Why My School Needs a Renovation

There are many reasons why my school needs a rennovation.

- dim lights
- no air conditionning/not proper ventillation - stinks in tech hallway, and other classrooms
- clocks aren't right
- dirty/unsanitary washrooms without hooks
- pa system never works
- portables
- dirty lockers without hooks
- surveillance cameras don't work 2/36
- basement?


I often find myself wondering; why is it so dim in here? is this time right? which locker is cleanest for me to lean against? why is there no toilet paper? etc.

I am in the washroom. It is dim. I enter the stall, squished by the enormous size of the door, I struggle not to brush against the toilet. I have trouble closing my door and locking it. Sometimes the door opens when other people open/close their doors. There is no hook for me to hang my things. The toilet paper dispenser doesn't secure the toilet paper... there was this one time where i pulled a bit too hard, and the whole roll just fell out... and rolled over to the next stall...When I try to exit the stall, I again have to be very very careful about not brushing my clothes against the toilet, the space is so tight. When I go to wash my hands, I have to step on the pump, which is quite sanitary because we don't have to touch the taps. But, when I am stepping on the pump, some washrooms vary in their problem; some only shoot out hot water (and we have to wash our hands at intervals at a time, so we don't burn ourselves), some over shoot, so it gets out clothes wet, and some undershoot, so there is barely enough water to wash our hands with, and we end up wasting time in there - so when we get back to class it's been so long that our teachers think we were wandering around but we really weren't!

Speaking about gross things, the next item on the agenda for today's list of things we must fix at our school, is our lockers. Some lockers work just fine, but there are many lockers that are really dirty inside and outside. I have to check to see if the locker is dirty before I can lean against it. Not all the lockers have hooks inside. Where are we supposed to hang our jackets and put our bags? On the dirty floor of the locker? No way. Some lockers have been around for so long that you have to tug on the door really hard to open it. To close it, you (or someone stronger than you) have to shove your whole body against it to close it.

Dim lights. There is only one place where the light is not dim - the sunshine hallway. It's like the school doesn't have enough electricity to power all the lights, so they are all dim. For our school, the lights are connected in parallel, meaning the energy will be equally distributed amongst each light, making all the lights just as dim. Dim lights are not good because it makes us feel sleepy all the time. Falling asleep in class could greatly impact how we learn.

Ventillation and air conditionning

Many areas of our school stinks. Sometimes I wonder if it's because our school is so old (yes, it's the oldest school in this area) that it's starting to mould? The tech hallway always has this distinct odour, the chemistry and biology rooms always have a dull nasty smell, the football hallway always smells like sweat and dirt, and the upstairs classrooms always smell like fart or body odour. If we had a better ventillation system, our air would be a lot cleaner and less stinky. In the winter, it is bad because if we want to get rid of the odour, we can't open the windows because it's too cold. So we must bear it. In the summer, there is no air conditionning, and it is warm outside too, so that doesn't help. The stink is almost always there. There may be days in the winter where it is not so cold, or fall and spring, where the temperature is more fair, and there is wind to blow the scents away.

Time is never accurate. Some days I get to school late, some days early, and some days just on time. I take a look at my phone, and the time is always the same. Sometimes, I am doing a test in class and I use the clock to judge how much time I should allow for each question or section. It has happened to me on a few occasions that the clock is wrong, and I end up having not enough time to complete the test.

Our P.A. System never works properly. There is always either feed back, or technical difficulties. It is also never loud enough for people to hear the announcements. There could be an important announcement about a club, or a sports team but noone hears it because it is too quiet. Is it because the office people do not know, after many years of working there, how to use the pa system? Is it because our system is so old, that it uses out dated technology?

Portables. They are so ugly and inconvenient. We should extend our school, or rennovate it so that we have more classrooms. During the winter, the heat isn't always going on, and we have to walk through the cold and snow with our winter jackets on and the portable gets all dirty and wet. In the summer, it is so hot and stuffy because there is no air conditioning either. They are also badly located. Two are located right next to giant dumpsters, making it smell even worse, and the other two are located too close to the big streets, so there is a lot of sound pollution and distractions. Also, it makes it easier for strangers to terrorize the portable because it is isolated and not very strong. Imagine if we had an external lockdown. The evil people could easily break into the portable and hold everyone as hostages at gun point. How are we supposed to get out of that one?

Did you know that only 2/36 cameras in this school work? I know, that's shocking! I found this out because in grade 9, I saw someone stick a bandaid (now I'm not sure if it was clean or not) over one of the cameras (now he had to climb up on desks and a drawer to reach up there) and it never got taken down that year. This means that either nobody was watching the cameras, the cameras werent working, or it didn't occur to anyone that it was important enough to take down. Maybe they just thought it was dirty and didn't want to touch it, but that's why we invented gloves!

What is with our basement? It is in desperate need of a complete makeover. There is garbage everywhere, random pieces of wood, and what is on the ceiling? I understand that that is where we practise archery... but really? At curtains? ...and why is it so dim down there?