by Joy Zhang ’14

Teachers have encountered a problem of chronically broken copiers since the beginning of the school year. While students may be rejoicing over less assigned readings and other handouts, teachers have become increasingly frustrated with broken copiers interfering with their lesson planning. After multiple complaints from teachers, Sherwood administration contacted MCPS which sent out personnel to fix the machines.

MCPS previously had a copier program that replaced old copiers with new ones every couple of years. About four years ago, MCPS changed this policy. Instead of buying new copiers, it started to service the broken copiers by refurbishing them with old parts. This resulted in copiers that were never optimally functional, leading to the crisis Sherwood staff is facing this year. The school has three copiers and there have been instances when all three are not working at the same time.

The unreliability of the copiers caused math teacher James Key to start a log documenting when the copier in the staff lounge by the media center was uncooperative. The log was created October 9. From October 9 to November 12, there have been more than 80 instances of paper jams, the inability to staple or make double sided copies, printing papers four times too dark, and papers coming out bent. Teachers have written comments in the log about the copier being “useless” and “it sucks.”

“I enjoy the challenge of working with students. And I enjoy the challenge of designing engaging learning activities. Making copies should not be a challenge – it should be the easiest part of my day,” said Key.

“[The copiers] constantly break down. It’s become a major point of frustration and a road block to doing our job. You get here early, you want to be productive, you want to get things done … but you end up spending all this time that you could be using to grade papers or write letters of recommendations fighting with the copy machines,” said social studies teacher Christine McKeldin. She is also one of the two Elected Faculty Representatives (EFR) at Sherwood, and she shared the staff’s frustration over the copiers with the school’s Institutional Leaders Team (ILT).

Teachers also wrote emails, pleading for the problem to be addressed and resolved. Principal Bill Gregory took the matter seriously enough to contact MCPS. “The Director of the Department of Materials Management and I have been in direct contact. We spoke a week ago and I relayed the information regarding when the jams began occurring as well as the frequency … She said that she will be sending two people out here to look into this further because the jams should not be happening like this,” stated Gregory in an November 8 email to the entire school staff.

After many exchanged emails, MCPS has finally attended to the problem. “People from MCPS did come out and look at the machines.  There was a fix they made with one of the machines.  We have not seen the same type of issues.  I feel confident that issues have been addressed and our voice was heard,” said Gregory on November 21.

Following Keys’ lead, the school has placed a book by the main office copier to monitor issues if they arise. Gregory plans to send the record of problems to the MCPS central office if any problems occur.

Key remains unconvinced that the issue has been resolved and claims many problems still persist. “All the corners came out bent, which has been happening for a couple of months now and that has not been addressed yet. The last couple of days, the machine has been shut down. Today, people have been using the machine and it’s been jamming … The machine in 214 has just consistently not been usable,” said Key after attempting to use the copier on November 27.