As the 2024 school year rolls in, many new changes have been brought into Vista Ridge. One of the big changes that every student, staff, and administrator are going through is managing the new schedule. There’s a whole new vibe here at school due to the construction affecting the new 2024-2025 schedule.
Since the schedule was altered, the times of classes, lunches, and passing periods have been changed. Students speak about if they like the new schedule or if they find it more difficult to maneuver around campus.
“I miss having A, B and C lunches because the lines are shorter, the AP’s are nicer, and it’s easier having our whole school split into 3 lunches instead of 2,” senior Piper Whitt said. “I think it’s also too crowded, as well as the hallway traffic and the portable city makes it worse because students are late to class since they have to walk across the street from Gupton and walk across the campus to get to their classes. I also think the new ranger time is helpless because you won’t effectively learn the material or make-up material in 20 minutes.”
When making the new schedule for the kids, the administrators at Vista have their own voice on why it was changed, as well as how it’s helpful in cases that students and teachers may not see. With the requirements of certain times needed for CTE classes (most of the classes in the C building), the times of other things such as ranger time and passing periods have changed.
“We switched to two lunches because the main reason was to put less of an impact or negative impact on learning, we had that lunch right in the middle and one way or the other it impacted learning because you had to leave class and then go back, so we thought we would be able to streamline it a little bit more with just having lunch before your class or after your class,” Associate Principal Mrs. Smith said. “Shorter ranger times had to happen because there are state requirements for CTE classes so the only way I could navigate that was to make ranger time shorter because I couldn’t take from anywhere else and CTE classes are the only truly non-academic classes that I could cut time from.”
With the new construction trickling in from last year, students and staff are both navigating around the campus and through the new portables that sit on the C lot. Teachers are having to move all of their equipment and items from their old classrooms to the temporary portables while adjusting their classes to a new environment.
“It’s challenging with being in the portable, it’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do since I’ve worked here, having to pack up 13 years worth of stuff and move it and obviously you don’t see it all, but most of my stuff is all boxed up at my house, in storage, or in these boxes in my classroom,” said English teacher Mrs. Nance. “I don’t hate it out here, I wish it were bigger because my old classrooms were big, but the AC works and the wifi seems to work, its just been challenging but we’ve been able to do it and we were first to move so the people out in the portables now have had a lot of room for error.”
It has definitely been a huge adjustment for everyone, but as the school year goes on hopefully people are able to grow accustomed to the changes that have affected us all. It won’t be an easy or quick revamp, but instead students, staff, and administration will slowly embrace the changes into their regular day-to-day schedule.
With the construction being ahead of schedule, Vista Ridge is expected to be finished and fully renovated by 2027. To read more about our Portable City, check out Matilda Prado Saravia’s “Portable City” on VRHS Word.
