Thirsty in class? Hope you have a water bottle, or you can’t get a drink! The schools new Covid-19 policies while very annoying are understandable, like wearing a mask, trying to social distance and other things, but not being able to get a drink is a little much. Yes,  you can bring a water bottle into class, but some people have a lot to carry already and a water bottle just adds to that.  Plus they can roll out of your hands or fall off your desk and cause a distraction. 

The school must have the water fountains turned off and taped off because of Covid, so they let students carry water bottles with them. This is a great thing, but not everyone wants to carry a water bottle throughout their day. They also allow students to fill up water bottles at the fountains with that function, overall being allowed to carry water bottles is a good solution to the problem but it’s not practical for every student. 

There are other solutions however, they could have paper towels and a spray cleaner at different fountains for students to clean anything they touched when using the fountain. Let’s be honest though, even just having half the fountains on would have less of a chance to spread Covid then the bridge does; the bridge alone is it’s own “super spreader event.” The school could even put out little cups for students to get water from then throw out, sure it’s not great for the environment but we’re worried about hydration right now.

Now let’s talk about student error; I’m a student trust me we make a lot of errors. When we returned to school in person, most teachers kept most of the work still being done on Chromebooks. Let’s think about this: a tired student + water + a Chromebook= one big accident waiting to happen. Obviously, we’re old enough to know how to drink water, but it only takes one mistake for everything to go wrong.

There are better ways to handle the water fountains than what the school is currently doing or just better ways to keep students hydrated during school.