 Welcome to Life at BHS. I am Aiden Argraves with the Racial Justice Alliance and I will be reading off some questions. I am here with- Christina. And Juno. Okay. I have a couple questions and before we get into this I would just like to ask, did middle school prepare you guys for what was gonna happen for high school? Cause I understand that this is the first year that you guys are the first years that are going into this high school? That one into this high school? Actually, no. I think the- The seniors. No. The seniors. Yeah. The rising seniors are the first people who were at Macy's, I think, for their freshman year. They're gonna spend their whole entire high school career at Macy's and so will be probably. The new school's probably not gonna be built. I don't think middle school prepared us at all. We had like a gap year almost in seventh grade. It was like all on Google Meet. It was like a hybrid and then sixth grade we were cut off. So basically all our like core learning was done over Google Meet. So high school was like a slap in the face, basically. Also homework wise, throughout middle school we weren't giving a lot of homework or that's true for Hunts. She went to Edmunds. But yeah, Hunts, they were really slacking on homework and preparing us for the type of lessons we're gonna learn in high school and so, yeah. All right, I'm gonna be reading off some questions. And my first question I wanna start off with is what's it like being in a school with no windows? You know, people may like a big deal out of it, like old, there's no windows, but you really don't notice it. I think what you notice more is how you can hear everybody in like the whole school, like all the time. Like people like running around the hallways. Because there's like a passing period that like goes to lunch in the middle of the day. And so like my civics classroom didn't have like walls that were all the way up to the ceiling. And so we would just hear kids like running back and forth in one's room, which is really annoying. But yeah. Yeah, like meanwhile, like some of the classrooms have like walls that go all the way up to the ceiling. But that's like a new thing that just happened for freshman year. So before that, they had like no doors and most of the like missing walls was like open space for classrooms. So, yeah. All right. My second question is what's it like having an idea to get in and out of the building? To be honest, you don't really like use it. Like when we first got it, they're like, oh show your IDs at the door. But we didn't actually start doing that until like the end of the year. Really? And even then our security guard is literally so useless. Like anybody and I mean, anybody can just walk into BHS at any given time. Like the doors are not locked really. You can just like walk in and you can leave the building as well without your ID and he will not run to get you. I promise you that. He will not come to get you. Good to know if that security guard is watching this. Hi. Troy. My third question is what's it like knowing there was a cancer causing chemical in the old high school and that if they didn't do the tests to find out that it was there that you guys would have been going to high school? Oh, I feel like I would have been fine. I actually wish we were back in the old high school because you know, four or you know, if we went back now three years in the high school, I'm not gonna get cancer or at least I won't be in that school long enough. So you know what I mean? Be like exposed to that much cancers, chemicals. I know that there were teachers that did die from, you know what I mean? Like cancer gonna get from the school but like those teachers have been teaching there for like years, you know what I mean? And so yeah, also I played basketball, like mini Metro and stuff like that. When I was little at BHS like almost every weekend. And so I feel like if I, like I'm already like exposed to that stuff, you know what I mean? And I'm fine. Maybe. Oh no. Let you. Personally, I'd be chilling. I feel like it wouldn't make that much of a difference. I mean, I get cancer later, that'd be really too bad. But I'm going to school like in a mall. So that's too bad too. Do you think the staff supported your mental health the best they could? Or what do you think they could have done better? They're really like no. I feel like there's like only like one teacher like one of like my core teachers that I could probably like go to like if I told them they would like they were like supporting me like fully like they didn't take any like points out of work I could submit like work a month later and they would like be like really supportive. Like they just wanted me to like pass and like pass with an A. Like that was like their ultimate goal. And some of my other teachers were like Loki depressed himself. So it wasn't really like an outlet to go to. They were just more focusing on like getting their work done, grading wise. All right. Do you think that the halls are like loud and like do you get headaches when you're there? I know when like when I was asking like people around like when I was in eighth grade about how BHS was like the environment they always complained about it being loud. I didn't find it too loud. Like during the actual like class period but like passing in between classes or like being in class while like there's passing time that was really loud. But also depends on like what floor cause like the bottom floor is their animals. And yeah, it's just it's crazy when it's lunchtime. I think that's all for this segment. And stay tuned. