The SRHS community has had the A/B day block schedule for about nineteen years. The school board has recently announced they will be changing the schedule to one similar to the TLHS schedule, which includes a traditional day every Monday. This means that every Monday students will have all of their assigned classes, but for a shorter period of time. Due to this new upcoming change students can become overwhelmed to retain so much information, which may reflect on their academic performance.

The biggest reason for the change is to implement an organized school schedule. Students will always finish school at the same time every week; this can help students arrange their after-school schedules. Another convenience is that it also helps parents with the whole trouble of figuring out the schedule on a week-by-week basis.

Even though I’m in my senior year and won’t be here to see how the school transitions into the new schedule, I think it was a step in the wrong direction for SRHS to implement this change.

Ms. Verheecke, who teaches World Cultures, ASB, and AVID at SRHS, says that the new bell schedule will be convenient in some aspects such as scheduling tutors for AVID. She also said, “The new bell schedule will be a little difficult, especially with teachers and planning, and with making sure that kids stay on top of their homework every Monday.”

This is something that could be very inconvenient for students. Many students break up their homework as A-day and B-day homework over the weekends and whatever they don’t finish they try doing in Advisory or the following school day. This will no longer be a possibility because they have to come fully prepared on Monday with all their homework, which some students will have a hard time with.

Mr. Allen, who is also a teacher at SRHS, stated, “I am not a fan of the proposed schedule.” He was told parents, staff, and district personnel prompted this change. Yet many teachers and students who’ve I encountered don’t like the change. This brings me to the thought, did administration even take into consideration what the rest of the school though?

Mr. Winton is in his eighteenth year of teaching history at SRHS. “I like our current schedule better. I’m not quite sure what the motivation is for changing,” he told me. He also shared his biggest concern which is that, “it’s possible that teachers won’t change their homework assignments and/or they will use Mondays as test days and overload students with too many tests.”

Yasmeen Manalili, a sophomore at SRHS, says, “The block schedule is better, I’m not really a fan of the new proposed schedule.” So far most students see no good coming from this change. “I just feel like it’ll be very overwhelming having all classes on Monday and you would also need to do homework for all those classes over the weekend because one day isn’t enough,” added Manalili.

The stress of classwork and homework is something students already struggle with. The new traditional day every Monday will be adding on to that stress.

Juniors at SRHS have gotten used to the block schedule and are disappointed that in their last year of high school they will have to adapt to a new schedule. What they find most upsetting is how this updated schedule won’t allow them to have early days. The earliest they’ll get out of school will be 2:40 p.m. The new proposed schedule means they won’t have a 1:50 p.m. release day on Friday to look forward to, which appears once every two weeks in the current schedule.

Camilo Gomez, a junior at SRHS, says,  “I don’t like it all. What most concerns me is the amount of homework students will be receiving because adjusting will take different amounts of time for everyone since everyone is different.” Camilo added he felt relieved despite his concerns because he only has to go through this for one year compared to other students.

The new schedule also limits work time. This mainly affects art classes like drawing and ceramics since they have multiple projects and deadlines. Fifty minutes will simply not be enough for most classes. The only true way to not interrupt students learning is by leaving the bell schedule as is.

Since it is a big possibility that Mondays will only be forty or fifty minute classes, teachers will not have enough time to complete lectures. A math lecture lasts about one hour or a whole class, depending on the concept, leaving the rest of the class for practice and homework. If teachers have to substitute a day with no new learning, they will have to pack more into the longer classes. This can be overwhelming and hard for students to retain so much information, which can disrupt their academic performance.

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