The straps, the stress, the combinations. Everyday you as a student are forced to deal with these straining physical and mental pressures.
About 70% of kids carry heavier-than-recommended backpacks in the U.S. according to a report in the journal “Applied Ergonomics”, while according to a recent Fielder survey, 49% of the student body suffers from a sore back from carrying their backpacks.
“Yes my back and shoulders have hurt after carrying my backpack,” junior Amy Matos said. “Everyone says backpacks are super heavy.”
Also, it’s not just the students that can become affected by the increasing weight in backpacks, but staff too.
According to the same article the pain bad posture and more problems.
One possible solution that could combat the spread of weight would be students being able to drop books off at their locker. Between classes over half of the students would consider using their locker given to them at the start of the school year if the passing period times were extended.
“I don’t use my locker because of the traffic flow and how hard it was in previous years for me to use it,” Matos said. “[Increasing passing period time] would make things a lot easier for the students, it would give them more time.”
For students who barely come near their locker during their schedule, a 1 to 3 minute change could help.
“I would rather visit my locker,” freshman Daniel Vita said. “Because I only have 1 period that is near my locker the entire day.”
Only students who get to school early enough are able to properly use their locker to transfer supplies and such back and forth in preparation for the school day.
“I am easily able to take things out of my locker right before school starts,” junior Hamza Ali said. “I carry some of my books in my backpack and some in my locker.”
Unless a students classes are near their locker, they cannot stop during the day and end up packing their bookbags with books for six classes. Now the passing periods used to be 6 minutes and talked about more often several years ago according to Chlebek.
“However, to accommodate our triple tired busing, the time was switched to 5 minutes,” Chlebek said. “There has been no communication to change it back.”
Using trend buses helps the district financially.“ Instead of each level having our own buses, it saves the district well over a million dollars per year.

Perhaps the 88% of students who do not use their lockers during the day can help advocate for each other and possibly bring backpack weight usage and passing period times back into the discussions