Things change with each new school year. Most students have new classes, new teachers; some have new clubs, new friends. But it’s not every school year that there is a drastic change in how the school day and school week is scheduled.
At the end of last school year, McDaniel staff and admin as part of a group called the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) agreed to a new schedule layout that’s unique to every other high school in Portland Public Schools (PPS).
The biggest changes are new times for Flex, a different day for the all-eight schedule, and most notably, a four-minute earlier start time, among other things. It was our school’s decision for most of these changes and not PPS, except for the slightly longer school days, which was a district decision.
So far, some students haven’t been too happy with the new schedule. Senior Andy Tu is someone who has been campaigning against PPS since the middle of the summer because of all these changes.
According to a letter to PPS that Tu posted on Instagram on Aug. 12, “A lot of these changes have overwhelmed many students, especially as they were rapidly coming back to school.”
Here’s a breakdown of each new change and how some students feel about the changes.
Flex
According to Tu and junior Cole Clark, the most talked about and controversial change is the new Flex times. Instead of being at the end of the day (after fourth or eighth period, usually on Wednesdays and Thursdays), it’s now right after first or fifth period in the morning on Thursdays and Fridays.
Now students can sign up for a room during Flex through the StudentVue app, so that teachers can anticipate how many students might come to their class for Flex, but sometimes there is high demand for classes, and they fill up so that teachers can’t help everyone.
“If one class has over 30 students, and I can’t make it, what then? Because I still need to see that teacher,” Tu said.
Luckily, now all teachers are available for Flex both days of a given week. Last year, the day teachers had Flex was based on what subject they taught.
The commons is not an option in the sign-up, but currently students can go there to sit and do work. Clark thinks it should stay that way, so that it can be a place for people who don’t have anywhere else to go. Junior Ryah Pearson thinks the commons is a great place for people to go to chill if they don’t have work they need to do.
“In the commons there are coloring pages, markers, fidget toys, and board games available,” Pearson said. “Maybe you really don’t have any homework or it’s just not your moment to focus on school right now. Go take your mind off the day and chill out or have some fun.”
Tu thinks that having Flex at the end of the day like it was before allows students to know about new content in all their classes for the day so they can choose which class for Flex would best help them.
“For me, I come in with some clarification questions on assignments that I would request assistance from my wonderful teachers for at the end of the day, after we started learning a new topic, subject and lesson,” Tu said.
Clark said that early Flex could be better for students to get help.
“When it’s at the end of the day, not all teachers can be available because they got other things to do,” Clark said.
Another advantage of the earlier Flex is that more teachers are available, especially ones who coach sports after school.
Pearson believes that having Flex early is an improvement in how students can use the time to their academic advantage.
“To me, the idea of Flex was to essentially create a school-wide study hall where students can move about freely consulting with teachers, catching up on missing work, even retaking quizzes. When it was at the end of the day, all students see is a chance to get off early. Now it can really be utilized,” Pearson said.
Tu and Clark agree that flex schedules should definitely be longer.
“Multiple students are still angry that we have only just 40-45 minutes of Flex instead of a full hour,” Tu stated in his letter.
Slightly longer days
Another major schedule change is that the beginning of the school day has been extended by four minutes, meaning class now starts at 8:26 a.m. This is to allow for additional professional development time a day for teachers and staff. All PPS high schools have this earlier start time. However, each high school uses that extra time differently. For example, Grant High School’s Flex time is two minutes longer than ours.
One strange schedule feature common between many PPS schools is that the second period of the day on regular A and B days are 96 minutes long, while every other period is still 92 minutes like last year. The reason for this is to accommodate the weekly announcement video being played during second period on Monday, but this is just a one-day-per-week occurrence. Clark thinks that they should’ve just added one minute to each period on those days.
Lunch time is now four minutes longer on all-eight days and two minutes longer on Flex days, instead of adding any time to classes.
Clark didn’t seem to realize this at first, but still feels it doesn’t have too big of an impact.
“I never even noticed that change,” he said. “I don’t think it will affect a lot of people that much because it’s just a couple more minutes added to lunch.”
Wednesday all-eight days
Another change is that the day which all-eight class periods are held has now been switched from Friday to Wednesday. This decision increases instructional time and effectiveness of that time compared with last year’s schedule, because of the multiple Friday assemblies each year.
Tu argued that having all-eight days now in the middle of the week messes up the flow of the schedule.
“Many students in our school are used to Friday being the unusual skinny day of the week, right before resting on the weekends,” he wrote.
In conclusion, there have been many changes to this year’s class schedule: some big, some small, some exciting and some unsettling. There may be some bright spots, and time will tell whether the changes will become just a normal part of school.
Paige Gilmore contributed reporting
