Classroom clocks await time change
Many classroom clocks are an hour behind.
November 6, 2018
Students are wondering why the clocks in some of the classrooms on campus don’t function properly.
They look up at the clock in the middle of the test and think they have all the time in the world to complete it, but then the teacher announces, “Five minutes left!” and they suddenly wonder why the clock deceived them.
Scott Rea ’87, Director of Facilities, is extremely knowledgeable on this issue. Rea said that the clocks are all wired to the main office.
He said, “Some of [the] clocks have failed, and because of the age of the clocks and the age of school, they’re not connected to the master system.”
It is evident that some clocks run about an hour behind than normal. This is due to the fact that daylight saving time switched several years ago.
Given the school’s aged system, the clocks essentially believe that daylight saving happened already, thus automatically turning back time by an hour.
Rea explained that this situationis“not as simple fix.” The process is “extremely expensive because of all the wires.”
He also pointed out that, at this point, it wouldprove too costly to fix the entiresystem. As a result, in the interim, he is “replacing the clocks that are dead with the battery-operated clocks.”
Rea notes that it is his job to ensure that all the classrooms are “perfect.” Given that some teachers do not tell him about the clock(s) in their rooms, in addition to the entirety of the situation, Rea is still trying to get a hold of the issue.
Math teacher Ottilie Valverde said that the incorrect clock times “confound [her] sense of what time the class should end.” Moreover, Valverde stated, “…when the bell is about to ring, and I haven’t realized it, I feel like I haven’t closed the lesson well.”
On the contrary, Julian Molina-Lopez ’20 does not pay much attention to the clocks. He believes that, during a test, “The teacher should be able to tell [students] or write on the board how much time [is left].”
Rea hopes to have the clocks fixed by the start of the new school year in 2019.