Some of the basic school qualities are the bell, the plain walls and even the desks, but what if we students can change this. I am not saying replace all that we have, just slightly change the basic qualities we have in the school.

One idea proposed was that the students in the art class can do a mural on one of the walls in the halls. This would work great because all students in the art class would get experience painting a little mural, and our school would also have more of a personality. 

Brent Hill, a freshman at Lakeland High School, stated, “I like the idea of changing some of the qualities, if I was gonna paint the walls anything, I would paint a space-themed mural.”

Ms. Gravatt also stated, “The difficult part of creating large murals is the time consideration and taking time away from the curriculum. It would be interesting to have a class completely devoted to school murals, posters, etc. because there are quite a few projects to be undertaken every year.” 

Another idea said that Lakeland should change the bell to some other tune like the Seinfeld intro or a guitar riff. Or they could have a weekly bell where Lakeland changes the sound of the bell every week. 

“We could liven it up a little and have bagpipe music!” stated Ms. Gravatt, an art teacher at Lakeland.

So out of all of these ideas, are they actually possible to accomplish? 

“We have talked for a long time, and we want to do something with these walls. Rather than putting it on the art teachers, maybe we could have someone come in and paint a mural. Overall, these types of projects take a lot of thought and time, but it’s a very cool idea.” says Trent Derrick, principal at Lakeland.

Derrick also stated that the problem with changing the bell would be safety, since students are used to the classic Lakeland bell, changing the tune could be dangerous.

Derrick is also working with the booster club to have a mural painted on the West wall of the new gym, and he said if they collect enough donations they could make it happen. A new football scoreboard, new carpet in the commons and the tennis courts are going to be redone. All of those things will happen.