Corral Staff Editorial
Three weeks ago, the district got its first taste of this year’s new professional learning model. While teachers prepared themselves through early morning staff meetings, students reset their alarm clocks and enjoyed an additional two hours of sleep before school began.
Mixed emotions floated around the school as to whether or not the change was more preferable than the early dismissals from years past. There were no major problems with the day itself. Traffic did not cause any big issues in transportation. Students made an effortless adjustment to the abnormal bell schedule. In spite of this, one detrimental mistake did occur in planning for the delayed start day, failure to take into consideration the rest of the school’s calendar.
The late start interfered with what is arguably one of the school’s most anticipated weeks: Homecoming Week. Although the week was already askew due to no school on Labor Day, scheduling the date on that Wednesday was even less beneficial for students.
While most kids look forward to Friday night’s football game and the festivities of Saturday’s dance, there is significantly less time for them to get homework done. In such a case, Academic Lab becomes a crucial asset of the week, allowing teens to get a jump start on assignments that would otherwise have to be completed over the weekend. However, due to the delayed start and a modified schedule on the day of the pep rally, students were never given a study hall period that week and were rushed to finish school work on the following Sunday.
Sophomores were short an additional Ac Lab due to the following Tuesday’s PLAN Test. For those 10th-graders busy with Homecoming activities, having an entire week without planned study time made it extremely difficult to get work done.
The district drew up the plan for Late Starts before the end of the last school year. With ample time to examine possible scheduling conflicts, the school should have made an effort to avoid implementing the Late Start when it would cause possible academic conflicts for its students.
No other high school in the community had its Homecoming that week, so had proper scheduling occurred, Homecoming could have been moved to a different week.
With seven more delayed starts scheduled for the remainder of the school year, we are hoping no more scheduling issues will arise that interfere with student study time. In the meantime, it would be in the school’s best interest to begin planning next year’s activities around the district Late Start days.
The district put in a grueling amount of time to make sure the new professional development method would coincide with the academic standards needed for its students and that they would be successful. In most aspects, the first one was. But the school needs to be willing to take a little bit of extra time to make sure the dates do not interfere with events being held at its schools to ensure students’ academic success.
