There have been many concerns about how crowded the hallways have gotten at East, and rightfully so. Getting through any hallway, especially C-Wing intersection, has proven to be nearly impossible this year.
Cherry Hill East has over 2000 students, and they are all crammed into one hallway for two periods a day. It is causing a problem, as students are now collecting unexcused tardies because they cannot pass through the hallway. Not only are students late to class, but teachers as well. The staff have no control over the matter, that role belongs to East’s administration. Many teachers have to head to their classrooms ten minutes early to avoid the intersections. This issue raises two questions; why are the hallways so overcrowded, and is there anything being done to solve it?
On Sept. 6, the East administration attempted to direct people out of C-Wing in between lunch periods LB1 & LB2. They were trying to organize a way for students to use different stairwells. The students going to lunch were directed towards the outside stairwells, while the students going to their homerooms shared the middle stairwell. It appeared to work smoothly, but it was unclear if the administration wanted to continue with this plan.
Mr Davis, one of the assistant principals at East, says “The traffic patterns are a work in progress. The entire school uses the same homerooms, so that plays a big role in the issue.”
When asked about what the administration was doing to solve the problem, Mr. Davis mentioned that they “have to kind of assess…where homerooms will be going, because of the traffic patterns in the building. [They] already did some things where…the second floor [students] come down the outside stairwells and everyone from the cafeteria will go up the middle stairwell, and that will help to negate some of the problems.”
Although the answer is not yet definitive, Mr. Davis helped to shed light on the issue. The administration is working to find a plausible solution to the overcrowding, and they realize how much it impacts the students and staff. According to Mr. Davis, East’s administration believes that homerooms play a huge role in the packed hallways. Because the whole school shares homerooms, there is a lot of misdirection. Students constantly bump into each other because everyone in the building is taking the same route. This causes the traffic to become even denser, as all of East is subjected to the same intersection at the same time. Administration is going forward with the plan to lead students to different stairwells, so that way the hallways do not completely overflow.
Additionally, students in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade picked new homerooms in the Google Form sent out in mid-September. Theoretically, these homerooms will be spread throughout the school, therefore students won’t all need to take the same paths to get to their lunch period. When that goes into effect it could solve some of the lunchtime rush.
Passing through C-Wing intersection is very difficult, that much is plain to see. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel with the administration’s new plans. Once clear traffic patterns are established and new homerooms are added to schedules, the hallway jams may gradually lessen.