After a year of construction, the new wing to the C-building has finally opened, allowing teachers to have their own classrooms and students to have more room inside their classes. Many problems arose, such as water leaks, bats, noises, and even damage to the existing C-building. Many people are beginning to wonder, “Was it worth it?”

The new wing to the C-building provides 24 more classrooms and a new counseling conference room. These rooms are designated for English, world language, and art classes. This provides more space for the campus’ ever-growing student population. 

However, not everything about the new wing of C-building is as promising as some people may have hoped. Class-to-class traffic has been a major issue for many students who have been traveling to and from this new building. 

During the first few days of the semester, students could only use the south side of the new wing. Students flood out of the upper levels of the C-buildings, and with the design of the two wings joining both staircases in the middle, it has created a bottleneck-effect that has hundreds of students fighting to exit the building, stuck in foot-traffic as if it were rush hour on a major freeway.

 “We made a change where we put a security guard out on the north side and we opened those doors all day so kids can go out that way. But people are electing not to go out that way, so it is a concern,” said principal Serrano.

As a result Serrano stated that the school is in the process of building a fence, which will hopefully encourage students to use the north entrances.

Traffic isn’t the only concern at the new wing though. The building continues to have major air conditioning issues.

 “I like it, but the air conditioning isn’t the best and sometimes it smells bad,” said junior Aubrey Pohl.

According to Serrano, there are engineers working on the air conditioning system every day and it’s just another thing to fix.

Another change that came to campus are the bells. The new bell system was drastically different from before.

“They’re nice, but I miss the old ones,” Pohl said. “The new sounds get confusing.”

Many students are not fond of this change for its odd chime and its overall confusing structure. There was a lot of confusion for the first few days of school about what the new bell’s signal meant.

“The system changed our options and I am not a fan of them,” Serrano stated. “We had several options and we picked one.”

Teachers and students were not expecting the new bell change and got confused when they first rang due to their odd chime. Once people realized that there was a modification to the bell signal, they began to wonder why they had been changed.

“The new building would not have been able to hear all of the [old] bells” stated Christine Gonzales, an IT specialist. “So they had to bring in a new system, and with that new system, we lost the old bells.”

After a year of grappling with the construction of the new C-wing, in the end having new classrooms to alleviate overcrowding is a good thing for Perry. The school administration is aware of the problems and is working to make the necessary improvements to the new wing.