The last day of school is the day we look forward to all year, because we gain our freedom from the burdens of endless homework and distasteful cafeteria food. One thing about the last day worth noting for freshmen who haven’t experienced it, is that classes are let out in shifts towards the end of the day.
What this means is that a couple classes will be let out of each pod to go clean their lockers, and soon after, another couple of classes will follow them. That way by the end of the day, all the lockers are empty and clean, leaving our hard-working janitors less work and more time to do final clean up. After all, the teachers and the maintenance staff want to get out of school just as much as the students.
There are typically four or five shifts of classes getting released. The first group of classes get out at around 3:00. Five minutes later the second group gets dismissed. No one will actually get let out with the bell at 3:25 and there is no AAA.
Nick Miller (the principal before Mr. Mischke) was the one who came up with this genius idea over 20 years ago. It initially made it easier if there was just less people in the hallways who were all trying to escape the school. There are approximately 1,850 students, after all! The seniors are ushered out as soon as possible for a couple of last pictures so we don’t have to add nostalgic/crying graduates to the chaos of the last day.
Since the last week of school is usually very stressful for staff, having a good working system for exiting the school helps take some of the stress off of our administration’s shoulders. Another added bonus to the staggered release is that it reduces the chance that students will want to conduct an end of the year prank that could result in an anxious janitorial staff.
In previous years, the couple attempts at pranks ended fairly badly, with some students arrested for such things as animal cruelty and destruction of property as a result of their poor judgement.
Hopefully this year’s last day can transition smoothly into Summer break, just as Mr. Miller intended it to be.