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having me. I am Milly Glosson. I'm with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and I'm here with... Hi, my name is Nassara. And I'm Alex. And today I will be asking them questions about their life at BHS. So the first question we're going to start off with is like are the halls crowded when you get there? What time of day? Like specifically? Like in the morning or during transitions. In the morning, there are a lot of people just hanging out doing whatever, especially in the cafeteria. You know, people just sitting around the tables or they're like these little areas by the escalators where you can just sit in there. There's a lot of people in their classrooms. But during transitions is where it really kind of starts to get more busy, congested. You can tell who has their license. People that have their license stay to the right side of the hallway and then it flows smoothly. And the people that don't, they just do whatever and they gaggle with their friends and then they just like walk down the middle and it makes it really hard for people to get around. Yeah, when the escalators are working, it takes you like a couple of minutes just to go up the escalators. And they added like a one per step rule because the escalators are always getting broken and there's only like three escalators in Vermont. So it takes a long time for them to fix it. And it just always gets broken and it's really crowded during passing period. Especially like when the escalators are broken, there's this stairway way in the back. You really have to walk way, way, way back in the corner to just to get to the second floor and specifically at the top. That's where it's really crowded because there's always people trying to get from the top to the bottom and the bottom of the top. And there's just this huge cluster of people just like staying around there. The next question I'm gonna ask is what is it like having no real walls? It's not that bad other than the fact that when people are skipping class, you can hear everything they do. And you can just hear everything like even other classes. Like sometimes the teacher will leave and be like, you're talking too loud. I can hear you in my class. And you can just hear everything. Like if someone's scrolling on TikTok, walking past your door, you'll hear it. Most of the classes I had were in rooms where the walls were extended to the ceiling. But I did have a study hall in a room that did not have the walls extended to the ceiling. And there were always people just like out in the hallway with like a group of four of their friends and they were dropping F bombs and there's nothing the teacher can do about it. And it's just kind of hilarious, but. Oh yeah, sometimes people just toss some stuff over the ceiling. And it'll just like randomly hit someone's head. One time it hit the teacher's head and she ran out and she's like, stop it, get in. The next question I'm gonna ask is, is it easy to get up and down the stairs with everyone in the halls? Easy. It's not hard, it just takes a lot of time because of the congestion that I described earlier, but it's not like a difficult task, but it does take time and they don't really give you enough time to transition between classes. If you have one class at the front left corner of the school on the first floor and you have to get to the front left corner on the second floor, that's a pretty long ways, especially if the escalators are down, you have to walk all the way to the back corner, go up the stairs, deal with the congestion and then you have to go all the way back over to the front left corner and that could take anywhere from like three to six minutes and transitions are usually like what, five minutes? Yeah, there's only two stairs in the whole building and one of the best stairwells, someone punched a hole in the wall and then someone wrote compost on top of it, so now there's just like a bunch of rotten food like thrown into this hole in the wall and it stinks very bad. Yeah, that seems pretty personal. What are the transition times? Does everyone leave the class at the same time or different times? You get five minutes for a passing period and the only time people leave different times is lunch because there's first lunch, second lunch and third lunch. You can speak about that. Yeah, so the classes that you're in, they all get the same lunch, like if you're in art class with a certain teacher, that whole class will get dismissed to either first, second or third lunch, right? And then you have to get back a certain time to your next class, which is really confusing with how they schedule it because you have friends that have first lunch, friends have second lunch and friends have third lunch and it's so that there's less congestion when you go through the line to get your food, right? Even with how they split it up, there are still people in the lunch line, it's just one straight line, right? With what, like 70 people? People will cut straight to the front and there's just this glob at the front and then like a really spaced outline moving towards the back and it's just really annoying sometimes. The last question I'm gonna ask is, do you have any classes with people in higher grades than you? It depends really like what class it is, like art, art you can have with anyone, like there's art one and art two and stuff. I didn't take art last year, I just took core classes, so this year I have art one, so