by Zach Geller ’25

Closed bathrooms are no strange sight to Sherwood students, but rounding the corner at the start of the 2024-2025 year, a team of student software developers is making an app to counteract issues like this, enabling students to report school-wide issues across MCPS.

Ripple is an app for students to report problems in their individual schools.
The hope for Ripple is to give students a voice and hold MCPS accountable for providing the best schools it can. “I think it could help bridge the communication gap between students and admin, and help improve student experiences by providing data on the small issues that students have,” said new SMOB Praneel Suvarna.

Once opened on either chromebooks or phones, Ripple gives students a map of the county and a list of reports they can make. These reports are customized for each school to better reflect issues that may be specific to each school. The possible reports can include anything from locked bathrooms, missing menstrual products, nonfunctional water fountains, broken infrastructure, and anything else staff members see as an issue.

If a student hypothetically spots a locked bathroom, they may select their MCPS school, click on the “Closed Bathrooms” issue, and then type in the room number nearest to the problem and voilá. Their anonymous report is submitted and may be seen by teachers, staff, and even the principal. The map is also updated to show the issue in that particular school.

“We’re able to pull this data, send it to (MCPS) Central Office, and then they can start taking action,” explained lead developer Pranav Karthikeyan, a senior at Poolesville. He believes Ripple will act as a more efficient and timely alternative to the end-of-year surveys students fill out, as it eliminates the need to comb through questions that don’t apply to the individual and go straight for the prevalent issues.

Pranav is a part of a team of three, made up of two students from Poolesville HS and one from Clarksburg HS. The group, who met SMOB Praneel through a robotics team, spent a combined 400-500 hours developing Ripple over the summer. They said that being students was an advantage for them, allowing them to log so many hours into the final product.

Pending final approval to allow access across MCPS schools, Praneel hopes the app sets an example for what each and every MCPS student is capable of: “Any student who has a solution to an MCPS problem should reach out. We’re ready to hear them!”