As of the 2024-2025 school year, this is the second time the school schedule has been reworked. Instead of starting at 7:40 am and ending at 2:40 pm, students continue the school day by an extra ten minutes to get a sufficient amount of school hours. Students are required to complete 1116 hours of in-class learning, excluding seniors, who must have 1086 hours of school time according to the Board of Education. But with the reconstruction of the school schedule, students and staff will need to make adjustments to their schedules too. And students typically feel that adding a minute or two per class doesn’t contribute much towards their education.
“I feel like the benefits of that[adding extra minutes to classes] is that we get more education in by just a few minutes and it really doesn’t change anything. Especially, when teachers are, well some teachers are like, ‘Oh you guys have just a few extra minutes, go and stand by the door or just stay by your desk,” junior Nancy Reyes Rojas said.
One of the unpopular changes among students and staff is the removal of late start on Thursday each week. Which affects both school and non-school related activities.
“I know I would use the late start time to hang out with my friends and to do a little school work. But now I don’t have that option,” junior Cole Orozco said.
Late start would be used as a time to get help and finish homework and interact with friends. But for staff, it’s a time to plan lessons and collaborate with fellow teachers. For example, teachers have less time to plan lessons because of the removal of Professional Development days.
“It does kind of stink to have our professional development days, where people had been working to plan activities for us. The psychology teachers were supposed to have two different psychologists come in and talk about different stuff, so we have to miss that. Because they made those school days,” AP Psychology teacher Jennifer Schlicht said.
With the change of in-school hours, school activities and jobs are affected as well, because some students struggle to adjust their work schedule.
“Staying late does [affect her job] because back when we ended at 2:40 I had 20 minutes before I had to be at work, so I had time to go to my house and change before I had to clock in, but now I have to bring my work clothes to school and take them and just go straight to work and change when I get there,” junior Adah Reid said.
Other school activities affected would include various sports. For example, track and field has not changed their schedules.
“So, North track team didn’t change their starting time. So I’m always getting there late, like midway through our warm ups so I feel like I don’t have time to get properly prepared for practice,” junior Nathan Cordell said.
Students feel as though preparation in sports is key, which includes both physical and mental strength. But they feel there isn’t enough time for either.
“For track and field, since they’re putting [in] 10 minutes more and we leave at 2:50pm, I feel like changing automatically just to go to track doesn’t give us a lot of time to prepare. Especially me, I like to be ready for things and not having enough time to put myself into my practice mentality and stuff like that, I feel like it’s not enough,” Reyes Rojas said.
Several students and staff dislike the change in class time and feel that there could have been another way the schedule change would have been avoided, such as more efficiently planning snow days.
“I think it’s kind of [redacted] like, this is Kansas. This is the Midwest. We have [redacted] weather all the time. We should be planning ahead. We shouldn’t be running out of snow days for two years in a row now,” Reid said.
Other staff and students understand the changes with the 4th quarter schedule as well as the reason behind the increase in minutes.
“Obviously, there’s got to be some science behind why we have to be in school for so many minutes a year. I mean, like I said, it’s better than adding a day in May, when the weather gets really nice, so I would much rather add whatever 10 minutes to the end of each day than add one or two days at the end of the year,” volleyball coach and art teacher Steve Amershak said.
