Office hours are a chunk of time that students typically get on Wednesdays for about one class period long (52 minutes) to do class work. There will be a change this year, and the school is moving office hours to the morning. This new time change could impact students’ schedules and be a bad change.
This year at the beginning of the school year, Principal Bach announced that they were considering moving office hours to the morning. This is new to the school and seems to be a change that most students dislike and have many questions about. But many teachers seem to really like this change.
A lot of kids will say they are not awake in the morning, English teacher Sarah Lauer described.
Last year, students had around an hour to do school work. Many students and teachers use this time to get a lot of their work done so they do not have to do it outside of school.
“I feel like it takes away the chance of getting to do the homework I get because office hour days are shorter but it wouldn’t make that much of a difference,” junior Logan Ryan said.
Additionally, office hours in the morning will impact a lot of students’ schedules, especially PSEO and 916 students. Multiple students have only a couple of classes in the morning and they have to leave for Century and/or other colleges.
“PSEO students are off campus and they’re not in our system. So whether the office hours are at the beginning of the day or the end of the day, if they`re not here, it not you know something that we would particularly program around,” Assistant Principal Aaron Drevlow said.
The move to the morning was made because of students who opted out. With the move to the morning, teachers believe it will be harder for students to be able to opt out as easily with most parents having to go to work and not being able to give their kids a ride at a later start time.
“I think that it`s important that students are at school as often as possible, and not just in class but in the building,” Lauer added.
This year, the schedule will stay 1 to 6 so no flip-flopping of periods.
Office hours are 7:40 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. with 40 minute class times and not that much of a change for the 5th hour, at most a 10 minute different Lauer said.
The school administration should keep office hours in the afternoon as it ends up giving more work for students outside of school and creates too many problems for students doing PSEO and 916.
