Our bell schedule that we’ve gotten used to is going to change soon. A mandate from the superintendent’s office forced all four high schools in the district to come up with one daily bell schedule. The new bell schedule will be implemented in the 2021-2022 school year, but all four schools are in the process of creating the new schedule.
As of now, the process is in its early beginnings. There have only been two meetings, where members of a bell schedule committee from each school come together to discuss the bell schedule, and a number of conversations between teachers have also been held. PCH history teacher Skylar Kim is one of the teachers on the bell schedule committee, and she talked about what she would want to prioritize in the new schedule.
“Preserving interactions with students, like Ac Lab, would be really important because that is the way we get to work with students one on one,” Kim said.
Other than Ac Lab, nothing else has been prioritized according to assistant principal Chris Dallas.
“Teachers are not prioritizing anything yet because we don’t know what the schedule is going to be,” Dallas said.
Everything on our current bell schedule is at risk, including Ac Lab. Many teachers also talked about preserving Ac Lab or some form of it at the last Professional Development meeting in October. Students such as junior Eric Chin also would like to have Ac Lab.
“I would hate if Ac Lab was taken away because I do most of my work in Ac Lab,” Chin said.
Parkway Central isn’t the only school with an Ac Lab. Both Parkway North and Parkway South have Ac Lab, but Parkway West does not. Parkway South only operates on block days known as Red and Blue days, with Ac Lab being on their Blue days. PSH student Riley Lovelace gave her opinion on their current bell schedule.
“I like that we have four classes a day because it gives us more to be able to get homework done since we have two days to do it instead of one day. It’s also good who have work and after school activities,” Lovelace said.