Is Closing The Middle School A Good Thing Or A Bad Thing?

If you attend Greater Johnstown, then you’re aware of the middle school being shut down due to the safety issues of the building, which means the 6th and 7th graders will likely end up going to East Side and the 8th graders to the high school. As a student here, I feel there are some major pros and cons.

One pro I came up with would be, safety for the students. I say this because we all know the middle school was technically falling apart on us and not safe for us to be in there anymore. They had the auditorium closed off for a while because everything was messed up. Everything was starting to decay and fall apart. Another pro would be there will be more students joining clubs and sports which is amazing because the more the better. Also kids will have more time in vocational programs and can understand what high school is like and start early. 

Now onto the cons. One con would be, the bus rides. Some buses are so crowded you can’t even find a seat sometimes. Add another grade and you’ll technically need more than one bus to go to the same area as the first one, which is costly. And the bus rides will be longer than what they already are. Also another con would be, the high school doesn’t seem to have that much room to begin with. Adding another grade would just start more drama and potential conflict. As we all know when we have subs, we go to the cafeteria if it’s open, then we go to B208 or B218 because of lunch, but where would sub rooms be if we make empty classrooms into actual classrooms? There would be nowhere to go and that’ll make it crazier than it needs to be. Oh and a major con would be, people would lose jobs, from teachers to subs. If the high school hires teachers from the middle school that’s less jobs for subs and they technically wouldn’t be needed, and obviously we can hire every 8th grade teacher from the middle school so there automatically would be a lot of job losses.

Now I’m not here to try and change the minds of people, because it’s already in motion. But I wanted to inform people of the risk of stuff that could happen during this. Let’s just be glad the middle school is doing something to keep its students safe.