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September 2022 Lone Wolf

Students and faculty feel safer, in general, than last year

by Vin Jones, staff reporter

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As most know, every school year invites new rules and protocols to improve from the following year. Typically, these changes tend to be minor and many students don’t bother to talk much about them. Most schools in CCSD had similar experiences with the previous school year, however.

At Basic alone, many students and even teachers have expressed that the former year was chaotic in multiple ways. Students previously here may remember the large number of fights that happened almost daily within the first few weeks of school and may even remember only one or two bathrooms being open for a large majority of the year.

On the teacher’s side, many recall most of their class sizes were much smaller due to the number of students not attending and some teachers had to deal with disruptive students with very little or delayed help.

People believe this trend of poor behavior happened due to last year being the first year many students were on campus again after being on lockdown in 2020.

NVDOE: Data from the Nevada Department of Education showing behavior and safety statistics from the 2021-2022 school year. Source: nevadareportcard.nv.gov

Even Principal Gerald Bustamante believes the behavior was mainly rooted in students and even staff being away from people and going through their own personal challenges.

A few students agreed that being back on campus full-time again was a difficult change and nerve-wracking for others.

This year, CCSD decided to add a few more safety measures to reduce a lot of these issues.

For example, Basic restricted the number of ways students can get off campus by making a “one-way point of entry system.” Also, the school being fenced off prevents fewer people that shouldn’t be on campus to get on as easily. Finally, one major change a lot of students have noticed was the increase of staff in the halls to make sure people are not out of class just wandering. A lot of students spoke about actually liking how secure the school is.

“They did get a lot more staff which is good. They took extra precautions. So yes, it’s definitely better than last year,” sophomore Za’Keriah Smith said.

At the same time, students have shared that the gate around the school makes it feel too enclosed and prison-like.

“I feel like it’s overbearing because you can only go one way in the morning,” sophomore Nialani Devoux said.

Though this gate won’t go away from the time being to fix these minor annoyances, Bustamante is well aware of these complaints and wants to keep Basic feeling inviting still.

SECURITY GATES: Security fencing and gates have been installed around all parking lots as well as back and side entrances to the school. Photo by Dilara King.

We have ideas for the fencing and how we can put certain things on it to make it feel ‘Hey, this is Basic Academy’ and not just that it’s just a chain-linked fence.

“We have ideas for the fencing and how we can put certain things on it to make it feel ‘Hey, this is Basic Academy’ and not just that it’s just a chain-linked fence,” Bustamante said. On the teachers’ side of the issue, many changes have been made to ensure their safety. Many may remember—aside from many altercations happening between students—teachers also had many problems during the previous year. For starters, due to staffing shortage, many teachers had to deal with their class attendance rate being highly variable. Some classes would be made up of 40 students and only 25 would show up.

Some teachers said that they had to deal with more problematic students with insufficient help due to the lack of teachers and staff.

One major issue was that teachers frequently had to substitute for other classes. This happened so often, some teachers would not have a prep period for weeks at a time.

This major teacher and substitute teacher shortage came from the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 when many people said substitute teaching was not worth all the chaos that happened. During this year, this issue has been solved, for the most part.

“The sub situation is a lot better now. We have subs almost every day,” Olivia Rivera, principal’s sec- retary and office manager, said. The previous year’s chaos was not limited to just Basic. Eric Jones, a social studies teacher, transferred from Del Sol to Basic this year.

“I would say a lot of the stuff I saw at Del Sol was caused by a lot of exterior factors. A lot of ankle bracelets, a lot of wandering around the halls,” Jones said.

Zariah Stewart, a sophomore, previously came from Western High School. “There were a lot of riots there,” Stewart said.

Both people have mentioned though that the changes within the school and the district in general were for the best to make up for the former year.

As always, not everything can be solved in one year alone. There’s still issues lingering in the school but students and staff hope each year will always be better.

MORE POLICE: Police have increased their presence, especially before school, during lunches, and after school. Photo by Dilara King.

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