The social fabric at Delta High School has been torn in half after the administration’s decision to cut teachers’ salaries by 20% to pay for slightly faster wifi.
The money that is being ‘saved’ by this cut is immediately being put towards the upgrade in the district’s Wi-Fi from 500 Megabits per second to 500.2 Megabits per second.
“We heard the cries for better technology,” said Superintendent Caryn Gibson, speaking over a phone call that still managed to lag for four seconds. “Last week, a student said that Google Classroom took nearly seven seconds to load! It’s 2026; taking seven seconds to load is a catastrophe that we just cannot ignore.”
This act has split the student body into two sides. In the counseling office, four students huddled around a kid’s laptop, claiming that the pay cut was “worth it for the gains.”
“Do I feel bad that some of the teachers have resorted to selling blood plasma during lunch breaks? Maybe a little,” said Ava Hamm. “But have you seen my ping? Sure, the number is basically the same, but the spinning blue circle feels more confident!”
On the other side, a group of students started a GoFundMe for the math department and is currently boycotting the new Wifi by using 3G hotspots from ten years ago.
“It’s dystopian,” said Brody McMillan. “The wifi is just fast enough for my science teacher’s resignation email to get into the school board members’ inboxes a millisecond faster than it could before. We’re losing our best staff members because Ava wants to watch YouTube videos in 1080p instead of 720p. It’s horrible.”
There have been attempts to negotiate, but all have failed. One side wants to keep the new wifi and the other wants the wifi to drop from 500.2 back to 500.1, at least to give the teachers better pay.
The teachers are caught in the crossfire and struggling to maintain order in a war they are inadvertently funding.
“I got this month’s paycheck today, and it was nearly $450 dollars short,” said Math Teacher Danielle Lopez. “I asked the school board why, and they told me to just enjoy the snappy reload rates. I have to teach kids how to do the quadratic formula on the back of old napkins because I can’t afford the copy paper anymore.”
Biology Teacher Austin Kimber has moved the students’ desks to the parking lot in protest.
“If I’m going to be paid like it’s the 1940s, I might as well teach that way,” said Kimber, propping a whiteboard against a student’s truck. “We’re out here studying ‘life’, which currently consists of…. Dead grass in the cracks of the asphalt and some gray slush.”
“This ecosystem is depressing and cold, but at least the kids who want the new ‘fast’ Wi-Fi will leave us alone because the connection drops as soon as you step off the sidewalk,” said Alice Melton