As a St. Charles Parish high school student you go to school five days a week, six and a half hours a day, and in total thirty-two and a half hours a week. Each school year last over a ten month span and eight courses are crammed into it. Each of those courses requiring you to take extensive notes and reach goals to ensure you pass that class. If succeeding is the common goal and mottos are “Whatever it takes,” shouldn’t each student get as much help as possible so they can be the best they can be? Rules that students are required to follow do not allow them to bring a laptop to school, the use of a laptop can extremely help a student do their best in classes and have nothing put a positive outcome. It’s understandable that every positive might have a corresponding negative but each of those negatives is ensured to have a solution.

While in class a student is exposed to new facts and details daily. Sometimes the notes, lengthy and overwhelming, cannot be interpreted onto your notebook as fast as they are being feed to you. Feeling overcome, you give up. And if you did get something written down chances are struggling to keep up, listening to the teacher, reading the bored, quickly scribbling across the page you cannot read what you wrote. If a laptop is present notes could be kept quickly and clearly, allowing the student to keep up with their teacher’s pace and having proper notes to study once they go home. Of course there would be some students who would yield their notes to breaking the rules by browsing the web. Easy and foolproof, the solution is simple. Internet access would simply not be allowed. The laptop, in this case, is just a substitute for the notebook. The notebook does not have internet access so you would not be handicapping the student in anyway by not allowing internet access. If research is necessary then it would be conducted on a school computer.

The laptop, more efficient and functional then using pencil and paper, will keep you organized. Nothing is worse than trying to find something you wrote down in class and not being able to because it is lost in a sea of paper in the dangerous ocean you call your backpack. High school students are like hungry sharks when the bell rings to go to lunch and do not take their time to put things where they belong before they run off to eat. A laptop will always have everything saved right where you put it and have its own little title so you know how to find it when you need it. There are also programs that are designed to help you stay organized. Microsoft OneNote is a program that’s used to organize your school work and put everything into its own categories such as class subjects. Of course the not so efficient negative to the laptops in school idea is that eventually their battery runs out. This can be prevented. Students should only have the laptops on when it is necessary to conserve power, but ultimately the schools could get electrical outlets installed into the floor or onto the desk like the chairs they have at airports. This would raise electricity bills, but it would also raise test scores and enthusiasm about school.

An estimated four billion trees are cut down each year for paper production. Just one student on any giving day could use up to five pieces on notes making it about twenty-five a week. If you multiply twenty-five by the number of high school students in St. Charles parish the number of paper used weekly in this parish should astonish you. In one year just think how much paper we use. If we slow down the paper use think how many trees we could save a year, and over many years. St. Charles Parish Public Schools is a model school system to many, so we could in fact influence other parishes, by our success, to do the same; saving a countless number of trees. Humans rely on trees for survival, we cannot breath carbon dioxide, but trees can turn the carbon into oxygen which is compatible with our bodies. Saving the trees could potentially save us. No one would steal a binder but when thinking about allowing laptops in school you would have to worry about theft, but as a high school student you should be responsible enough to keep track of your computer. We have been taught responsibility since kindergarten and it is time we use our skills. Also the school gives each student a locker which is more than secure enough to keep your things out the hands of others.




Allowing laptops in school will only bring success to students and our parish by boosting grades and allowing students to perform at their best. All of the potential problems faced by allowing laptops in school are not only outweighed by the benefits but conveniently have a resolution making it nothing short of senseless to not allow high school students to make use of laptops in school.