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NEWS
The Skyline Post
How Covid-19 Affects Students at Skyline Collin Michele A recent Skyline Post survey of 86 current students reveals that a majority of respondents feel Covid-19 has affected their relationships and personal life negatively. The student body faced a difficult time last year and now the return to school brings more challenges. Last year, students were sometimes given no deadlines or easier work, but are coming back to stiff deadlines and harder homework. The Post survey contained questions such as, “Has a year of online school affected your schoolwork coming back?” and “How has not being at school affected your school relationships with teachers and friends? Is it awkward?” Respondents were selected through a convenience sampling method and were collected anonymously. Questions were designed to get a wide variety of answers and produced a lot of interesting information and honest responses. 72.1% of respondents report that schoolwork is difficult but still manageable now that they have returned to in-person school. These reports suggest that the school body is struggling with coming back from online school to normal school but can still handle it. “The schoolwork is overloading and I am having a hard time keeping up with the work,” says one respondent. The survey also collected data about the effect of Covid-19 on students’ personal lives. An anonymous respondent said, “Covid-19 took away the end of my freshman year and all of sophomore
year. I felt like these were essential years in building personal relationships that I, and all others in my grade, lost out on. However, because of sports I was able to supplement some of this. I’m not sure how those without extracurriculars managed.” Other respondents thought that online school was a nice, more relaxed form of school, stating that “Covid really didn’t have an effect on my relationships.” Another respondent noted, “My relationship with my family improved. Covid helped me to celebrate coming back to school more than ever, although the schoolwork load is much more.” The survey included a question, “How has not being at school affected your school relationships with teachers?” Approximately 65% of responses reported that the respondents feel like they don’t know teachers as well last year. One shared, “During virtual school I didn’t really ever meet my teachers.” It is important, another noted, because “[k]nowing [teachers] makes them more approachable.” The survey suggests that students need some time to get used to going back to school and doing homework/tests. Because of the students’ difficult time last year, returning to school has been a bit more of a shock compared to coming back after summer break in past years. AAPS District Superintendent Jeanice Swift acknowledged that this Fall has been “demanding” in her letter to the district about the October 22nd change
to asynchronous learning for Skyline and several other schools. She noted in the letter that one positive of these surprise days away from in-person learning was providing staff and students with “some relief.”
Data from a survey of 86 Skyline students from multiple grade levels Credit Collin Michele
Finding The Truth Behind the Skyline Parking Pass
Samuel Klein Forty dollars. The price of 20 packages of Mariani Premium Yogurt Covered Raisins from Walmart, or one vial of insulin from Canada. When not spending money on life saving medication, or nutritious, life sustaining food, a student driver might spend this money on the annual Skyline parking pass. For the first few weeks of the school year, Skyline students were reminded that they must purchase a parking pass from the financial office in order to park in the student lot. Students like Josh Krukonis, Skyline Senior, started questioning the ethics of parking passes. “It doesn’t make
sense for the price to be so high for a high school student,” said Krokonis. “I don’t even know what the thing is for!” What do parking passes do? Are they really just stickers that limit rear window visibility? Principal Cory McElmeel said, “parking permits [are regulated to] to make sure authorized cars are on campus so that we don’t have cars dumped here and we don’t become a park and ride.” While a few unauthorized cars may seem harmless, allowing unauthorized vehicles into the parking lot can be dangerous. McElmeel stated that “over Covid… I actually had to call the cops
because we had three drift circles going out in our parking lot.” McElmeel explained that for a student to prove that they are “authorized to park on campus” they must pay $40 for a parking pass. A parking pass proves that cars on campus are “authorized.” However, a pass that costs nothing would theoretically do the same job. So, why $40? The parking pass “supports the purchase of various needs for students in poverty, incentives for our PBIS program, campus beautification projects identified by our student body, and other enhancements to the student experience.” McEl-