Students and staff of the Alternative Learning Center (ALC) are experiencing the high school building for the first time. It is quite the transition and everyone is experiencing it differently.

This is the first year that the ALC program is in the school building. The ALC moved to save resources financially. It’s a huge adjustment for the students who have been a part of the program in previous years, who are used to being separated from the rest of high school students.

“It’s not as tightly knit, even though we are forced closer together,” Senior Myah Lienke said.

Before joining the building, the ALC had their own.  It was a nice place that made students feel at home and part of a community. There are about 60 ALC students, and on top of that, freshman were added to the building as well.

Lienke explained, “We were told that we would be a little bit blocked off from everybody, but still everybody is using our hallway for passing and walking through when we are in the middle of class.”

The ALC does not have their own hallway away from the rest of the students. Their classroom are located at the ends of two halls, right next to a stairway and right next to the other classrooms. The ALC runs on a different schedule than the high school, so they will be in classes still while the other students in the building have their passing time. This is distracting for the ALC students considering there is a huge number of students walking the halls during passing time, which can get quite loud.

“Giving priority to electives means also that they have to give up going to the ALC, and they dont want to give up coming here,” ALC Principal Mary Ticiu explained.

A positive outcome of the ALC joining the high school building is that the ALC students now have the opportunity to take part in electives, such as painting or orchestra. The only issue with that is that the ALC has a different bell schedule, so the ALC classes and the electives don’t match up. If a student decides to take an elective, they would be missing out on some of their own classes. A lot of the ALC students don’t want to miss their own classes, because the ALC is made to feel like their own community.

“They can escape something they had a past practice of failure and they can hit reset. And the reset button for any human being child or adult, or parent or elder, you need to be able to start over sometimes,” Ticiu explained.