By Janelis Duran and Dariana Garcia-Bernabe

The bell that indicates the changing of periods at Franklin Learning Center has been the same for the past couple of years. That was until about a week ago when  the once pleasant bell was changed into an extremely loud and obnoxious one. This new bell has caused more problems than solved them.

Not only is it loud, but it distracts students from learning. Multiple times I have been in the situation where I am in the middle of doing my work, so close to finding the answer or understanding the question and suddenly the 6th lunch bell rings. It caused me to lose my train of thought. It is an invisible force that interrupts classes.

There have been times where my teacher is teaching and it rings. The class has been disrupted and is taking away from class time. In classrooms every second counts, especially if the class is large.

Another problem, is that it is way too loud. The first couple days introducing the new bell, it completely scared me. It is unnecessarily louder than the previous one.

The question we want to ask is simply–why was it changed in the first place?

According to Mr. Wilson, FLC’s Vice Principal, the “old bell” was just getting too old. The sound system sometimes didn’t work and when they tried to get it repaired the parts for it just wasn’t available anymore. This is very devastating to many students and teachers who say the new bell is just too loud.

Zulymar Rios (FLC’22) says, “I was taking a biology test and right when I was in the middle of my thought the bell rang and disrupted my whole thinking pattern.” Taiyanna Williams (FLC’19) states, “It’s so unexpected, I was doing a presentation and it rang during it, I jumped.”

We know that the new bell is loud and obnoxious, we also know that the old bell isn’t come back. Are we getting a new bell to replace this abomination that we got stuck with or are we going to have to live with it?