The ability of students to learn should be of the utmost importance to any school district, but the construction saga on Naperville Central’s eastern wall has threatened that priority.
To start the school year, dozens of classes were relocated due to the reconstruction of an exterior wall because of issues with its structural integrity. Personally, I had three classes (AP Language and Composition, Advanced Media Lab and Spanish 4) move. The decision to relocate classes, made out of an “abundance of caution,” was the right choice.
Classroom relocations took students out of an area with structural issues and allowed them to continue learning in an environment without the constant banging, sanding and welding customary at any construction site. While the threat to students’ safety was solved by the time classes moved back into their original rooms on Oct. 2, the danger to their education was not yet removed.
In the two weeks since we moved back to the original classroom locations, loud distractions have been the norm. Desks shake from the construction; instruction from teachers becomes inaudible in lieu of pounding on the other side of our classroom wall; AP Lang changes classroom locations regularly to avoid the deafening noise.
All of this came to a climax at 8:37 a.m. on Oct. 16, when fire alarms were activated throughout the school after the little theater was filled with smoke, believed to have come from welding from the construction.
That alarm would have occurred regardless of continued relocations or not, but it did show the entire student body the level of distraction that has plagued classes which border the east wall’s ongoing construction.
While losing class time was an unusual occurrence in the instance of that fire alarm, similar deprivations of instructional time is a normal expectation of classes bordering the continuing construction. Exiting the building, as required during the alarm, is a frequent form of coping with the noise whenever independent days are allotted.
None of that was a problem when classes were relocated. Not only were we out of direct physical danger, but alternative locations were an escape away from the noise of construction. The solution? A relocation back into beginning-of-the-year classrooms.
For a month and a half, Central relocated classrooms out of caution for a physical building collapse. Now, they should do the same to prevent the educational collapse until construction is complete. While the school made great progress in protecting the physical safety of students through the wall’s rebuilding, I hope they make that same improvement for students’ educational safety.
