In Reply to: Another South Lakes student posted by Nadroj Regnad on October 18, 2000 at 12:51:53:

Hello Everyone. I see that this discussion has taken off quite fervently. I am pleased in some ways but am disappointed in other ways. I meant to arouse interest in this subject, and if you do not attend South Lakes High School then you can not understand what happens behind those doors.

My first point, in which I will very specifically address, is that what kind of rocket scientist does it take to get a tape measure and measure the distance between an average car and the ground???? Obviously Mrs. Rodriguez can not even handle such a simple task. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about...Our priniciple spent our thin funds on increasing the size of the speedbumps on the South Lakes campus, only the workers she hired to complete the job made the speedbumps so high that EVERY car I heard go over them, scraped the bottom(which included some 16 cars.) I heard even 2 trucks and 3 SUV's scrape the bottom. The only vehicles that could properly go over these speed mounds were the school buses. When complained to by a student known as Ashely H. she replied with the response "You should have been going slower." That is funny considering that she was inching over the speedbump in 1rst gear, trying to get over it and having to really rev her engine to acheive victory over the tiny mountain. I experience the same deal. I was going so slow that my car couldn't make it over unless I kept gunning it. I was afraid that my car could not make it over. The bottom of my car was scraped very severely. Then at 10:00 after over 20 some complaints by faculty and students were made, and with a call that would finish the argument, Langston Hughes faculty called Mrs. Rodriguez and told her that "They had to go." By lunchtime the working crew was already out there stripping the road of the speedbumps, leaving huge gaping pot holes with steel bars protruding horizontally (of which had been present for a minimum of two weeks prior to the added speedbumps and which also was causing damage to many tires and even knocked my alignment off)she removed them. Due to the damages on my car, I am very resentful towards the bad decisions of the principle and to the wasted school funds(paying workers many additional hours to strip down the remaining speedbumps then redo the job + costs of the actual speedbumps) that were already at a stretch. To this day, the new speedbumps are an improvement but they still are not a reasonable size. Many vehicles still scrape the bottom of the car on the speedbumps when passing over it, including me. My teacher also raised the question: "What happens when a paramedic unit has to go over the speedbumps?"

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