Over the last four years, I have had many thoughts about what it would take to make this school a more enjoyable place to come to for 7 hours, 5 days a week. Some of the amenities, so to speak, provided to the students that are portrayed in movies with high school settings are so over the top and provide unrealistic freedoms that they only leave actual high schoolers with disappointment and deception about what the quality of life at school is actually like. Nevertheless, knowing that the halls are filled with opinionated teens who want to improve the copious hours spent in this building; I took note of some of their suggestions for improving the day-to-day operations at LHS.

First up, bathrooms. Specifically, working hand dryers in the girls’ bathrooms and adding urinal dividers in the boys’ bathrooms. As someone who has had to frantically wipe my hands on my pants in between classes because there is a line of four girls long in front of the ONE hand dryer, I support this suggestion. I’m not going to comment on the latter of the two, though, enough said. New equipment for the various music rooms was also highly requested, as well as that AP European History and AP Comparative Government and Politics be offered at LHS. The most famous of wish list items, however, and should come as no surprise to anyone, had to do with amending the LHS parking lot crisis. 

Some solutions to this included taking down the two-hour parking signs in the neighborhoods, building a parking ramp or just adding on space to the lot we already have. (Although this is not really logistical considering the school would have to obtain another plot of land and pave a parking lot.) One student thought this spatial setback could be solved by not doing construction on the school in the middle of the school year… sounds like a fine improvement to me. 

On the other hand, some of the “wish list” items are more simple than others, such as one student who wants flavor mix-ins for water to be sold in the school store and air fresheners to be placed in the bathrooms. Also in this category would be simply allowing students more outside time such as during WIN, lunch and between classes.

Some students got more creative with their requests, such as a hot dog cart, a concession stand that serves breakfast food, a vocal ensemble group similar to a barbershop quartet and playing ESPN on the TV monitors in the hallway between classes (this one was my personal favorite, I believe this would be awesome). Other marvel ideas include updated locker rooms for the athletes and three-day weekends, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Even though some of these desires are so uncharacteristic of a public school and would never be considered, I thought they were still worth sharing because of how awesome they would be. Some of them seem doable, and would make a large enough number of students happy that they might as well take some of these items into consideration.