As a new semester begins, Principal Jay Opperman and the rest of the administrative team have established new rules regarding traffic in the halls throughout lunch mods.

“What’s gonna happen is during the lunch mods only, so four through 11, instead of students being able to move at any time, we’re just asking that students only move at one of the passing times like before [the mod] or the mid mod pass,” Opperman said. “So really, every 15 to 20 minutes you can still go where you need to go, to go see a teacher or whatever. If you were in a situation where you really had to go somewhere, we’d write you a pass too.”

Opperman has thought through the new rule to avoid overstepping on the freedom students at Westside have with modular scheduling to maximize their learning.

We do have an environment that provides a lot of freedom and responsibility for students, which that’s cool,” Opperman said. “That’s one thing I always weigh, if we do this are we taking away the students ability to access teachers? And the teachers ability to access students? We feel like if a kid can still move every 15 to 20 minutes, we haven’t taken away that ability. Anything we [administrative team] do to try and tweak things we want to make sure we’re not taking that away how our teachers and students can interact outside of class time.”

The rule will also work to improve safety measures at school.

“With the free flow, from the security and supervision standpoint, it is a little bit of a nervous thing,” Opperman said. “If we had an emergency situation, instead of 20/30/40 kids wandering during these lunch mods, we’d rather know that kids are in a place where an adult could give supervision and direction.”

Although some students may notice not being able to switch locations at their exact discretion during lunch mods, students will still have many of the same privileges they had before.

“The intended expectation is always for students to use their time well,” Opperman said. “We’re just limiting a little when you can pass to that next decision. We’re not denying that ability to go get help, or go with two friends to the math IMC and work on whatever, or to go to 271 and just talk and relax for 15 minutes.”

As far as mods one, two, three, 12, 13, and 14, the ten minute rule will still be enact.