This year’s schedule change has a lot of new opinions. A lot of students want the late ten a.m., start back. Or the early leave at three p.m. I agree with both, but that time schedule barely left time for learning. Although this schedule barely leaves any time for events.  Opinions can go around and round for hours with no correct answer, but we can definitely write them down to get a better train of thought out there.

This year’s schedule is quite complicated. School starts at eight fifty-five a.m. and ends at three fifty-five p.m. On Thursday’s school starts at nine forty a.m. and ends at three fifty-five p.m.

Thursdays and Wednesdays, we don’t attend all our classes. It is split by every other period. Wednesdays we go to periods first, third, fifth, and seventh. On Thursdays we go to advisory, and the remaining periods.

The late starts last year were nice in the mornings. Although we had short days with barely any time for all our classes and didn’t get much teaching/learning done. Last year in semester one there were two hour long periods, this left kids unfocused, aching, upset, tired, hungry, and overall not getting any information. Myself and many others disagree with that time schedule. I say as long as we do not bring that back everyone will be happy.

Leaving at four is interrupting a lot of students’ jobs, events, homework time, and non-school related sports. Starting at nine in the morning and leaving at 4 p.m. is 7 hours of school. This is the average school time, but leaving at three thirty p.m.  would barely make a difference in our class time. We could always start at eight thirty in the morning. I can agree that early morning starts are awful, but this could help a lot of people to leave time for activity after school. Like myself.

This year’s schedule isn’t completely new. This comes as a surprise to a lot of people. It has been broken down to certain parts of Hellgate , sentinel , and big sky’s schedule to combine it into one. For instance, on Thursdays we have homeroom as a first period, this comes from Hellgate. Hellgate high school students aren’t required to go to their homeroom first period like the other two high schools involved. A lot of kids find it unfair that Sentinel and Big Sky students must attend advisory.  Many think it should be optional to come that morning and if you have missing work then you can show up and treat it like a zero period. I agree with these opinions. I often don’t have missing work or things I need to be studying. It can be pointless for me to sit in the classroom with nothing to do.

Overall, I am still adjusting to the new schedule. There are definitely things I want to change, but I am happy with it. Earlier leave and optional advisories would be wonderful. I am just thankful for no more two hour classes! Looking forward to my second year of high school at Big Sky! Let’s have a good start to the year!