It is a brand new school year, which means a brand new schedule! Here is a quick overview of the new format, information from the administration as to why they constructed it as they did, and my personal thoughts on some of the changes.
This year’s schedule once again features 75-minute classes that meet every other day. According to a survey sent out by the administration, 61.7% of the 623 students surveyed agreed that this format worked well for them. Teachers showed about the same percentage of agreement at 65.7%, however, I do not think everyone surveyed can be seen as equal. I, personally, find the schedule detrimental to learning. Perhaps middle schoolers with more laid-back curriculums and fewer commitments see alternating days as exciting and beneficial, but it is difficult for upper schoolers with AP classes that have set curriculums leading up to AP tests. It was really hard to squeeze in and retain all the required material. I do not think this schedule is effective and teachers last year constantly said that it did not work for their class curriculums, so I am rather surprised the A/B format is still being used.
In addition to classes still meeting every other day, school continues to start at 8:15, and division/grade meetings are in the middle of the day. However, there have been a multitude of changes to the schedule.
The first big change of the year is the full-day rotation of classes where each one meets at a different time every other day throughout the eight-day cycle. The reasoning behind this is to combat fatigue that occurs at different times throughout the day and to allow student-athletes to miss less of a particular class when they are dismissed early. Many students feel the rotational format is confusing, but we have not been in school long enough to run through a full cycle, so opinions are not rooted in anything but speculation. It is simply going to be an adjustment for students and teachers alike. Another difference from last year is that lunch is now at one time for the 10-12 Division and it is before the 8-9 Division’s lunchtime. This makes for a crowded lunch room, but the unified time allows friend groups to eat together and there is no more atrocious second lunch occurring in the late afternoon. There are still two meeting times per week for clubs, but they are now after school on Wednesdays and midday on Fridays. The final big change is a new school end time. We now end at 3:05, which is an exciting update for most. Office hours and 8-12 athletics are now at the end of the school day, which provides plenty of time for extra help and unified sports practices across teams.
With new schedules being rolled out for the past three years, administrators have put a lot of thought into the new format in terms of making it unified across the divisions and tweaking it to work for different types of learners, but overall I think they may have missed the mark with keeping the alternating day system.