Wouldn’t you love to leave school during a free period, and be able to go eat wherever you want?
An open campus means students have the opportunity to leave school when they are not enrolled in a class: that includes both study hall and lunch periods.
Having an open campus provides many benefits including, giving students with good grades a privilege, teaching students time management, as well as giving students a small breather from their busy schedules.
Giving students the privilege to leave the building during free periods would encourage all students to maintain strong grades, or in some cases improve their grades. There would be grade requirements set for juniors and seniors if they wanted the opportunity to get that privilege.
This opportunity would further motivate students to perform well in their classes, as it has already with the current privilege period here at Lake. Students would get the opportunity to eat different lunches everyday, get a much needed break from school, and support local businesses as that is where they would go to eat lunch. Being able to go sit at a small coffee shop with friends for lunch or stop home for a bit would make the school day much more enjoyable for students.
Giving students this privilege would teach a very important life skill when heading into college in their near future. Time management is a skill that is important to have when growing up into young adults.
Students that have the open campus privilege would have to plan and make sure they leave and come back with enough time to be in class by the time the bell rings for their next class.
I would say most students relatively enjoy going to school, or don’t mind going. Lots of students thrive when being with people all day and being social all the time, but others enjoy being alone a little bit and kind of need space to breathe.
Having an open campus gives students that much needed breather from their busy schedules and the school environment.
Getting to take a small break during the day for students gives them a much needed stress reliever. Most students pack their schedules with hard classes, so giving them a privilege for working so hard each day is a reward students should have.
Having an open campus at your high school provides many benefits for students each day, like giving students a brain break. With this in place, students will learn good time management and it will encourage students to get good grades to achieve the privilege.
Mr. Harold shares his input on why Lake High School is not an open campus.
He explains, the school year after covid, 2021, Lake switched to having an open campus and all juniors and seniors were able to leave the building during free periods. The goal was to spread students out during lunch periods and free periods to try to avoid the spreading of covid.
After that school year our school then switched back to not having an open campus.
“Our kids handled it pretty well overall as far as getting back into the building, being on time for class, really didn’t have many issues, it went pretty well but there were some concerns,” explained Mr. Harold.
He also describes the risks that came with having an open campus. Tremendous amount of phone calls from parents and police officers to the school, safety concerns, and most importantly not knowing where all the students were at, were the biggest concerns our administration had.
For the most part students did a great job with being back to the school on time and everything, but just a few of those concerns were big enough to not continue having an open campus at Lake, explains Mr. Harold.
