2016-17 school year begins with changes to homerooms, parking, traffic patterns

2016-17+school+year+begins+with+changes+to+homerooms%2C+parking%2C+traffic+patterns

The 2016-17 school year began with a few adjustments to what faculty and students were typically used to experiencing. These changes included adjustments to a few familiar things including lockers, homerooms, and parking.

Assistant principal Mr. Brian Pawlicki said the change to grade level homerooms from mixed ones will allow the school “to get more information to students that is specific to their grade level. It helps us in homeroom because guidance counselors can get information to students at different levels about things like college applications or career planning.”

Principal Colin Carr added about the change,  “Now we don’t have to take up time in English classes to distribute materials.”

“Lockers and homerooms go hand in hand. The lockers are assigned by the location of the homeroom. When we change homerooms, subsequently the locker locations change,” said Carr.

Another adjustment made this year has been made to the flow of traffic into and out of the parking lots.  “The traffic pattern coming in during the morning changed. That was a response from the Harford County Sheriff’s Department in concerns that accidents that were happening at the corner by the stadium with people making a left out onto 165,” said Pawlicki.  “The reason why was to get more information to students that is specific to their grade level. It helps us in homeroom because guidance counselors can get information to students at different levels about things like college applications or career planning.”

Carr adds, “Now we don’t have to take up time in English classes to distribute materials.”

We were trying to make it safer for people leaving our lot so we changed the flow through the parking lot.”

Carr reveals, “We have a one-way system now where people have to come in through the tennis courts and leave through the AG lot. That was changed in an attempt to eliminate the large number of accidents we were having with people making a left turn out of the building. We thought it would be better if we had one-way traffic and used the traffic light in the AG lot so we could get people out in a safer manner than last year.”

In addition the changes in driving patterns, parking assignments were also changed. “The parking was [re]done because there isn’t enough parking for everybody. In order to get people parking spaces that need it, whether it be work, students who leave on half-day, for students on a college visit, and for athletes who stay behind after school…”, said Carr.  “We wanted to put numbers on the parking spaces so that way they would be assigned a space so that we would know who is parking where and insure that those students who really needed one would have one.”

The principal added, “An additional reason for the assigned parking was last year, we ran into a lot of students parking illegally and we couldn’t get delivery trucks through the parking lot because they parked on curbs when they shouldn’t have been. We had to track those kids down, get them to move, then get the deliveries into school.”

The administrative team works together with school improvement team members and teachers to bounce ideas like these ideas off each other, said Pawlicki.

There is always a growth area where people needed to get accustomed to a change and even next year, when we do this again, there will be a three or four day period where we need to get permits out but we haven’t gotten them out to everybody yet,” said Carr.  “We acknowledge that there will be three or four days when it’s going to be difficult, which is why there is no tickets being given out as we’re just massaging the situation to make it the best we can. There will come a point though when you can’t park on property unless you have a permit.”

Regardless of the changes, Carr has this message for students.  I want to welcome everybody back, I’m happy to be back and I hope everybody else is. This is a really good place to be and one thing I want to encourage everybody to do is be an active participant in something that we do here at school. You get more out of things when you become involved in them.”