The Board of Education is looking to change the schedule for the school day to smart scheduling for 2016-2017. This would mean that instead of having the normal eight periods that are forty-two minutes, there would now be about 6 periods in the day for about fifty-five minutes. This also means that you would not have all of your classes in the same day you would still have eight periods worth of classes but you would go to all of them over the course of about two days. This also means that all kids must have a lunch. Along with our school and many other schools have already or are looking at enacting some type of smart scheduling to their schedules and many have different reactions such as Rancocas Valley and the Cherry Hill School District.

In Rancocas Valley Regional High School they have the smart scheduling and it is about the same that it would be here, they have the longer periods and the different classes on different days. But the only difference is that they have each of their classes for half of a semester, so that means they might have English, math and science for one half and then gym, elective and history for the  other half of the year.

Nicole Torres, a sophomore at Rancocas Valley said, “I think this scheduling helps the students and especially me. Instead of having eight classes to worry about for homework, I now only have to worry about four or five. The day also seems to go faster and since the periods are longer teachers give you more activities and breaks during the period.”

Timothy Locke, a History teacher at Cherry Hill East High School who’s schedule is a rotating schedule of day one to six and each day is a different combinations of four classes for either eighty or fifty-two minutes, shares his opinion from a teacher’s point of view.

“There are definitely some benefits to this scheduling, the fact you get more time with your students but there are also definitely some downsides. I don’t get to see the same class everyday so sometimes students forget about homework or they might not be able to recall what they learned the last time they were in this class as well. So that also makes it harder to test,” he says.

There are many pros to this new scheduling. Students now get to have a lunch no matter what and do not feel the need to drop a lunch just to take an extra class. Students also get the chance to meet with their clubs during the day instead of after school which may be a challenge for some. You get longer class time so there is a larger chance that students get to learn more in this time than they did before. But there are other cons to the new scheduling, students won’t see the same set of classes everyday like they are used to. This is also a very big change to students who have been having a structured eight or nine periods a day, each around forty minutes long since they were in sixth grade. There should be a way for students to adapt to this new schedule and to learn more about it before it is enforced.