As the school year goes on at Lake Ridge, some students may have difficulty getting to class on time. Presently, the school releases its students from classes in a specific manner. When the first bell rings to let out students from their classes only the freshman and juniors are released, the sophomores and seniors however, are expected to wait until the second bell rings minutes later. Assistant Principal, Rob Romaguera, explains the reasoning behind this, stating that the release schedule closely adheres to the amount of students currently attending the school.

“The reason for that format is crowding. Where Lake Ridge High School is a 6A campus, that’s going to be over 2600 kids, and so by partitioning them off into segments it’ll allow the hallways to flow a little bit smoother,” said Romaguera.

Many students participated in online learning the previous school year, therefore, numerous students such as freshman and sophomores are getting newly acquainted with their high school campuses. Because of this, schools have taken the previous school year into consideration when forming their release schedule from classes.

“The consideration was simply to reduce the crowding. The sophomores we have now have never even been in this building, nor have the freshmen and so just taking it into consideration there with a huge high school campus like this, we wanted to make it as navigable as possible,” stated Romaguera.

To some students, with three floors, Lake Ridge can be considered a large high school campus. As a result, several end up with a tardy because of the distance between classes. In particular, senior Logan Johnson, usually has no problem getting to class, however while seeing some of the positives of the staggered release schedule, Johnson believes that it does more harm than good.

“The school is pretty spread out from the third floor to the athletics and art hall so sometimes I’m a little late but most of the time if I just hoof it I’m fine. Someone less cardiovascularly advanced might have trouble like from the theatre to a third floor English class, but I feel for the most part we’re fine. Especially since we don’t have walkers in the halls, it’s less congested because of that, and the staggered release times help with that. But I feel like the staggered release times do more harm than good,” said Johnson.

The previous school year might be thought as abnormal in regards to both the attendance of in-person school and the years in the past. The release schedule is new and can be considered unique compared to previous school years. However, some students feel as if the partitioned release schedule is no longer needed.

“By nature it’s counter-intuitive, and since not every teacher adheres to it per their curriculum, I feel like it’s out of place in the original syllabi that they wrote, but ultimately it’s not that big of a difference. I don’t think it should be continued. I feel like it’s overstaying its welcome and becoming more trouble than it’s worth. But I feel like it served its purpose at the time and it’s obsolete now,” stated Johnson.

When Lake Ridge first opened, not nearly as many students attended as they do now. Geometry teacher and coach, John Meyer, recalls that the hallways weren’t as crowded as they are now, and notes that students may find it hard to get to class because of this.

“Well we have a lot more students since the school was opened. Sometimes the hallways are a lot more crowded than when the school opened up in 2012. If there’s too many students in the hallway at once it’s hard for students to get to class and there’s less space,” said Meyer.

With limited time to get to class many students find themselves in a hurry. When paired with the distance between some classes this often leads to even more of a challenge when getting to class for several individuals. Sophomore, Shanet Salinas, finds it difficult to get to her class with limited time along with a crowd of people because this can restrict her abilities to move at a faster pace.

“With limited time, for me I feel like it’s too short. I need to get from here to there but when I try to go fast it’s hard because you don’t want to hurt anybody and you don’t want to cause damage,” said Shanet.

Some students feel as if the release schedule could use some improvement. One example is senior, Alyssa Baldwin, who believes additional time could take away potential stress caused from the worry of getting to class on time.

“They could be more flexible with some students and more understanding with the time it takes to get from one point to another and I think they should extend the time just a tad, not too much so there is not as much roughhousing, but also to the point where people don’t have to worry about their intellectual opportunities,” stated Baldwin.

The flooding of the staircases with students could cause students to get to their classes at a slower pace. In fact, multiple staircases are dispersed throughout the campus in order to lessen the crowds and improve the flow of students reaching their educational destinations at a quicker pace.

“One of the things that I think students miss is knowing that our academic area is three stories and is a large rectangle. If they were to proceed to the corners of the rectangles, using those stairwells, rather than automatically going to the center stairwells where majority of the people go,” said Romaguera.

Many schools look into a variety of problems and seek solutions in order to improve overall school-life and academic achievement. In this case, Lake Ridge takes multiple things into consideration when forming their procedures and systems to do just that.

“Each time we do have systems and procedures we do evaluate them on an administrative level, we try to look at the bigger picture and then see what could be important and what we need to tweak, change, or alter at all for any policy,” stated Romaguera.

Perhaps many find some difficulty with getting to class, additionally, there may not be a perfect release schedule out there. However, various students could find less difficulty with getting to class because of the potential solutions that have been found by the school. While it might not be on the horizon, the best way to release students may be a good conversation to have in the upcoming future.