At the start of the new school year, the district implemented a plan to eliminate several staircases within Katy ISD schools. The cuts are due to an inability to hire enough stairs in the transportation department this year.

“The administration ran into some issues trying to keep our stairwells,” Algebra I teacher Noah Bussess said. “Apparently, getting stepped on throughout the day offers very little job satisfaction.”

Due to the district’s allotment of staircases per number of students, Cinco Ranch will retain one staircase in the entire school. Early reports indicate that the remaining staircase will most likely be the one in the rotunda beside the main commons.

“There’s definitely going to be a lot of traffic on that staircase, so it will be much harder to get to classes on time,” junior Stu Dent said. “That’s why I’m glad that the school is considering a plan to implement 50 minute long passing periods and seven minute long classes.”

Some plans proposed to utilize the time spent stuck on the staircase include playing educational documentaries on a large TV screen above the stairs, playing extreme king of the mountain on the upper steps, and installing hundreds of stair lifts with desks attached to them to the sides of the stairs so that students can do homework as they rise towards the second floor at an agonizing pace.

“I fully support the stair lift idea,” Bussess said. “Besides helping students complete their homework, they can also serve the purpose of taking care of that little problem we would have had with transporting students with crutches or in wheelchairs.”

Teachers with classes on the second floor will have to come into school an estimated three hours earlier than usual to beat the new traffic expected to develop on the staircase.

“The teacher workday will most likely extend to about eight more hours each day,” Assistant Superintendent Ida Boss said. “But on the bright side, about seven of those eight hours will be spent waiting for students to arrive in their classes.”

Due to its isolation from the rest of the school, the second floor of the freshman center will only be accessible by climbing up the sheer brick walls in the now-empty stairwells around the freshman center. According to the District Communication office, many parents have filed complaints on behalf of their children–complaining that it will be extremely difficult for their children to climb up a twelve foot tall brick wall with no handholds.

“I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be pretty hard to climb up that wall while carrying textbooks and backpacks,” freshman Carrie Books said. “But to be entirely fair, climbing the wall will be significantly easier for future students, who will have had practice doing the same thing in elementary school.”

Because they will not be forced to wait in the traffic of the staircase, freshmen will still have seven minute long passing periods, and will suffer the same disciplinary consequences of detentions and eventually losing exemptions if they are repeatedly tardy to class. Freshmen reportedly are preparing for climbing the wall and into class in less than seven minutes by packing rope, harnesses and other climbing gear in their backpacks.

“I personally think that we should all view this as a great opportunity,” Boss said. “Still having trouble getting that elusive P.E. credit? Just having a single semester of class on the upper floor of the freshman center will now earn all the P.E. credits necessary to graduate from high school.”

Freshmen will also be expected to exit the second floor in a calm and orderly fashion during fire drills. Standard procedures will include lining up, leaving one’s possessions in the classroom, and jumping off of the ledges of the second floor in a calm and orderly fashion.

“I know that it looks bad,” Bussess said. “But at least we’ve been told that we might get cushions at the bottom of the stairwell for when we have to jump back downstairs.”

Despite the many measures that the district has taken to solve the new transportation issues within the school, a surprisingly high number of students remains unsatisfied with the district’s actions.

“I’m not very happy about the staircase situation, but at least it’s not like the district allowed job vacancies in a key department to escalate until it had created an issue that would affect literally thousands of students in the district,” Dent said.

“People might have a bit of trouble getting to certain classes on the upper floors, but at least they get to school easily enough. Our buses provide a transportation system that we can always count on being there for us. That’s what really matters.”