Dripping Springs High School is about to become “old stomping grounds,” for a lot of us. I can guarantee these past four years were not easy for any of us (students, teachers, and parents alike). On behalf of the class of 2021, The Class of COVID, let’s get to unpack these past four years together.

Despite the ups and downs that we all experienced throughout high school, it is hard to not feel nostalgic while looking back at a time before Tik Tok. With the rise of social media at an all-time high when we first stepped into high school, the trends were shifting at a very fast pace. 

From what I recall from freshman year it was all about Snapchat. Snap Maps had just been released and everyone was stalking each other. Arguably, it was the creepiest trend of the year…

Then, freshman year blended into sophomore year and Dripping Springs got its very own Starbucks at the same time that we were all getting our driver’s licenses. This made for a very broke and very caffeinated sophomore year, but at least we were getting all our work done. Without Starbucks I’m not sure if any of us would have survived the AP English unit over East of Eden.

Before we knew it we were juniors. May we always remember the parking crisis of 2019, when we had to be at school an hour early to get a somewhat decent parking spot. It wasn’t all bad though, at least we were all hitting our daily step goal walking to and from our cars. Coinciding the parking crisis was the rise of Tik Tok. Thinking back on it, the number of people filming Tik Toks as I was trying to walk to class bothered me, but now I know that app was one of the only things entertaining us during the first COVID lockdown. We will always remember leaving for Spring Break and not coming back the second half of our junior year. 

Now, we are seniors. It happened faster than we thought it would and I bet most of our lives look a lot different than they did four years ago. Some of us went back to in-person school and some of us chose to stay remote, but somehow the majority of us managed to make the most of this crazy year. Now, we are thinking about Graduation. It’s like the finish line at the end of a twelve-year race and we are all about to cross it together. Nobody can deny that our high school careers looked a little different than most, but we got through the hard times with the help of amazing teachers, parents, and friends. On behalf of the seniors, goodbye Dripping Springs High School and thank you for all we have learned inside and outside of the classroom.

By Sam Moore, Co Editor-in-Chief

Feature photo by Riordan Tiller

During the current school year, students will continue to take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or the STAAR test despite the months of school’s missed. By not taking the STAAR test it allows students to focus on their personal lives and other problems they are facing during this year without adding the pressure of preparing for the test.

One of the main problems that have completely changed the world is the COVID-19 virus that started to spread throughout the world in later 2019 and early 2020. This has caused a setback and even caused students to become behind the needed curriculum. Also as many schools have used at-home learning there have been more challenges students have faced. In a poll from Active Minds, 38 percent of students are having a hard time focusing on their work from home and found the work stressful. It’s more important to focus on the needed information than spending time in class preparing for the STAAR test when there’s more important information that is needed to be learned.

With the pandemic, students have also had to learn to navigate their lives and adjust to this drastic change. A lot of these children and teens have had their personal lives turned around. With the younger generation having to stay inside due to quarantine it can lead to a feeling of isolation, depression, and even anxiety. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention most visits the ER have been because of mental health issues. Before someone can focus on school and even the STAAR test a student needs to deal with their mental health because it affects how a person functions and goes through their daily life. 

 During this time at home, there has also been a decrease in the amount that the students have learned. According to KHOU, Texas students have lost an average of 3.2 months of learning. With this in mind, this shows what the outcome of the tests may be despite them not even having been taken yet. Knowing that students have lost months of learning most likely the test scores will be lower because students have not been able to absorb information fast enough or haven’t learned all the information needed for these tests. 

A person could argue that despite knowing the outcome it still helps teachers gauge what they need to teach better. However, this year the results will not be as effective because they will show what they’ve learned during a year that has been like no other. Thus the tests will not show fully accurate information on what needs to be improved teaching-wise within schools.

The solution to the STAAR tests is letting the schools administer a test for themselves to see what they individually need to do differently. It will help save resources by running it through the whole state and will lower the pressure on the students as well. By taking away standardized tests this year students will be able to focus on things more important to them during a time that is new too many.

By Abby Hernandez, staff writer

Featured photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash

In the times of the COVID-19 Pandemic, schools need to ensure the safety of both students and the community. While, for the most part, this has been successful, there is one detail that needs to be addressed: sheer ignorance by the masses. First, I will state my concerns and their implications. Then, I will give my proposal to (hopefully) solve this situation at DSHS.

Now, what am I talking about? Well, for the past few months, I have observed many students not wearing their masks appropriately, in the sense that they don’t wear masks over their entire faces. This is most certainly intentional, and it just comes to show that many don’t know the gravity of the situation. Lives are literally on the line, and people who violate public safety don’t seem to understand this.

However, what’s also shocking is how anti-maskers have repeatedly been able to get away with safety violations. In almost all of the cases I have seen, they were not even called out for their violations. Nobody around even said a thing. This exposes the lack of willingness to enforce rules and is an evident flaw in the school’s management of COVID-19 guidelines. 

This leads to my proposal: create harsher punishments for those caught violating safety rules. Do they want to violate mask rules? Detention it is. They repeatedly violate safety rules, suspend them from in-person learning. The current guidelines don’t seem to be curbing the ignorance of people, so make them understand that their actions are taken seriously. Make them understand that what they are doing is unacceptable. Now that more contagious variants of the Coronavirus have arrived in America, protections against the virus are needed more than ever.

People may say that harsher rules are ethically wrong. They are not. In comparison, lives take much precedence over the opinions of people. Connecting to the reason behind my proposal, it must be commonly understood that mask-wearing and other rules are not a game. As I said, it’s not a matter of control, it’s a matter of public safety.

By Alec Stuart, News Editor

Featured photo by Kayla Cox