Cesar Chavez High School Reviews

What was it like going to Cesar Chavez High School? Well believe it or not over 2,000 students are attending Cesar Chavez all ranging from grades 9th-12th. As well as that, there are over 70 faculty members teaching various subjects to these students. I attended Cesar Chavez High School from my sophomore till senior year, and while being there I personally experienced and witnessed many issues. Being that Cesar Chavez High School has over 2,000 students, they must make drastic changes in order for the students to be in a better learning environment. 

Lunch at Ceasar Chavez was a nightmare no student would want to face. Our school had two lunch periods that were thirty minutes each and served 1,000 students in each one. Now, most people would think that thirty minutes would be more than enough for students to grab and meal and go, but for Cesar Chavez, this was not the case. In fact, as big as the school was the lunchroom was so small. The lines outside of the lunchroom were unimaginably long. Students would wait normally at least ten minutes before they got to the doors of the lunchroom just to scan their student ID cards and proceed inside to wait for an additional seven to eight minutes for their food. There were five different meal options almost every day, but what made the lines so long was that only five workers were serving the food to the 1,000 students or so. The whole process of getting food at Chavez took at least fifteen to twenty minutes. That is more than half of the lunch period students are given. When I was still attending Cesar Chavez lunch felt a bit stressful due to the fact that you would have to wait so long for food and barely had any time to relax and enjoy your meal after almost four hours of class. I believe that Cesar Chavez needs to raise their lunch period to at least forty-five minutes and that they must have more staff inside the lunchroom in order to get the students out as soon as possible. Students are spending over half of their lunch just waiting for food, this only gives them fifteen or fewer minutes to consult with teachers, makeup tests or quizzes, and use the restrooms. This leads me to Cesar Chavez’s next issue. Restrooms.

As many students as they had and as big as the campus was Cesar Chavez High School chose to just open one out of the seven building bathrooms for the 2,000 students to use during school hours. Cesar Chavez had a bathroom rule where students had to wait thirty minutes after class had started to finally use the restroom and anytime before that the restrooms would remain. After the thirty-minute wait period was over students then had a thirty-minute opening to use the restroom and after that thirty-minute opening was over the restrooms remained locked until the period was over. To top everything off teachers were only allowed to let one student leave at a time and the students had a ten-minute limit to be out. Of course, not all of the classes were within the same walking distance from the restrooms. Some buildings were closer while others were further away. This rule had so many issues as one could see. For instance, the students who were in classes further away from the restroom had very little time to actually use the restroom due to the fact that the walk to and from the class and the bathrooms took the majority of the time. Students who did not make it back in time for the ten-minute limit were punished with detention. Also, being that each student had a ten-minute limit this meant that only three students could use the bathroom in a single class period. I could not imagine needing to use the restroom so desperately to know that I had to wait until the next class period to go. Students cannot learn comfortably if they cannot use the restroom when they need it. I know some students did take advantage of the restrooms, but this did not mean that everyone else had to suffer the consequences. Using the restroom is not a privilege. We as human beings have to use the restrooms in order to not get any health issues, but obviously Cesar Chavez didn’t see it that way. Cesar Chavez needs to see that one bathroom is not enough for the 2,000 students and that they need to open all seven building bathrooms all hours of the day. 

My final and last issue that I saw was that there are not enough qualified teachers teaching at Cesar Chavez. In my junior year, I took a physics class and was two weeks behind due to my counselor putting me in at the last minute. The teacher had a very thick accent no one could understand. Being that I was late I asked to come after school to be caught up with the lecture. My teacher said, “No, I do not do after class study.” I was flabbergasted at the fact that a teacher who is paid to teach students and help them with their questions just denied one who asked for help. After that, I dropped the class and took another science course. After dropping the class I found out that he told the students he would pass them all with a B if they tried on the midterm and final exam. He did not even teach them physics; he let them pass because he was unwilling to teach it where his students understood his lectures. After being numerous teachers’ teacher assistants saw that many teachers did not care to teach their students. Now not all teachers at Cesar Chavez are not qualified for the job. In fact many are. I’ve met many teachers who have tried to make their classes fun and engaging for the students and I believe that Chavez should hire more teachers like those. For example, I was grading quizzes in one of the US History classes and the teacher did not answer any of the questions during the lecture and would be upset when being asked questions. Why would a teacher get upset when students were asking for clarification? Before hiring teachers Chavez should look closely at their records and check in on teachers' lectures in order to see how efficiently they are teaching their students. Everyone deserves a good education, but we cannot do that with under-qualified teachers.