New hallway rules at Eckstein crack down on tardies, bullying

Posted on January 25, 2011 at 3:58 pm By 6 Comments

Students at Eckstein Middle School are learning a fundamental rule of the road: Always stay to the right except to pass.

Principal Kim Whitworth is trying a new approach to help alleviate the unsafe conditions and chronic tardiness caused by haphazard hallway traffic patterns during passing periods at Eckstein. She’s asking students to stay to the right side in hallways and stairwells, just like we do when we drive. Students are also prohibited from stopping at lockers anytime during the school day–another source of passing-period bottlenecks. Walk on the wrong side of the hallway more than once and you run the risk of lunchtime detention.

In an email to parents announcing the new policy, Whitworth cited another middle school where this plan has been very effective in reducing hallway incidents and students who are late to class. They have also seen a decrease in the amount of between-class bullying.

Students are unhappy with the new rule, saying that it’s too hard to carry everything they need for a half-day of classes with them until lunch, and the punishment for crossing into oncoming traffic is too stiff. But parents and staff at Eckstein hope that this will improve the learning environment for all students.

What do you think of the new rule?

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  • Interested mom

    Why is this an issue now? Is this because there are more kids at the school than the school was built to handle? In the 5 years my daughter has been at her elementary school, enrollment has jumped from 300+ kids to 500+ kids. This means crazy hallways at beginning and end of day. Is this what’s happening at Eckstein? It seems kind of weird to not allow kids to access their lockers when needed. Why have lockers?

  • http://www.roosiehood.com The Roosevelt Blog

    Lockers are still needed because kids aren’t allowed to carry their backpacks during the day.

  • Brendapancratz

    well.. students hate change first off. At Meeker you can not carry your back, therefor you must stop by lockers at some point, ( be organized ) dictating what side of the hall they walk on is interesting.
    bullies could be on your side at the time. Maybe add a min to passing, it sounds fixable.. good luck.

  • Sayer Stewart

    I am an Eckstein student and I think that this rule is ridiculous.

  • Lirettejay

    The middle school where I teach is over crowded.  Our principal started this to eliviate problems in the hallway and it worked well.  Our main hallway is a giant circle and it is a one way hallway.  I don’t have the stats off hand but students can get from place to place now.  At first it was met with resistance and now the students don’t complain because no one is shoving and pushing to get through somewhere. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000209182600 Barrett Archer

    Stupid. Kids aren’t cars traveling at high speeds.

    You can’t run in the hall, so you must walk. Waiting for even the most abysmally slow sloth on a high dose of morphine version of a person making the world’s slowest recovery after a leg injury on the ball field to finish walking by on the “wrong” side only seems to cost you a relevant amount of time when you’re under the stress imposed by your annoyingly quirky Art teacher, who assigned you to make a decorated Origami animal.

    Who that turtle’s in your locker? Oh, that’s your Origami. You left it there with love like Caylee Anthony where you hoped it would stay. Unfortunately, we all must undergo embarrassing experiences. Yours was that you put the time in for a perfect pretty paper turtle. Time you should have better managed making an average turtle and applying the rest to extracurricular

    Screws that wacky European, Japanese, UK and other nations’ “right” way of driving on the left, Eckstein’s Rules do. The right side must be the natural way for everyone, since nobody ever wants to choose the left. It never happens. In fact, the penalties for traveling on the left someone bothered to spend the time writing–likely in a dark sticky lair while also chopping up infants on a cutting board–to spice up low sodium, watery condensed soup because they don’t care for those “despicable” foods with atrocious rebellious qualities like content and flavor–are there because outside the box thinkers give the cardboard planners less control over the contents.

    Your customers–parents–need to know their child never questions rules or innovates and will never in their future career be higher promoted than a low level Kool Aid drinker.

    Future epic fail at driving a car anywhere on time when they grow up because due to childhood trauma inflicted by repeated wrist raping detentions for passing Billy, the short bus fat kid who eats whales for third breakfast. He’s in a tightly packed caravan with about two dozen other shockingly identical looking, astonishingly heavy strangers, all rocketing along faster than time in the event horizon of a Black Hole. All forcing your child who has discovered the benefits of Power Walking, to walk on the wrong side: To pass forever.

    Overlords, why have the rule? Student track runners must be using the energy they would be expending traveling to class and arriving several minutes (to allow for warmup exercises and self motivated practice) before their next class ends for the class before theirs begins while staying half an hour after their current class is over at the same time their next class starts, by time traveling at exponential Mach speeds via Omni Walking (Ultimate Power Walking, but with an arrogant air: Something the kids would’ve taught you by now if they were raised with respect for their intelligence, like Human girls and boys instead of calves) plotting murder. Oh, and let me know where you got these half day book lugging pack mule kids who also have the energy to cope at home, to keep and build an emotional support network of friends, and to write something “interesting and fun” about the “Take Their Money, Steal Their Future, Stick ‘Em in a Box & Watch the Forced Prison Gang Warfare or Else Butt Rape and Murder” Washington State “Correctional” System for your State’s history class.