The sound of students collecting backpacks, working on homework, chatting with friends, and hurriedly running to first-period classes is common in the last five minutes before the bell rings. But this year, due to 10 extra minutes added to the day, that bell is coming earlier than ever before. For some students it is a change that is easily forgotten.
“No one remembers the new schedule, and its ten minutes longer, which no one likes,” junior Michael Burdick said. “All in all, it’s just annoying.”
In order to accommodate the new schedule, 5 minutes were added to both the beginning and the end of the day, with school starting at 8:55 a.m. and ending at 4:10 p.m.
“It doesn’t affect me personally, but I could see how it would affect other individuals,” senior Will McInerney said. “I’m pretty laid back.”
But what is true for McInerney is not true for all students. “I have to wake up earlier to get to school on time with the new schedule,” junior Lacy Crisler said.
The changes in the day were not without reason. “We originally had the A day and B day schedule because it was similar to Allen’s schedule, and we wanted to try and keep things as much the same as possible,” principal Gavan Goodrich said. “But over time, the middle school changed to an 8-period day when they moved over to Sloan Creek and we continually had teachers that were asking to see their students everyday. We had an opportunity this year, to change the schedule. I’ve worked with 90-minute periods and 45-minute periods, and it doesn’t affect the instruction in anyway.”
But in order to make everything work the day had to be extended. “We had to add the extra 10 minutes to make room for 3 lunches. There’s a reason we start at 8:55, too. Because of when the buses come to us, there’s a lot of making sure it fits with all the other systems,” Goodrich said. “The new schedule compresses the work of the bus schedules and it actually helps them with their workload.”
Some students, however, believe the schedule could have been fixed differently.
“You could have 4 classes a day, and have every class, like, an hour and a half every day for each class,” Crisler said. “Some schools do that and it works out a lot better.”
For others, the new schedule is works out well.
“I like this schedule better because you get a little bit of work done every day, instead of spacing it in between days,” McInerney said. I like that you get to go to class every day.”
