Old Schedule vs. New Schedule

Can you imagine if suddenly one year, school days got longer? Well, you don’t have to imagine–we are living it. At the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, Harrison High School had started a brand new bell schedule, and all of a sudden, our time at school is 10 minute longer. This has affected students and staff in both a positive and negative way. School now ends ten minutes earlier than previous years, but starts a whole 20 minutes earlier too! What is the reason for this time change?

The first bell now rings at 7:45, a whole 20 minutes earlier than last year. This means students need to wake up 20 minutes earlier, leave their home 20 minutes earlier, get to school 20 minutes earlier, and go to class 20 minutes earlier. Everyone had to push their usual schedules back and students are feeling the impact.

When asked asked if they noticed a change in their sleep schedule, 56.3% of students claimed they were getting less sleep this year compared to last. This can negatively effect young minds and bodies. An article published by the American Psychological Association stated, “Sleep is a key ingredient in physical and mental health, and most adolescents aren’t getting enough.” When students get home from activities or work, they are likely getting to bed at around the same time as last year, only now they are waking up much earlier. For more information about how much sleep people get, you can check out this article also published by the Harrison Paw Print!

In addition to the new start time, our new schedule added a 20-minute-long, daily advisory bell to every students schedule. The reaction on this addition is split though. Some students see this new bell as completely useless, others like the short study hall. When asked 47.1% of students said they found the new advisory bell useless, while only 5.9% found it useful. When asked if students would change anything about the new schedule, an anonymous Freshman said they wished the advisory bell to was 30 minutes instead of 20.

This change was necessary though, to accommodate teachers that work both here and at the Junior School. The new schedule simplified the transition between the Junior School and the High School.

Choir and Acapella teacher Ryan Hutcherson was asked if it would be more or less difficult for him to leave at 9:29, which is when he leaves during the day this year, or at 9:47, which would be when he would have left on our old schedule. His response was, “It would be easier to leave later, rather than earlier.”, Which means he would prefer the old schedule. When an anonymous sophomore was asked their thoughts, they claimed the dismissal time being so close to the Junior School dismissal time causes an absurd amount of traffic. With the Junior School’s dismissal time being at 2:30 and the High School dismissal time now being 2:45, there is only 15 minutes for the junior schoolers to get off campus before the highschoolers are rushing out.

The new schedule was created to simplify shared teachers experiences, but I am not sure its function aligns with its intent. After surveying students and teachers it seems a collective solution would be to only have advisory once or twice a week. Overall, majority of the school would rather return to the previous schedule rather than the new schedule.