school hours should be reduced

By Ayden Myers

As someone who’s not the biggest fan of the school schedule, I'm here to say that I believe the hours at Liberty should be reduced. 

For starters, PLC 2-hour late starts should just be no school. The same goes with Fridays in general. Fridays tend to be unproductive, with it being an extra class at the end of the week. In some of my classes, we just play games all class period on Fridays.

Along with this, the school days tend to drag on with nothing to show for them. I’ve noticed that an hour and a half isn’t always fully used. Usually, the first hour of class is utilized for lessons, and assignments, whereas the last 20-30 minutes of class is often just independent work and free time. Therefore, I believe 2-hour late starts would be more effective in student learning.

Often, class time feels poorly used, with long nonadaptive lessons that don’t always stick to students. The fact that classes are an hour and a half long, and work outside of class is still required is outrageous, a lesson needs to be utilized the full time, so work is not required outside of class.

So, why would reducing school hours be necessary? From personal experience, I think all these extra school hours aren’t always productive. The way the Liberty schedule works, is the schedules rotate every day, with a blue, red, and blue-red, schedule, Monday-Thursday. 

However, on Fridays, the schedule is different every week. This more or less means that Fridays tend to just be an extra class in the schedule, meaning lessons tend to be scattered around this time.

So why wouldn’t the school just reduce school hours? According to https://www.orah.com, the article states “With each day that a student is absent, schools potentially lose money depending on the jurisdiction that their school operates within,” (Penteado para 1). 

Keeping the article in mind, I believe the reason the school wouldn’t reduce hours, and enforce more days regardless of student convenience, is due to state funding. Of which, the school gets paid on a scale of how many students show up to school each day.

School hours could be more productive and reduced based on student needs. And the time students are in school, hours should be used to the fullest so students get something out of each lesson.