Every day, parents send their children off to school so that their child can receive an education. At this point, whenever the children are sent off to school, the school is now in charge of the children because of the legal responsibility of “locos parentes”. This means that the school is there in place of a parent. The parents expect their children to be taken care of by the school until their children come back home. This happens every day and not much thought goes into what the conditions are like for the children and teachers while they are at school.

Some parts of  the school are getting old and starting to show their age. To make our school better for the students, some parts of our school should be updated in order to make our school a better place.

One of the main issues of the infrastructure at the high school are the windows and the doors. Throughout the high school, some of the windows don’t fit their frames, resulting in multiple problems. One of these problems happen whenever there are strong winds blowing outside, resulting in the wind blowing its way inside and making the room way colder than it should normally be.

Whenever it’s raining outside, some of the rain seeps inside through the windows, causing puddles to form beneath them. In order to combat some of the problems with the windows, teachers have placed tape around the windows or even stuffed the frame with paper towels to stop any precipitation from coming in.

Along with the windows, some of the doors throughout the school need fixed up. Some of the handles on the doors look like they are about to fall off, and one of the handles actually has fallen off of one of the door. A few of doors’ handles don’t even need twisted, and just be pulled open. As is the same with the windows, some of the doors don’t fit their frames and creates gaps between the door and the frame.

The windows are not the only problem whenever it’s raining. Another leaking part of the school is the roof. Every now and then, water will start to leak down from the ceiling of the second floor, creating a slippery floor that causes a hazard for students. To stop the water from dripping on to the floor, buckets are placed in the hallway to collect the leaking water, and nothing is really done to fix the roof to stop this from happening again. In order to fix this, parts of the roof need to be repaired in order to stop this problem. However, this may not be coming any time soon and students are put at more of a risk the longer this goes unfixed.

As of right now, a major portion of the school is lacking air conditioning. Most of the rooms do not have any air conditioning, as a simpler solution is just to open up the windows and let air come in. However, this isn’t as efficient as air conditioning, and sometimes when the windows aren’t open, classrooms can reach temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes it hard for students to concentrate. Some rooms, such as the computer lab, need air conditioning for the computers so they do not overheat, but what about whenever the students are overheated from the warm temperatures?

Along with air conditioning, heating is another major problem throughout the school during the colder months. Sometimes, some of the rooms still feel cold, even while heating is said to be running. A few students have even resorted to bringing blankets to school in order to keep themselves warm.

“I really think we need to fix the heating system most of all because I have discovered that it is still cold in a lot of rooms in the high school. If we could solve a problem in fixing the heaters or even getting a latest brand, it would probably keep the school warm enough for kids not to have to bring blankets to school,” sophomore Alyson Horner said.

Everyday, students and teachers use the lights in their classroom. However, in a lot of different classrooms, some of the lights will start to blink on and off constantly, which can become an annoyance quite quickly. These lights often need replaced, and the cost to replace them racks up quite quickly.

Throughout the school, there is a variety of insects and arachnids that crawl around the halls, and make students quiet uncomfortable when they are sitting in the hallways in the morning, waiting for class to start. Another frequent visitor to the school are mice, as they have been found in many classes over the past few years, and are a concern for the health of the students.

One major problem with making all of these upgrades is the amount of money left in the school account for school maintenance. As of right now, $4.7 million is set aside for building purposes, with $1 million of that is set aside in case of an emergency; however, $1.44 million is going to be used in order to pay for the new field and track renovations, leaving only $2.26 million left for school upgrades. This amount won’t be enough to upgrade the windows, doors, roofing, heating and cooling. So when exactly will we get the upgrades to try and help students feel more comfortable at school and create a better learning environment?