With a new school year comes new classes, new computers, new clothes, and this year, a new bell schedule. However, the newest addition to Mid-Pacific was also met with criticism.

This, despite the administration having collected data last year on how to create a better schedule.

One change that produced the most feedback is the seven-minute passing period. For example, on Tuesday through Friday the start and end times for each period fall on odd intervals, such as 10:21 AM or 1:28 PM.

“It’s kind of dumb, seven minutes. It makes everything kind of uneven, which makes it hard to remember what time the class period ends, what time the class period starts, and I’m not really sure what they were thinking with that,” said sophomore Noa Hui.

Even some staff have found that the passing time requires adjustment.

“I’ve gotten to the point where I just say ‘okay, everybody just go use the restroom or fill your water bottle’ because I know if they’ve come from up the hill or down by the gym region, they didn’t have time to use the bathroom or take care of any of those kinds of things,” said MPX 9 STEM Teacher Bob McIntosh.

Another SNAFU involves the Monday schedule. With its 40-minute class periods, instead of a seven minutes passing interval, students must hustle along to their next class in four minutes.

Many students find that teachers’ due dates are overwhelmingly on Monday

“Having every class [on Monday] is kind of annoying, but also super stressful, because that’s the day that teachers make stuff due, or assign stuff, so you go home with all these classes with assigned homework, and you start feeling so much pressure because you’re just overwhelmed with all this work,” said senior Tyler Leong.

Plus, teachers assign a bulk of the workload on Mondays, and with school ending at 3:30, the work day has been shortened.

“It gets tiring because on Monday is when we have the most amount of homework and you wanna get home the fastest,” said junior Samantha Hart.

Another part of the Mid-Pacific community is affected as well. Immediately after school, athletes have less breathing room to get where they need to go due to the Monday end time.

“I kayak and the buses leave at 3:45, so right after I finish study hall on Monday, I just have to run straight to the cafeteria and change, so the end time on Monday makes it kind of difficult,” said sophomore Chaz Wada.

To better adjust the schedule for the future, another survey was recently sent out to middle and high school students to collect student opinions on a variety of topics about the schedule.

According to Assistant Principal of Student Life Rebecca Hodge, the schedule will be open to responses until Sept. 19.

Looking ahead, the school administration, based on these survey results, hopes to have a permanent schedule next year that will last into the future, said Assistant Principal of Academic Affairs Lori Pereira.

“We were hoping to be able to get a more long-term schedule done this year, but we just couldn’t get it done, so we differed to one more year of a temporary schedule, which is what we have right now,” she said.

No matter what the schedule looks like now or in the future, students and teachers just need to keep moving forward and adjusting.

“For me, it was going to be whatever it was going to be; you adapt and at the end of the day, you still get the same job done… You make it work,” McIntosh said.