The latest version of the bell schedule debuted during the first week of February in response to the faculty and student’s interests for a revision to the current schedule. The new schedule has made adjustments such as earlier release to the end of day, only four period school days, rotating the last class of the day, lengthening of office hours and academic support, and extended lunch breaks.
The previous system was very mentally draining due to overall shorter breaks between classes and using lunch. The Monday schedule limited learning while also exhausting students who have to work through eight of their classes. Another complaint was how the last period would sometimes fall at the same time at the end of the school day which made it difficult to stay focused for that class. Overtime this grew a sentiment that a remodel of the system was needed.
“Mr. Ly is making a dream come true that the teachers, many, many teachers have wanted to do for a while. We’ve lived with this long enough. We really need to change.” SDWG member Nicole Goff said.
The team tackling this project is the Schedule Development Working Group. This group consists of many different faculty positions to create a schedule fair for everyone.
“So basically what we did was we put out a survey to the entire faculty and staff, and we said, hey, are you interested? And what ideas or perspective and experience can you bring to the team? Do we have representation from all those different viewpoints? Social studies, world language, library, MPSA,” Ly said.
Many opinions have been considered in constructing this schedule that the council had to work with before even the students.
“I mean, we started with surveys even to people off the Mid Pacific campus. You know, what are the neighbors’ concerns? Pick up and drop off, when do surrounding schools start and end their school day?” Goff said.
A survey conducted for the student’s opinions on the bell schedule was sent out by the Principal Stephen Ly to highlight the most important issues that need to be addressed first within the current system.
“One of our goals in the whole process of building the proposed schedule was to make sure everybody felt heard, and we actually used that feedback directly to create certain features in the proposed schedule,” Ly said.
The new schedule completely removes the Monday schedule with instead alternating even and odd numbered period schedules. After the pilot, a lot of students find this revision a definitive upgrade to the old system.
An issue that the students had with the old system had to do with the whole idea of the Monday schedule, where the day is packed with all eight of students’ classes with 45 minute sessions.
“Monday schedules are a waste of time. I enjoy them, but we don’t get much time to work” said Sophomore Minato Hirano.
The Monday schedule has been a gripe for many students because it cuts in half the effective amount of time students are able to work for each class, while also fitting all students’ classes into one day can also be mentally exhausting.
One of the major points that the council tackled directly was the High School’s pleas for a longer lunch time. The pilot schedule changed the amount of time for students’ lunch break to nearly an hour long, but now starting at 12:11. This issue of later lunch periods stems from the change of two classes before lunch to three periods.
“Not everyone eats lunch that late, That’s pretty late for me, I think other people would agree.” WorldPierre Gagnon said.
This struggle to get through an extended period of classes in a row is a similar problem reminiscent of the old Monday schedule.
“Ultimately, I think it was hard for the students too because on the older schedule, some of them had 5 classes back to back without any kind of break in between.” Pierre Gagnon said.
Although there have been conflicting views on the new schedule, overall students are happy for the change and appreciate the effort the principal and council are doing. Some embrace the change after the pilot week.
“I think my opinion [on the new schedule] is more positive now. Before I was a bit shaky, but now it seems pretty solid now that we went through it.” Krish said.
“Once the plans are implemented like this new schedule, some people will have this moment of maximum hysteria, there’s gonna be all kinds of issues. But then as time goes by, as the plan beds in, fear decreases, realization that fears were unfounded and overwhelming support for change.” Gagnon.
“The feedback we received from students was incredibly positive. We’re talking about anywhere from, you know, 60 to 75% of students saying that each of those features was good.” Ly said
Now the council is working on the final touches after sending out and receiving the student feedback from the second survey sent out.
“So now what we’re doing is we’re looking at all of the qualitative responses where people had to write in, hey, here are my suggestions. And we’re looking to make one more round of small adjustments… We’re making one last round of changes, and then after that, a decision will be made by the entire senior team,” Ly said.
The community can expect an answer soon according to Mr Ly, saying to “please expect to hear from me before spring break, about whether or not the proposed schedule or some version of the proposed schedule is adopted.”
