For many years, students have looked forward to going to OCS. The punishment seemed fun in its status as a blow-off class and a break from class in general, but starting this year, students are going to notice a drastic change in how OCS is run and its transformation into a more disciplined and serious environment.

“We wanted to make OCS an actual learning environment,” Matt Good, assistant principal, said. “The idea is that students occasionally are going to display behaviors that require consequences. We want to teach our students to recognize when those behaviors are going to happen, so that they can have alternatives in the future to respond appropriately so that they will not get placed in OCS again.”

The new and improved OCS is going to make students think about and correct their behaviors. By creating a solemn and strict environment, the administration is also hoping to discourage similar transgressions in the future.

“Every student is different certainly, a lot of students are in here for minor infractions; I try to convey to them that this is not the best environment for the student, the student should be in the classroom,” Charles Shipp, OCS teacher, said.

Students should find it their goal to get out of OCS so they can be in the classroom. The first step to getting out of OCS is finding out what the student is doing wrong.

“We want to identify the behaviors that cause the actions,” Good said.

Improving how a student acts is an important aspect of OCS this year, but students may continue to act up even in the intimidating program. So how are these students disciplined?

“First off I will attempt to talk to the student to try to reason with them as to why certain behaviors won’t be tolerated because we do have far more stricter rules in the OCS environment than your classroom environments,” Shipp said.

Since the teaching is looking a lot sterner this year, the new OCS initiative will hopefully be a success, and make students no longer think of it as a playground. One OCS veteran deliberates on his ideas of how the new referendum will turn out.

“It really depends on whether or not the teachers follow it,” Richard Pollick, senior, said. “The way it’s been is the teachers who run OCS don’t seem to care about anything, they’re just there to sit and get through the day and make sure the kids don’t kill each other.”