There are five major time zones in the continental United States: PST, MST, CST, EST and Lexington High School Standard Time.
Picture this: you’ve accidentally slept through your alarm clock and wake up with just 30 minutes left before the school bell rings. You brush your teeth, put on your clothes, and rush through breakfast. You get in the car) and make your way to LHS. As you are running in, the time on your phone says 8:29 a.m. You get to class, but the door is closed. You are late.
LHS students should be given the benefit of doubt and not get marked tardy if they arrive after the morning bell but before 8:30 because of the faulty bell system.
The LHS bell system was established in 2000 along with other renovations to the building. At that time, digital clock systems were state-of-the-art and too expensive to implement, so the school opted for an analog clock system. The problem with this is that it often doesn’t match up with the actual time.
“The bells and clocks lose about four seconds a day. So at the end of a month, you’ve lost about two minutes,” David Amicangioli, the Lexington High School Facilities Manager, said.
This is a large problem for students and teachers, as transitions between classes become increasingly confusing.
“I don’t know when to get to class [or] when class ends.,” Ken Li, a freshman, said.
While the shifted times mean that the schedule is staggered during the whole school day, the problem is most impactful in the morning.
“It’s mostly a problem in the first block when students need to know when class starts and they’re not here to hear the bell ring to cue them in,” Jessica Goodstone, a freshman history teacher, said.
The bell system causes problems. So how can we fix it? One solution is to replace the clocks with a digital bell. However, this is costly, so many agree that it is worth it to wait to replace the system until the new school is built. Since we cannot replace the clocks now, teachers should simply give students the time in the morning, as doing so is convenient for both parties.
Another possible solution is to purposely set the clocks two minutes behind so they ring at the right time. Unfortunately, the bells don’t always have the same gap, meaning that they would have to be changed every day, further complicated by a 24 hour reset duration.
At the end of the day, LHS Standard Time is here to stay. In some ways the experience of strolling into class unknowingly late has become a school tradition, and who knows, people may even miss it after it’s gone!
“It’ll feel funny when nobody complains about it anymore,” Melia said.