Annie Wright Schools underwent a series of small changes and adjustments over the summer, as the school has grown and the daily schedule has changed.  

A change that many people noticed right away, was the change in the key code. After our key code had been the same for multiple years, it changed all of a sudden this year without warning. Head of the USG Jake Guadnola demystified the reasoning behind this sudden change.

“The code to the external doors was the change that we needed to make because the numbers [we had been previously using] were starting to wear out on the keypad, and if you can believe it, [one of them] in particular was almost non functioning. So that was brought to our attention and we then had to come up with a code that didn’t include [those numbers].”

All School Chapel had to undergo a change in response to the growth of the ever developing USB.  “Last year I think we couldn’t have the Preschool, Pre-K, K, and first graders there…” said Guadnola, “this year with the addition of another grade of boys, it was going to displace another lower grade, and next year it’d displace another grade, and pretty soon we’d be talking about all school chapel, but it’d only be maybe 10 of the grades. So then we tried to figure out what our next best solution is. We talked about divisional chapels, and we thought ‘well, as we continue to explore this idea of coordinate education, why don’t we have the boys and the girls together?’ And so, that’s what we decided to try.”

More local to the USG, the right to Spirit Fridays have turned from a right to a privilege, that can be earned by less than a set number of uniform infractions throughout the week when we are expected to be in daily uniform. 

“I think it’s safe to say that I was a little disappointed with Spirit Fridays towards the end of last year. They felt more like free dress days than they did spirit fridays. It kind of felt like people were wearing anything. So, as Annie and I talked over the summer, we thought ‘isn’t there a way that we can instead of turning them from the sense of it being a right, to more of a privilege. Something that was earned.’ And it should be earned by being in really good uniform throughout the week.”

Guadnola also mentioned that if the number of uniform infractions exceeds a set number, it will be a dress uniform friday, as a type of punishment for not being in daily uniform. 

As of this year, students have a limit to the number of pages they can print this year. Day students are granted 600 pages, and dormers are granted 900. The limit was set due to the high number of pages students and faculty were printing, and how much money the school was paying for all of those pages. The highest number of pages one USG student printed last year was 7746 pages.

“We were given a report that showed the sheer number of pages printed by both faculty and students and it was kind of overwhelming…When we looked specifically at students we realized that there were some students who were just printing a lot. We were able to look and try to figure out what seems to be roughly an average number of prints, and we were able to then go a little bit above that and give everybody a limit…If you need to print more than that, we would ask you to pay that cost…We hope it might stop the more wasteful printing, where people are printing 70 page documents, but maybe only needing a couple of those pages, and trying to get people to be more thoughtful that there is a cost there.”

A big change, and a big loss for many, is the loss of co-curricular days. Co-curricular days were generally directed toward one class, or one objective, and tended not to incorporate the other classes as well, which was not the intention.

“Almost every co-curricular day is anchored by really important programming for one or maybe two classes, but wasn’t always really important for all classes. So, what was happening is we felt really positive about what we’d put together for one class, and then we felt like were just kind of trying to throw something together for the others.”

Though there will not be co-curricular days, Guandola explained that when there is certain programming that is necessary for one grade, that grade will partake in that programming, and have a type of co-curricular day, while the other grades go about the day per usual. It is meant to avoid creating days where one grade has lots to do, and the others are hardly doing anything.