A Student Eye View

Slow Internet makes computers “not really usable”

English class only has 3 computers and there are about 40 students. During nutrition and lunch the room gets full and it’s difficult to get anything done, and it gets even worse during finals. Our library is big but there is little in the way of computers, so it’s not a great place to study. Besides the computers, we need more lockers. Our school only provides lockers for certain students, which isn’t fair to other students who are trying hard. From my point of view, Arvin High School needs so much to be done.

— Aurora Cervantes, 16, is a student at Arvin High School and lives in Arvin, Calif.

Classrooms “filled to the max”

elsewhere if they are to eat lunch, no alternative is offered. I once found a cockroach in the tray of oranges in the cafeteria. Lovely. My school has, and knows it has, a cockroach infestation, yet there isn’t much they seem to do about it.

~ Maria Hammet, 16, Merced High School

The food in our cafeteria needs to be better. It is either undercooked or overcooked and they serve the exact same thing everyday. There is no variety and that is a huge issue.

~ Deborah Juarez, 17, Merced High School

More resources for “teaching the AP Exam”

My school needs a few new computers. I am a sophomore at Arvin High School and I feel that my school needs improvement in the area of technology. Not only is my school equipped with outdated computers but it is also hard to gain access to them. Most of our computers are so slow that they are not really usable. When we do get a chance to get on a computer, we spend most of our time starting them or resetting passwords. And when we are finally in, it can be hard to navigate the internet because the computer is slow. To use a computer we need permission from a teacher, or we must go as a group with our class. Getting permission from a teacher can be quite hard because they don’t want to be liable if anything happens to the computer. Some teachers are nice enough to let us use a computer, but most are not. I feel that the quality of my education and my classmates is being impacted by the lack of access to well equipped computers, because many students don’t have access to the internet or a computer at home and may have a hard time completing assignments.

I know that I am not alone when I ask for more well trained educators to reduce classroom sizes and help students have a better learning environment at Golden Valley High School. Golden Valley High School is located in southeast Bakersfield in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, where more than 70 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch. Even though there are many things that need improvement in my high school, I feel that we need smaller classroom sizes to allow for more one-onone relationships between teachers and students. As shown in the picture, many if not all classrooms at Golden Valley are filled to the max with about 35-45 students per classroom, which is way over capacity. Much of this is not due to lack of classrooms, but to budget cuts which restrict the hiring of new teachers, causing a shortage of staff that results in too many students being fit into small classrooms.

Food “just isn’t appealing”

At Buhach Colony High School, there is more of a focus on the general class curriculum, and not as much on the AP exam. For this reason the amount of students who earn [a good score] on the AP exam are those who make it their goal to be successful and decide to form study groups, as well as pursue other kinds of outside educational aid. My suggestion would be for schools to better prepare the students by teaching the AP exam, and not simply show them the requirements or the format of the test.

~ Fernando Almaraz, 17, Buhach Colony High School, Merced

For more on LCFF, see EdSource Today’s “Essential Guide” at: edsource.org

What my school needs is more computers. Some have signs that say, “Out of Service” -- we need maintenance to fix these computers or have them updated with new ones so that students can use them for homework projects. And even the ones we have are not enough for the number of students (approximately 2,300 who come from Arvin, Lamont, Weedpatch and Bakersfield). For example, my

The lunch menu is terrible! Instead of moving to whole grains and gluten-free, why not add diversity to the menu? Every time I go to lunch, many students refuse to get the standard: one fruit, one vegetable, a milk and an entree. It just isn’t appealing. Furthermore, lactose-intolerant students must look