This year at Manitou Springs High School, District 14 is implementing a dynamic new schedule that is centered on a shorter overall school year and more effective means for student participation and success. This change came about from numerous complaints ranging from the placement of holiday breaks to the very passing period lengths and was designed by the district to combat these unpopular issues. However, almost halfway through the school year, the innovative new look for Manitou is faltering, let alone accomplishing its goals.
Manitou Springs High School has always operated on a four block system. The blocks lasted one hour and twenty minutes and were divided by lunch and a “free” period called primetime. Primetime split first and second block and lunch began after third. The school day started at seven forty and ended at two forty. The actual day-to-day schedule did not breed many complaints among students and parents, but the calendar year, more specifically the placement of finals and holiday breaks, irked countless students, teachers, and staff. With the old schedule, finals were completed after Christmas breaks, often requiring vacation study time and making finals more difficult to complete. In addition, the break would split the very end of the semester, creating lesson problems for teachers and ensuring confusion amongst students that have to endure an abrupt change in classes.
In order to address these scheduling dilemmas, District 14 adopted a new schedule and put it into use at the beginning of this school year. School began later, with the first day pushed back to September 1, and the first semester was cut significantly, allowing it to end before Christmas vacation. Plus, the actual Christmas vacation was lengthened by a week, giving students about three weeks off school. The actual school day however, underwent substantial and somewhat unnecessary changes. Primetime was moved to in between second and third block and the passing periods between first and second block were lengthened to ten minutes. These changes also pushed back lunch and the day ended at three fifteen.
While I somewhat agree with the decision to take finals before the holidays, the changes in the daily schedule have infuriated me and many other students. The longer school day, though criticized for obvious reasons, does not concern me as much as primetime’s new placement, rendering it useless. In past years, primetime served a variety of purposes. Students used it to meet with teachers, complete homework for other classes later in the day, eat breakfast, and socialize. With its new position in the schedule, primetime serves maybe two purposes mentioned above and has grown into an unnecessary school day aspect, offering students the opportunity to socialize and not much else.
Breakfast is often overlooked in the new schedule. I know quite a few students who either don’t have the time or prefer school breakfasts that have been affected by this change. Who wants to eat breakfast at ten in the morning on a school day after waking up at seven? The new schedule makes breakfast unappealing and does not present students with the opportunity of a morning meal until almost halfway through the school day.
Also, primetime has now been shortened, resulting in a number of additional problems for students. Even if a student needed to complete an assignment during primetime, its new allotted time slot makes it near impossible to accomplish any work. Thus, the student majority has decided to utilize primetime, a once effective and popular work or break time, as a socializing hour. While some socializing can be effective for students to break up a three-block long education marathon, I see primetime, and its elimination from the schedule, as an opportunity to strengthen other scheduling areas. That free time that came about from primetime’s absence could be added to lunch or even stripped from the schedule altogether, resulting in an even briefer school day.
As primetime has slipped into disarray and misuse, the district is now implementing ten minute passing periods between first and second block. To me, this five-minute extension to walk from one class to another represents the epitome of time misuse and waste. Five minutes more in the day could be attributed to a variety of other school aspects. It could be added to our already short lunch period or primetime, bolstering its effectiveness and allowing students a bit more freedom to escape from school or meet with friends and teachers or allow them to leave five minutes earlier.
Our current school schedule is floundering because of these unnecessary and somewhat useless weak points. It is detracting from education and is allowing students to turn to more ineffective and unproductive habits during their short breaks from class and does little to address the past problems, instead creating new and more prevalent ones.
