The clock ticks 8:15 and students are filing into their chairs. 50-minute periods back-to-back along with break, lunch, and passing periods add up to release for middle school students at 2:35 and high school students at 3:31.

The decision of switching the 1-7 schedule from Monday to Friday was well-thought-out by the bell committee for the 2018-2019 school year, English teacher Kristin Moore said.

Students would have block schedule during Monday through Thursday, then on Friday there would be the 1-7 schedule.

“You could have all of your classes and recap what learning and lessons took place during the week,” Moore said. “It was a way to touch base with your teacher again at the end of the week to kind of go over the week’s work.”

However, there were benefits to having the classes on Mondays as well, for there was the ability to preview before the block periods.

“So last year when we had Mondays as the all periods, it was kind of good to set up the week,” science teacher Loren Schwinge said. “So I could see all of my classes and kind of let them know what they’d be expecting later on.”

Another benefit is spreading out the studying time across the week instead of having all tests and quizzes on one day.

“I usually have 3 or 4 [quizzes/tests on Friday],” eighth grader Dustin Phan said. “I’d rather have [all classes] be on Monday, so on Monday we could have all the classes and then we could have some tests on Thursday and some tests on Friday to lessen the load.”

Even though there were pros and cons to the decision of switching the classes from Mondays to Fridays, the bell committee held students’ best interests in mind as they decided.

“The other reason is that we felt that when all of the classes were on Monday, we felt like too many teachers were assigning homework so that students had like 6 or 7 assignments due on a Monday,” Moore said. “We felt like that was hard, because part of what we were trying to do is make students’ weekends a little bit more open. We realize that, yes, students will have to do some homework over the weekends, but we want that time to be mostly set aside for time with family, or time for extracurricular activities or just to rest and relax.”