The upper auditorium is currently closed during lunch mods due to the renewal of auditorium seats. Administration intended to do this sometime this year after gathering data on student trends.
Westside opened the upper auditorium as overflow for the cafeteria due to needing to know how many students would use the IMC. During the first semester, administration collected data on all of the IMCs.
Dean Lois Rasgorshek explained that students are now assigned a lunch mod to help with the lack of space.
“Roughly 500 of our students are assigned to be in the courtyard so there’s actually more IMC space during those lunch mods,” Rasgorshek said.
Administration also noticed a few students using the overflow space. “It was maybe 20 to 30 students [in the auditorium],” Rasgorshek said.
Administration decided that closing the auditorium before Thanksgiving break would make things clearer for students.
“[On] the first day, there were a few kids that didn’t hear the announcement, but other than that, everyone had places to go by [the following] Monday,” Rasgorshek said.
Teachers were freed from auditorium supervision, and could supervise other places in the building. Teacher Amy Studts expressed her opinion on the change.
“I feel like the upper auditorium was not a good place for students,” Studts said. “I like that my supervision has moved to supervising the 100s hallway and also by the gym to make sure kids have passes and are getting to where they need to be going.”
Administration intends for changes to create the best student and teacher environment.
“I think sometimes students don’t realize when we do things,” Rasgorshek said. “It’s not always that this is going to be forever; we change things to meet the needs of the building to meet the needs of the students.”
