With a new principal at Etowah, come new changes. Perhaps the most notable is the cross-campus release (CCR) bell.

  Instead of having a small grace period after class starts for students crossing campus, those students are released three minutes before the end of class. This means that all students now have to be in class at the same time.

  Being released separately from all the other students does eliminate a great amount of traffic, and less traffic makes it convenient for all the students to get to their next class. Prior to CCR, all students released at the same time created much congestion for students both crossing campus and simply walking one building over.

  “It’s easier to end class early than start class late,” Tabatha Box, math teacher, said.

  In previous years, the grace period allowed cross campus students a small wavier to the late bell. However, because there is an actual bell for these students this year, many think it is unfair.

  “There should be a CCR bell at the end of the day at Etowah East. They are always yelling at us to hurry up,” Josh Clendaniel, freshman, said.

  Some teachers keep teaching after the CCR bell because not all students leave, and students may end up missing material.

  Some students may leave at CCR, even when they are not crossing campus, in order to have more time seeing or talking to friends, rather than being in class.

  “I think it’s ridiculous that we can’t leave for CCR during lunch because we have no time to get to our next class,” Haley James, sophomore, said.

  Administrators encourage students to eat at the cafeteria on the campus where their next class is, eliminating the need for  CCR dismissal.

  If any student is not in class by the last bell, the student must get a tardy slip from a computer at main or East campus.