any student or faculty member could walk by and take something out of someone’s locker. Some lockers don’t even have locks. You do not notice all of the problems until you take a good look around at the whole school.

Another problem that is not as common as the broken lockers is that some of the classroom doors do not lock. Some of the ones that do lock stay locked even when you unlock them, so you have to put something in the doorway. This is a safety issue because if for some reason there was a lockdown, not all the doors would be able to lock. If the teachers could not lock the door, someone could walk into the classroom at any time and put students in immediate danger. On the other hand, if the door stays locked and a student has left the classroom he/she would have no way to get into the classroom and they would have to stay in the hallway or find another classroom that they can get into.

A huge problem that is faced everyday is the fact that the wifi stops working often. The school chromebook I am using right now has spent 20 of the 50 minute period loading because of the wifi issues. Students and teachers are losing valuable class time waiting for the wifi to load instead of using that time to learn and teach. Substitute teachers that come into the building comment on how slow the wifi is and that the students could be learning much more if this problem was fixed. In Journalism, half of my class leaves the room. They either go to the library, out into the hallway or to other places to interview people for their articles. They have to do this because the wifi in the classroom is so bad that it is hard to use the computers in there. We use computers every single day in order to type, edit and research for our papers, so the slow wifi makes this a huge challenge.

Having a new school would fix the slow wifi, broken water bubblers, broken and missing lights, missing tiles, missing clocks, broken lockers, and many of the other problems. If we were able to get a new school we would have more time to learn which means, in return, our test scores will be higher. Getting a new school would also motivate the students to go to school more because they will like the environment they are learning in. A new school would lower absences and make Pentucket High School a happier, more welcoming, and better learning environment.