As School Starts Some Teacher’s Rooms Not Ready For Them

By Jovanna Brinck

Courier Staff Reporter

The start of a new school year can be a very stressful time.

Students have to prepare for rigorous coursework and teachers have to schedule their teaching plans.

The maintenance and cleaning that is needed for the new school year is often overlooked. Each year there are about fifty maintenance crew members that work vigorously to organize the classrooms in all of the schools in the New Haven School District.

Maintenance takes turns on which schools to start with. This year, James Logan High School was one of the last schools in the district to get their rooms clean and ready.

Upon talking to James Logan’s principal, Abhi Brar, it was addressed that although all classrooms were ready on the first day of instruction, there were a fair amount of classrooms that weren’t ready when the teachers arrived a few days earlier.

“Our goal [each year] is when the teacher shows up to prepare for classes, everything is ready,” said Brar. Due to a problem that occurred while getting the elementary schools ready, it was impossible for the maintenance crew to achieve that goal this year. By the time the teachers arrived at their assigned classrooms the Friday before the first day of school, a few rooms were empty of desks and chairs.

A couple teachers were very upset about the problem. “I was furious [at first], but I got over it,” stated Mr. Boyd, a social science teacher in the 400s.

For other teachers, the delay didn’t even affect them. For example, the Drawing teacher, Ms. Lipman was very happy to share that her room in the carpeted hallway “was the first one they did this summer.”

Despite this setback, everything was well prepared on the start on the first school day. “On Monday and Tuesday, maintenance crew worked hard to get [the classrooms] ready for the first day of school,” Mr. Brar said proudly. He also pointed out that he is hoping that this problem does not occur next year, as it can add stress, for both staff and students, to the new school year.