During these many years at Prospect, students were free to leave class for a break whenever they pleased, to use the KLC and leave campus whenever they felt like it. This year, however, everyone has probably heard of the new rules. One of the rules in question is scanning into the KLC and students having to stay for the first and last 10 min of class, also known as the “No-Fly-Zone”.
Many people would assume that the rules are due to people walking in the hallways, but the problem is much bigger than we think. During the summer this year, the whole district organized two days worth of meetings because the schools found out that kids are “going all over the place and not reporting to classes”.
Adam Levinson, one of the deans at Prospect, explained, “There’s nothing worse than a parent saying ‘hey I don’t know where my [kid] is at’…and allegedly they’re in the building somewhere. That can’t happen.”
Surprisingly, these rules originally haven’t been created to stop people from walking in the hallways, but the problem was mainly students deciding to cut class by staying in the KLC all day. Since there wasn’t anyone that checked attendance there before, the teachers would usually end up looking for the student.
But it’s not just teachers that support the new rules, an upperclassman who’d prefer to stay anonymous admitted, “These past years I did the same thing, like walk around the hallways and now I can’t do that anymore,” they said. “So I would say [the new ID rules and the no-fly-zone are] definitely more restricting.”
“At first, I was a little more upset about [the ID rule], but to me it makes sense now to have to sign into the KLC just because they don’t want people walking around in the hallways and distracting classes, so I would keep [the rules the same],” they said.
However, some students don’t fully agree with the no-fly-zone.
“It could be a little aggravating especially when [you] need to use the restroom,” Julian Dugan, a junior at Prospect said.
He told a story about how challenging it could be to leave sometimes, especially since some classes run on long lectures and it could be hard to interrupt the teacher or miss something important.
Although the rules are pretty sudden and unexpected, in upcoming years Prospect and the rest of the district hopes to achieve not just better attendance, but less accidents and congestion on Kensington.
“We’re just trying to get away from covid and we’re trying to get into some good habits,” Levinson said.
