PPS announced major updates to next year’s schedule for all levels of district schools, many through their start times specifically. For high school students, this means adjusting schedules back four minutes, as the new school year will now start at 8:26 a.m. daily.
The district added 15 minutes of instructional time for elementary and middle schools, and provided middle schools with a seven period day. K-5 schools will start at 8 a.m. and end at 2:30, K-8 schools will start at 8:45 for all students while K-5 students will end at 3:15 p.m., and 6-8 students will end at 3:30 p.m. At middle school, students will now start at 9:15 a.m. and end at 4 p.m.
These changes are meant to add more instructional time, make way for more teacher planning days, and account for unexpected complications as the school year progresses.
PPS has attributed these changes to previous failures this year to keep students in school, with both the teachers strike and a winter storm removing a substantial amount of instructional time.
To provide as much instructional time as possible, the district, with the state’s guidance, adjusted the high school day to add 80-minutes-per-month to the current schedule. By the end of the year, this would account for about two additional school days. While the district accounted for the 11-day deficit from the strike by adding the same amount of days to the calendar, they could not account for the additional week of school missed due to the severe ice storm.
Most students do not believe this change will have major effects on them.
“I know I might have to wake up a little bit earlier. [But] I don’t think it will have drastic changes,” said junior Luca Guite when asked about his adapted morning schedule.
This is a common sentiment among the student body.
“I will probably just have to leave home early,” said junior Jorge Prieto Mendez.
Although for most students these changes pose only a minor annoyance, students who rely on the tight schedules of their parents for transportation may need to completely rethink the way they get to school. Additionally, this change leaves buses with a smaller margin of error to get students across PPS to their school on time.
While these changes may be felt in the long run, in reality this extra minute-per-class will not be significant enough to be noticed by either students or teachers.
“I don’t think any teacher is going to get that much teaching done in a minute. So I don’t think this is a really valuable way to [add time to the school year],” said Guite.
“It seems like a weird way to add a day and a half,” added Steve Nims, world religions teacher.