With a new year comes new additions to Gloucester High School, most noticeably the first day of reopening from the A-Hall, now renamed 100 Hall, from closed renovations.
100 Hall has reopened its doors to students and teachers alike. 100 Hall has been given an aesthetic and structural makeover, with new flooring, lighting, walls, and many more additions that make this hall more functional for students and staff.
The biggest addition to 100-Hall by far is a brand new main entrance, with the main office moved directly adjacent to it. The additional entrance has tile flooring with white cement bricks surrounding it, a white structural pillar in the middle, and a Gloucester Dukes logo plastered right in front of the doors.
Walking into the main entrance greets you with a hallway to the front, being able to take a left into the rest of 100-Hall, or right to the rest of the school. A teacher lounge is to the right of the entrance, encased in glass.
Going into the rest of 100-Hall by taking a left leads you to renovated classrooms and a renovated glass entrance instead of the stale cement and red doors. New bathrooms have been added, with a brand new design to combat the vaping issue that GHS Staff just can’t seem to stamp out. 100-Hall (and by context, assuming the rest of the school once renovated) bathrooms consist of one main area with small tiles and a row of lockable individual bathrooms with a toilet. There are several sinks with hand dryers, and each bathroom has a tampon dispenser. Every bathroom is unisex. Sinks are automatic, and full-body mirrors are located on the sides of each bathroom. Water bottle fillers and water fountains accompany each bathroom directly on the outside.
100-Hall has completely different lighting compared to the rest of the school, with a cool white instead of the dim, warm lights we’re accustomed to. The lights brighten 100-Hall immensely, although it promotes eye strain due to the white walls and light-colored flooring. Lighting makes an immense difference in the overall mood and appearance of 100-Hall, and there are differing opinions on if the cool white lighting is healthy for the work drive of students and staff.
A sophomore who preferred to go unnamed had this to say: “It’s really amazing but kind-of confusing, I’m still not sure where the bathrooms are.”
One of GHS’ security guards, known to students as Gary, had this to say about 100-Hall: “It’s nice, as long as y’all keep it that way. It’s just confusing because it’s day 1. Give it some time. There’s, uh, gonna be signs directing students like the rest of the school in due time.” Although 100-Hall has been opened and is far more aesthetically pleasing than the rest of the school, it’s clearly still unfinished. Unfinished flooring, walls, and active construction zones near the library break the illusion of a clean, functional school and ruin the beauty value of 100-Hall.
New additions have been added to the outside portion of the trailers, including a pergola near the right-side C-Hall exit, and another one awkwardly placed near P100-101. The pergola’s main purpose is to block out the sun and prevent rain from falling on students and staff under it, although the Pergola near 100-101 is redundant as you have to walk across a large area with no weather protection. The Pergola near the C-Hall exit has a large gap, which would allow water to fall into the C-Hall exit. The former Guidance trailer has been reformatted into two classrooms, one of which will be a study hall classroom.
Written after the first block to second block change, 100-Hall seems to be far too cramped and tight to allow for quick movement. Several times, students going into 100-hall were at a complete standstill, with no movement, while being too cramped together to allow for any maneuvering. 100-hall is aesthetically beautiful, even unfinished, although being unfinished seems to be its biggest flaw when it comes to functionality.