almost like we have it with a bunch of freshmen. Yeah, core classes are usually by grade, you know, algebra two, geometry, physics but then you get your electives and those, they kind of like mix together. Well, that's it for the questions. Hi. Hi, my name is Akilah and we're here with my beautiful co-host. Binti. And Reverend Mark Hughes. Love you guys. And we're at this segment called Live at BHS. There you go. Okay, so first things first, how do you like BHS? Like just in a general, you know, pros and cons kind of way? Um, I like, I mean, I like most of my classes. I mean, for the most part, the teachers were good. There are times when, you know, some teachers were not as like... Say it. Come on, Binti, look right in the camera and just say it. I don't know, there's just like some teachers that don't really know, like, just how to teach, like, kids in our grade, especially because like, we were in, like our middle school kind of got cut short. So I feel like we learned a little less than like other classes. So there are just some teachers that, you know, we're moving at like such a fast pace to like the point where like, it was almost like it was too much for most students because we didn't really get that education that like students in the past got. But I also like, I didn't, I was fine with like being in the mall. I didn't really like hate it too much. I think that, you know, yeah, the window part was like, it was a problem, but like, it really wasn't all that bad. And that's like the thing people complain most about. But like, I think the environment, it was definitely like hard to focus in. But I think that it was, you know, it wasn't the worst place to go to school. Can I just, I mean, Bente, it just came to me. You guys are the first freshman class to start in, in that space and Macy's, whatever you want to call it, after what we call the worst of COVID. I mean, it was literally your, what was it, your seventh and eighth grades where we were in the middle of a, a serious aspect of the global pandemic. Is that correct? Yeah. Wow. It was like, well, it was like the middle of sixth grade and like the whole seventh grade. Wow. Wow. So you, and then at the same time, they find the PFAS, PFAS or in the, the chemicals in the, in the building, in the high school building. You weren't in the high school building at the time, but they closed it right about the same time. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure they also found those chemicals in the middle school that I went to, cause this summer, like they were airing it out of the auditorium while people were there for summer school. So I found that very like weird cause they like closed down the high school, but then they left the middle school to have those chemicals. And like they didn't do anything about it until now, but they're also like people using that building. So I don't think that was like a good way to, like, yeah, I just, I don't know. But I think that if they were gonna like close the school down, the high school down for like a chemical that's in most of the other schools, like it's like the, it's basically like they just closed down the high school for no reason. Cause it's not like they're gonna knock down every other school in the district. Exactly. That's true. That's very true. I guess the next question I wanna ask is like, I mean, you talked about the cons. There is a lot, but going through like such a transformational time of your life, like having to be isolated from the pandemic, but then also having like a different changing environment based on like then other classes before you. Do you feel like it was more helpful or hurtful? You know, like kind of the pros and cons of that too. Do you think that it maybe benefited you more than other kids who previously got to like not have to go through a gold pandemic? Honestly, I mean, ways that it was helpful, I would say they're like a lot of the things that we're doing now are online, which definitely makes it easier to just like search, like quickly search something up. Like I think like just being on our Chromebooks all the time, doing most of our work on online definitely just made like reaching out to the internet way easier, but also like the problem with that was definitely that students would just find a way to cheat on like any tests and they would like, I think that we definitely since we had so much access to the internet, we definitely did like abuse it a little too much, but I think now that we've like definitely like fully transitioned into in-person, I think that there's a really good balance with it. And yeah, I think using Chromebooks for most of our classes was very helpful. Yeah, definitely, definitely want to thank you for sitting down with us for coming out. I mean, talk about resilience, just one heck of a journey that all of you guys have had up until now, just as always like black folks, we are resilient people and we're better for it. That's why we say through the fire, we don't say in the fire or stuck in it. We always come out like pure gold at the end of the day. We're better for it for our experiences. I know that there's some conversation we can have about your perceptions and also your thoughts and plans on your personal wellness and the wellness of your peers and moving forward in some of the programs and services that you're envisioning to be able to be your own Calvary in your journey ahead. So again, thank you for coming out. Yes, we'll see you across stage real soon. Thank you. That's a wrap guys, see you next time.