Dancing to the beat of a different tune.

The bell music this year has gone through some changes.

The overseer of the music has changed since assistant principal Erik Huber left. Others have reached out to assist with the music. Students have felt some dissatisfaction with the state of the music this year.

The minute bell music is a tradition that’s been held many years for the school. One minute before the class bell rings, music will play from the speakers, indicating that there’s a minute left until class begins.

“I can tell you I came from a school that didn’t have the bell music, and I enjoy the minute bell music. Not only does it give a cue that there’s only a minute left, but it just kind of brings an upbeat feeling in the hallways,” said assistant principal Tim Ridley.

This year, however, there’s been some changes regarding who is in charge of the music. The previous manager was assistant principal Huber, who moved to high school Bullitt Central this year. The role was then transferred to Ridley. Huber used a large database of songs on a hard drive for the music, and he planned to pass the hard drive onto Ridley. Unfortunately, an accident happened and the songs were lost. At the beginning of this year, Ridley only had a few CDs available for the bell system. As a result, there hasn’t been as much variety with the music this year compared to previous years.

More recently, art teacher Jason Kelty decided to give some assistance to Ridley. He’s planned to burn some CD’s with different themes to use for the bell music, including instrumentals and speeches. However, so far he’s only burned one CD, which was Beatles themed.

Student choice is a factor with the bell music that students say has been lacking this year. In a poll conducted with 131 voters, 93 percent said that they think students should pick the bell music more often than they currently do. “Personally I like the bell music, and I think it’s a good thing because it helps us know when we have to be in class. At the same time I wish we still had the kids picking it because with only teachers picking it it’s like the same songs for months, and it gets boring,” said sophomore Miranda Hahn. In years before, the bell music was integrated in with the weekly Charger Buck drawings. One of the prizes for having your name drawn was being able to pick the bell music for a day, but that hasn’t been an option yet this year.

The cause of this is the coordination and access issues that Ridley and others involved with the music have run into. “This year it hasn’t changed as much as we wanted, but we’re working on that now that Mr. Kelty has stepped up and wanted to take that on for us. We’re going to work on student choice too, obviously…I think that’s important,” said Ridley.

Hopefully, the bell music will evolve more and more as the school year goes on.