Junior high students having to leave early for classes

Many freshmen at the junior highs are in Spanish 2 and come to the high school for their class. The students leave their period prior to their Spanish class early to get on the bus up to the high school. This has frustrated two students recently who are confused as to why they have to go through that trouble when they have two Spanish teachers at the junior highs.

Emma Frohling and Melanie Ernst are some of the freshmen at Peet who come to the high school every day for Spanish 2. Frohling has Spanish 7th hour and has to leave her 6th-hour U.S history class 19 minutes early in order to catch the bus. When she does arrive to Spanish, she is always 5-10 minutes late. 

“Leaving my U.S history class early has caused me to have trouble understanding the class because I miss a lot of information they go over when I’m gone. I also miss some of the things my Spanish class goes over in the beginning due to me being late,” Frohling said.

Frohling decided she didn’t want to continue this because she felt as it was “pointless” and wanted something to change. She then emailed her counselor in hopes of being able to have her Spanish class at the junior high.

When the counselor at Peet, Rebecca Lins, got back to her, the only thing she could do for Frohling was switch some classes around so she would be leaving her study hall early rather than U.S history. Unfortunately for other students like Ernst, they don’t have a study hall in their schedule they can switch around. 

“We have so many students taking Spanish 1 (especially now that we offer it at the eighth-grade level) that we can’t house all of them here nor fit all of our Spanish 2 kids. We don’t have enough classrooms, and the other Spanish teacher is only here first period,” Lins said.

Although there are two Spanish teachers at the junior highs, one of them has become less available due to online schooling. “Before the change of students having the option to be online, she would have been here three class periods, covering all of Spanish 2, but then we had to share her with various staff switching to teach online,” Lins said. 

“It is our goal to have the most students take their level 1 and level 2 Spanish in our building and not having to travel; unfortunately, it’s just so many that we can’t house them all here for it,” Lins said.