In the past couple months, many have most likely noticed the decline we’ve had in printing paper. In many classes, teachers haven’t been able to print worksheets and references for students, and it’s not just our school, it is every school in our district. This is because of debts our district must pay, and to do so, they limited our access to printing.

“We [RRISD] were in the hole [of debt] and you’ve got to make cuts in order to make things mathematically. You have to make it work out and so there were cuts that had to be made all over the place, and this was just one of the areas that they saw need to cut back and make a budget that we needed to stay within,” 7th grade Math teacher, Katherine Lennox (Ms. Lennox), said.

Ms. Lennox said that for her Math class, she started having to assign work on Schoology and make students write notes in their notebooks. It is a little more work on both her part and her students’ part, but there isn’t much she can do.

“I’ve noticed the cut down on paper for a while now, in almost all my classes. I think it had the biggest impact on my Math and Science classes. In Science, we have to write our names on all handouts given since our teacher doesn’t have extra copies, and I’ve noticed that we’ve had more work on Schoology,” Pearl Jani (7) said.

Jani told about some changes in her Math class, which include having to write all their notes for a unit in their notebooks and doing parts of their homework on a separate piece of paper or on Schoology. Yet she mentioned that doing notes in her notebook has been more helpful for her in Math.

“Honestly, I think writing in our notebooks has been a lot better. I don’t know why, I think it’s that having to write everything down is helping me better understand what’s going on in class. So even with the recent cuts, I’m not complaining. Writing notes in our notebooks is way better than filling in the blank notes,” Jani said.