SLA Media

SLAMedia is a publication of the news for the Science Leadership Academy community. Writers come from the student body in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We work in unison to create a functioning paper with biweekly postings on a variety of events.

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Unexpected Fire Alarm Disrupts Classes

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Students waiting outside the school during the fire drill.

By SLAMedia Staff

Interviews by Melanie Thomas and Jacob Lotkowski

On Thursday, Dec. 13th, the entire population of 55 N. 22nd Street was sent outside for the second day in a row.

At around 12:30 PM, during Y band, the fire alarms went off, leading to a full evacuation.

This alarm was a particular surprise because the school had just had a scheduled practice drill the day before.

Students remained outside for 25 minutes while Principal Lehmann investigated the source of the alarm.

There was no fire, but the cause of the alarm is not completely clear. Construction has been happening on the residential side of the building, which Principal Lehmann thinks was probably the culprit.

“The landlords think it’s from students, and we think is from the dust of the workers,” Lehmann said. The workers were kicking up dust during construction. Residents of the building also had to evacuate.

After it was determined that the building was safe, however, the alarm could not be disabled because the code given to the school to deactivate it was wrong.

The fire department did not show up, but that was by design. According to Lehmann, “the alarm calls the fire department depending on the code.” Based on where the alarm went off, the fire department was not immediately notified.

During the time outside, rumors swirled about the cause of the evacuation. Students had many theories, including a mishap in Engineering Teacher Matthew VanKouwenberg’s classroom, or a pulled fire alarm, such as the red box by the front stairwell on the third floor, where the plastic case is broken.

Because the alarms don’t actually go off during a drill, the situation seemed more serious than usual.

Freshman Isabella Mezzaroba stated, “First I thought that it was just another drill because we had a drill the day before, but then I remembered the alarm doesn’t go off when we have drills.”

“Some people panicked,” she said, “but everyone seemed to be pretty chill about it.”

Other students were unfazed by the drill.

When asked how he felt about the evacuation, Junior Anthony Buchnico said, “Pretty indifferent. I didn’t expect there to be a fire.”

One lingering concern is the broken door to the back stairwell on the 5th floor. If the door is not propped open, it is locked shut. A truck parked right outside the back door also created a bottleneck of students trying to exit the building.

“There was a big cramp there for a little bit,” reported Buchanico, “but we got by it thankfully.”

After twenty or so minutes outside, the alarm was finally disabled, and students returned to their normal schedules.

“I was relieved that my school didn’t burn down,” reported Mezzaroba. “And then I was like, ‘Okay. Off to English class.’”

Frosty Classrooms at SLA

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By Sara Nesbitt

Staff Writer

 

SLA, being the school for creators and thinkers, sometimes the building doesn’t fully meet the requirements as well as the students and teachers do.Temperature continues to be a problem in the classrooms at SLA. Over the past few years, there have been several mishaps–from heaters malfunctioning to air conditioning always running– and sometimes both happening in the same room.

The problems can be persistent. “The heater kept breaking, and the guy had to come a third time before he fixed it and it’s working now,” History and Spanish Teacher Juan Sanchez told SLAMedia.

In English Teacher Matt Kay’s room, the temperature has reached a low of 53 degrees, and English Teacher Meenoo Rami’s room has reached the low 60’s.

The fluctuating temperatures cause distraction to teaching and the learning of students.

“The past week was a challenge for the learning community in room 311,” Ms. Rami noted, “It definitely throws off the rhythm of the class.”

Both teachers moved their classes into the library, having to improvise their lessons. Students shared aggravation.

Junior Rose Knibbe commented, “Because Ms. Rami’s heating was messed up, I had to find somewhere else to get my work done.”

The move to the library has a ripple effect — the students who have clear the library due to the classes felt annoyed, as well.

“The fact that the library is supposed to be a free, open place and we get kicked out is really frustrating,” Junior Dalena Bui said.

Not all teachers think cold rooms are a problem, however. On the contrary, Science Teacher Matthew VanKouwenberg has a different idea about temperature.

Mr. VK purposely keeps his classroom at frosty temperatures. Junior Matthew Marshall said of room 304 that Mr. VK “keeps his room colder because people retain knowledge better.”

Is there a solution to this constant temperature problem? Most of the classrooms were fixed as of now, but keep a sweatshirt handy, because that might change.

Macbooks Go Chrome?

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By Jesus Jimenez

Staff Writer

 

MacBooks– The beating heart of an SLA student’s workload.  Without them, it seems almost impossible to complete the sort of assignments given at SLA.

The Chromebooks are a series of laptops developed by Google (and built by Samsung and Acer) that are designed to fully integrate cloud-based technology in a simple and efficient manner.

However, the computers come at a price. Each year, SLA struggles to find the necessary money — around $180,000 per year — to fund the freshman laptops.

This past year, the cost went up slightly when Apple discontinued their regular MacBook series, and SLA had to spend a bit more on MacBook Pros.

Searching for alternatives to the growing cost of the MacBook, both Principal Chris Lehmann and Tech Coordinator Marcie Hull were introduced to the Chromebook by their friends at Google.

Chromebooks are the new thing, with getting inside info from Google employees, Mr. Lehmann saw the potential for Chromebooks at SLA. They provide a whole new definition to productivity by giving you direct access to your google account directly from your desktop.

Addressing one of the major concerns,“The biggest thing they have going for them is the cost.” Chromebooks cost, on average, $199, compared to $1199 for a MacBook pro.

He added to the list of pros: “They are fully built off the Google app system and are designed to be a school computer.”

Ms. Hull has her own thoughts about how the Chromebooks would impact education at SLA. She described the Chromebooks as a “jump start” to what could possibly be a new learning experience for the entire school.

Ms. Hull explained one of the cons for the Chromebooks, saying “There are no executable files, you can and can’t do things”. Meaning, that there aren’t any .app or .exe files found in computers with operating systems such as Macs or PCs.

Loading a new operating system onto the Chromebooks that isn’t based on their default Linux-based one would be one of the learning experiences that Ms. Hull would expect. Finding alternatives to software such as iMovie would be another obstacle if the school were to order them.

Even if software were to be found, the Chromebooks still don’t have the same computing power as a Macbook. While this statement is supported by both Mr. Lehmann and Ms. Hull, the fact that Google’s Chromebooks have the potential to be an excellent tool in the classroom still remains.

The integrated Google Apps (Google drive, Gmail, etc.) system would be very beneficial to the students at SLA. In the past few years, the school has been experimenting with cloud-based technology as a part of our learning.

Enhancing the technology in room 300 would be an investment made from the money saved by purchasing the inexpensive alternative. They would make up for the lack of power and software of the Chromebooks by adding more iMacs with more power and faster speeds.

Regardless of what the decision will be, Ms. Hull said “…with any tool we choose, there is always a lot of work to make a 1:1 laptop program be functional and educational. The true goal is to have the tool disappear and the learning to be what [the students] see”.