In June 2023, the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) began a large-scale project at Burlingame High School: reconstructing and renovating the school gym. While students and teachers alike eagerly anticipate the new gym, there were obvious consequences of losing the space: no home basketball or volleyball games, long drives to practices — and no location to host the annual Advanced Placement (AP) exams for students.

For the past six months, Assistant Principal and AP coordinator Aimee Malcolm has been meticulously working to make up for the spacing issues. The first step was to find a new location, and luckily for her, the Burlingame Recreation Center was the perfect match — it was close to the school, had a usable testing environment and could accommodate larger exams, while the school library and alumni room which would be used for smaller tests.

“The factors that were brought into this equation were ensuring that it was easily accessible for students, that it would meet the testing standards and requirements that are in accordance with AP College Board, and that it would be a quiet, safe and clean environment for students,” Malcolm said. “Essentially, it needed to be easily accessible and similar to the environment that we would have here at BHS, where it’s going to be clean, calm and organized.”

Picking the location was the easy part. The harder part was ensuring that students could take the digitized exams at the new location.

“At first we thought we were going to have to run paper exams over there. And then by student request, we decided to pivot and accommodate the digital exams,” Malcolm said. “The Rec Center got their tech people and [we got the] San Mateo Union High School tech people [to] all jump on a call to make sure we were able to get the [network] bandwidth together.”

After six months of meetings with the Recreation Center staff, tireless hours planning and extensive digital exam tests, everything seemed in place for AP exams to run smoothly.

This was true for the first four days of testing. Sophomore Michelle Chow took her first-ever AP exam in the Burlingame Recreation Center’s Sequoia room on Tuesday, May 8 and appreciated the ambient environment.

“It was actually really nice because I really liked the natural sunlight there,” Chow said. “It was [also] not loud [which was] a really big plus because I tend to focus better in a very quiet environment.”

However, not all exams went as smoothly as Chow’s exam.

Early morning on Friday, May 10, students were unable to log onto Bluebook to begin their AP US History exam.

“I think half of the Chromebooks weren’t able to access or at least successfully access Bluebook, [which] was probably due to the network issues within the Rec Center,” junior Jayden Wan said. “After 20 minutes, Mrs. Malcom was like, ‘Alright, we’re going back to BHS.’”

After realizing that the root of the issue was the internet connection, Malcolm and the proctors made the quick decision to move the AP U.S. History exam to the A-building for all students at the Recreation Center.

While some students were upset about the delay in the test, others like Wan appreciated the extra time to review with friends.

“Some people study in the morning. So right after they have studied, it’s in their brain, but if you wait like an hour, then it’s gone,” Wan said. “I was able to study a bit in the meantime [when the exam was moved] just because most people had other peers around them.”

Luckily for students, there wasn’t much delay, as Principal Jen Fong, Malcolm and many other administrators immediately helped assign test-takers to classrooms, organize desks and file students into the rooms.

In just about 40 minutes, the AP U.S. History exam rooms in the A-building were ready.

Although Wan’s exam was delayed, he is grateful for the administration’s commitment to digital exams instead of paper exams and for their adaptability to internet issues.

“I think some things are out of your control […] they did a good job figuring out that kind of solution,” Wan said. “[The room] was kind of scuffed, but I think it went pretty well. A lot of people were monitoring, [with] five adults in the room to kind of figure out the situation.”

Fortunately, the internet connectivity issues only occurred for the U.S. History exam, and the second week of AP exams in the Sequoia room went smoothly.

In fact, many students prefer testing in the Sequoia room to testing at school.

“The alumni [room] was really stifling and loud to be in for testing because the train passed by and cars kept revving their engines right outside the door,” Chow said. “​​I would hope I could take my test in the Rec Center next year because it’s just quieter overall.”

Malcolm is open to feedback to improve the testing experience for next year.

“I know students have been working really hard and preparing, and we wish them the best of luck,” Malcom said the week before testing. “And I always welcome feedback around the communication process or anything like that.”