Students push the heavy trailer door open the second the bell rings. Panting from the long walk from one side of the school to the other and outside to the trailers.
WS students already have to take the long walk to get from one side of the school to the other, barely making it on time for the bell. Add that time plus the time it takes to get to the trailers and students arrive to class after the bell.
“[Some of the] trailers are way back by the driver’s ed and personal fitness rooms, so it’s not really close to anything,” said junior Mary Jane MacArthur. Senior Catherine Elwell adds on this by agreeing that it is “out of the loop.”
The distance is not the only reason the students are late to their trailer classes.
“I’m late to my [trailer] classes because the hallways get really crowded,” said senior Cassandra King.
The overcrowding of the tiny hallways at WS seems to be one of the many reasons for students to be late to their classes, especially the classes in the trailers. Another reason students are late to their trailer classes is because some students have to use the bathrooms before classes start, which are a great distance from the trailers.
“I am actually a little late to class pretty often because if I have to use the bathroom there’s no way for me to have enough time,” said MacArthur.
Many students who go to the bathroom during class do not come back and not only miss a lot of instruction but also receive referrals because they would leave and never come back.
“I think having the temptation to leave campus since you’re not in the building is hard for some students to resist,” said English teacher Alexa Romano, who used to teach in a trailer. She continues by saying that “[students] were less likely to see me during Spartan Time because I wasn’t in the building.”
On top of that, the unpredictable weather of NOVA tends to be a major issue for the students with classes in trailers. King complains that she gets “soaking wet going to and from the trailers.” Romano agrees that “weather was much more of a distraction in the [trailers].”
Sophomore Greyson MacKinnon complains of the many potholes in the pavements which create huge puddles which make it harder to arrive to trailer classes on time. “The parking lot needs to be repaved,” he said.
Getting to the trailers isn’t the only negative part about trailers. The trailers itself are already bad enough. The trailers sometimes smell of unusual scents and getting the smell out of the trailers can be a problem since the windows do not even open. Sometimes, the air conditioning and heating systems do not even work, making the trailers either a freezer or a sauna.
‘It’s either really hot or really cold [in the trailers], but then again, that’s not very different from the rest of the school,” said MacArthur
There are currently many trailers and there will be even more trailers in the beginning of next year, but this is a temporary situation. WS will renovate into a bigger and better school.
“You have to make due of what you got so it’s inconvenient at times but it’s for the improvement of the school,” says King.