This school year has brought many changes, whether it be the parking lot changes at the start of the year, the new exemption policy, the athletics grant or the staff changes;the school is constantly evolving. However, the 23-24 school year might bring a change that isn’t so welcome with rumors of the bell schedule changing back from four classes a day to seven. This has many students, and staff members, caught off guard, and while some may believe it’s worth doing, it truly makes very little sense. 

Thinking primarily with the perspective of someone who has always had a block schedule, it’s rather nice to be able to not have to worry about time crunch all the time, extended classes allow for much more personalized pacing, letting students finish assignments within a longer window so they aren’t constantly stressed about how much time they have to complete something. 

It also allows teachers to fully make the class period their own, choosing how they want to fill a full 90 minutes, rather than 45. Block scheduling allows for greater bonds to form between teachers and students, seeing as they’re already spending long periods of time together, they tend to get to know each other a little better.

More classes also means more passing periods, which is dangerous because it creates way more opportunities for people to get up to trouble due to all the traffic. Having only half of the passing periods also just means not having to fight through the main hall so many times throughout the day but that’s beside the point.

Changing the schedule also begins to interfere with the different extracurriculars going on around campus. All of the different teams and programs have become accustomed to much longer periods of time in the day dedicated to what they do. Shortening the classes means these kids and teachers just get less time to devote to what they love. Now while many athletics programs and things of that nature are already double blocked, others in different UIL events or clubs aren’t so lucky, and besides, only caring about sports and athletics is wildly closed minded and backwards to begin with. There are other things that kids do in school that matter like UIL, HOSA or the wildkat media team.

Changing the bell schedule back to seven periods a day will only add stress and chaos to the school day, it’s an unnecessary change to everyone’s days, it only causes more negatives and it means that every single day brings a full seven periods of work into students’ and teachers’ lives. That’s horrible. 

Don’t go through with it, it’s not a great idea.