It’s been over a month since school started, and students at LHS have noticed many new changes within the building. What was once the beloved MASH is now allocated for a different purpose, and instead, we have a new learning help center: The Workshop. The seemingly never-ending construction in the cafeteria and courtyard, although still ongoing, has produced something new: a redesigned, upgraded cafeteria.

 Students have also found that the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms are no longer scattered throughout the building, and instead, all of the girls’ bathrooms are located upstairs and all of the boys’ bathrooms are located downstairs. This has led to the storm of opinions and questions that have been circling amongst the students; everyone wants to know what is going on!

The Workshop

“We were already planning on moving [the MASH’s] location so that we could get all the different supports that a student might need academically a little bit closer together… So that if someone needs support and is in their study hall, they can get that [support] much more easily,” Dr. Jennifer Loika said, the Associate Principal of Teaching and Learning. She has been very involved with the movement and rebranding of the MASH.

The MASH was an acronym for ‘Math and Science Help,’ which was exactly why the name was changed. 

“We help students with more than just math and science,” Dr. Loika said. The Workshop provides aid for students in all core subjects, such as math, science, literature, social studies, along with language classes. 

Furthermore, because of its proximity to the other support classrooms, teachers gain much more help in aiding students. Dr Loika’s hope with The Workshop is to connect students with the most effective help available.

The Cafeteria & Courtyard

The renovations in the cafeteria began in the 2024-2025 school year and were carried out into the summer of 2025 and the 2025-2026 school year. Fortunately, the interior of the cafeteria is now finished and has been improved with more seating options and space. However, the courtyard, as of now, is still a work-in-progress. 

“I took over my new position July 1 [2025], and so when I came in, we were told the cafeteria was going to be about three weeks delayed,” Mrs. Meagan Silverberg, LHS’s Assistant Principal of Operations, said. “Since then, we’ve gone to months, but we are still making progress. What I will say we did is finish the seating area … and then behind that wall where the temporary serving line is, they’re building a whole new servery.”

Additionally, in the future, students will also have the option to sit in the courtyard. “The courtyard is [a] little bit longer of a project because they had to put in some more foundational supports before we could put concrete on it,” Mrs. Silverburg said. “So it got delayed for that.” 

The courtyard is planned to be an outdoor seating area that is also protected from the weather via glass roofing. Together, these big updates will make lunch periods for students a much more pleasant experience. 

The Bathrooms

Another topic of interest amongst students are the bathrooms, mainly due to their new placements within the school. 

“There is a long-term plan to eventually replace all of our bathrooms or at least update them,” Mrs. Silverberg said. 

A few of the bathrooms had already been updated in the 2024-2025 school year; however, others were developed during the summer. The plan was to keep all the bathrooms open, but a new issue arose: the wall dividing the girls’ and boys’ side of the upstairs cube bathroom had been removed during renovations. This led to the decision to allocate that bathroom to only one gender. 

“The [final] decision was made to make the first [floor] for the boys and the second [floor] for the girls, because we had just updated the new girls’, one on the first floor and a boys’ one on the second floor,” Mrs. Silverberg said. “So then both of them have two updated bathrooms on each floor.” 

These changes were mainly set up to make the best of the current bathroom situation. 

With new updates to the building and finished renovations on the way, students can look forward to the many upgrades that will be implemented in the LHS building and change student experiences for the better!