By Ketki Chauhan ’16

 Over the past few months, teachers and media center specialists have come face-to-face with the issue of the availability of the school’s media center and its computer labs as a result of PARCC and AP testing. The labs and the media center have been blocked out for 33 days between March to May, leaving teachers helpless and forcing some of them to modify their assignments.

Media Specialist Joseph Reiff believes that as a result of more assignments and lessons being done online, the media center and the computer labs have become harder to schedule. Not to mention, there is a lot of changing done in scheduling when administration schedules a date and then comes back to change it, regardless of whether a teacher is booked that day. Despite a first-come, first-serve basis, the administrators and counselors are prioritized, especially in the case of testing. PARCC testing had a severe impact on the problems in lab and media center availability.

“Because they [administrators] had never done them before, they didn’t know what they were going to need or when they were going to need it. So, they blocked out like two or three straight weeks of the library and for the computer labs,” Reiff explained. “And, what they found it is that ultimately to do the PARCC tests, it was only Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a couple of weeks and not even every morning or afternoon; it kind of varied. So, they were able to free up and they didn’t need the media center at all.”

Despite spaces opening up, there were still more problems. Teachers were not aware that spaces had opened, so those available times went to waste. It also interrupted Reiff’s library media program.

“The beginning of the third marking period is when I’m the busiest. I do the English 9 and 10 research projects with all the teachers. Because the labs and media center were all blocked out, teachers changed their whole research assignment to not include me,” Reiff said. Once the media center was available, Reiff was asked to be one of the PARCC test coordinators. “Ironically, I had the 9th and 10th graders in the media center but I wasn’t here to work with them.”

However, Reiff believes next school year will be more promising in solving this issue. The current process for reserving a lab is through a binder Reiff keeps with a sign-up sheet for every lab in the school. Teachers, then, come in and book a lab. Next year, the system is expected to shift online to make it easier on teachers. There is also talk of implementing a block schedule next year to minimize the impact of PARCC. Lastly, there will be more chromebooks available next year, which Reiff believes will help with PARCC and other testing.