Alex

Good morning, My name is Alex, I am a Junior at Chelsea High School. I would like to address a serious issue that affects both students and staff at our school – communication.

Communication is an essential part of any plan or organization, and a lack of communication can have consequences. At Chelsea High, we are facing a serious communication problem that affects various aspects of our school’s operations. Students and teachers alike are often left in the dark about important school issues, events, and policies, which leads to confusion, frustration, and inconvenience.

The most common issue we face is the complex schedule of the school’s bathrooms. Most students do not know the bathroom schedules, causing them to run around the school searching for an open bathroom. While it is true that the issue of vaping in the bathrooms is a serious one, punishing all students by closing the bathrooms is not a viable solution. Instead, the school should provide resources and support to help students struggling with nicotine addiction. Closing the bathrooms is an inconvenience to many innocent students who just want to use the facilities. Moreover, many students and teachers do not know which bathrooms are open during the day, which ones are closed, or the schedule for opening and closing each bathroom. The school administration only posts signs on the doors indicating that a particular bathroom is closed, but they do not indicate which bathrooms are open. Security opens and closes them at random and never opens the bathrooms on the fourth floor of the building. It is extremely tiring to run down four flights of stairs multiple times a day just to relieve myself. There is a chance that the bathroom won’t even be open. As a result, students are forced to go on a wild goose chase to find an open bathroom, wasting valuable time that could be spent on learning, and then these students get in trouble for being late to their classes.

Another area where communication is lacking is school announcements. While we used to receive morning announcements with updates on school events, student birthdays, club recruitment, and sports games, this is no longer the case. The administration fails to relay important information to students and staff, which can be seen with the most relevant issue of the bathroom schedule. The administration tries to convey information through posters all around the school, but many students do not read them. In fact, many posters end up being torn up by students. An example of this is a self-care fair that the school put on. The fair was advertised ahead of time, but only announced 10 minutes before it started. This made it difficult for many students to attend since they did not have time to plan ahead. Those who did attend ended up flooding the location because they just found out about it. This lack of communication is an inconvenience to students who are trying to stay on top of school activities and learn.

Communication with guidance counselors is also an issue at Chelsea High. Regarding classroom changes, students often have their classroom changed without notification, causing a lot of issues for students. If students ask guidance counselors about the change, they don’t have any information about why the change was made. Some classes do not have a teacher due to shortages, and students will sit in a class for the period without a teacher. Students do not know if they will be receiving credit for classes without a teacher. Many students are struggling to meet graduation requirements, especially due to the pandemic. Many juniors who were online struggled with the adaptation, which affected their credits for graduation. Now that they are back in person, those students are trying to fix it, so they can graduate, but teacher shortages are affecting their credit, along with a lack of communication from administrators. Furthermore, the lack of communication with guidance counselors also extends to college and career planning. Students at Chelsea High are not given enough support when it comes to navigating the college application process or exploring career options. We are not told how to sign up for our SATs. We are not told what we need to graduate, or how many credits we need. It’s like we are just paychecks for these people. I have personally heard from multiple teachers and seen multiple teacher emails where communication is very vague. One example is an email I saw sent to a teacher where it was advertising something for the class of 2025. However the dates 2023, 2026 were added into this email showing that administration does not care to relay information correctly even to staff.

In conclusion, I believe that these issues can only be solved if the administration listens to students and teachers and takes proactive steps to address them. Effective communication is essential for a functional school, and it is the responsibility of the administration to ensure that everyone is kept informed about school issues, events, and policies. By doing so, they can create a more welcoming environment for students and staff.