Have you caught it? Did it escape your notice? The somewhat challenged task of getting to class recently received an interesting touch up. When students came back from Winter Break from Feb. 17 to 21, they might have noticed that the main stairwell stairs received a new paint job. It was out with the soiled shade of battleship grey and in with a sparkling new shade of battleship grey.

Consider what got the stairs to their prior grimy state. After four years of wear and tear on our new building – not to mention discarded gum, trash, and smoothie cups along with millions of steps on the part of successive years’ student bodies – you’re going to have a faded shade of grey.

“It was about time that this had to happen,” said Meredith Kaltman, ninth grade academy leader. She said that some time back, school administrators contacted the Atlanta Public Schools facility maintenance department and the project was taken on during the long weekend.

However, some eagle-eyed students noticed that a couple flights of stairs were not painted – specifically floors six, seven, eight and nine. “The first day I came back I was walking up the stairs and was all excited,” said junior Tara Torossian. “But when I got to the sixth floor, I was like – Oh.”

The conspicuous absence of new paint on floors six, seven and eight remain a mystery to this day. “Maybe they ran out of paint,” said junior Luca Kurtz.

Now that some of the flights of stairs do look nicer, it’s hoped that students will be more motivated to go the extra mile – and take the stairs.