By: Ashley Weller
With the start of the new school year on August 13th, many changes have been introduced into the school. Two of these are the new phone policy and the new schedule. These changes will take time for students and staff to adjust to.
The phone policy is fairly unchanged. On the other hand, the new schedule is fairly different. The schedule is the most prominent change, as it affects everyone in the school.
The new schedule introduced at the beginning of the school year is to help with state test scores to help keep the Promise Scholarship. The changes in the schedule allows for intervention every day and potentially twice on Thursday. The new schedule introduced four minute passing periods so students can have interventions everyday. The passing period change has been an adjustment as students become accustomed to not always ending on a 5 or 0 for the 8 period days.
Mr. Swanson explained why the schedule is set up in this way, “We rearranged the schedule to try to increase intervention time and to make first hour start at approximately the same time every day.”
Wednesday’s late start will stay the same as it was last year, which may throw off a few students. Mrs. Taliaferro stated, “I haven’t really gotten to experience the new schedule times too much yet, so I don’t think it’s going to make much difference, but we’ll see.”
The switch between Tuesdays and Wednesdays may be difficult at first, but students and staff will adjust over time.
The second biggest change to the school is the new phone policy for middle school. In middle school, a new phone policy has been put into place. Middle schoolers are not allowed to have their phones on them at all during the school day. They have to keep their phones in their lockers until the end of the school day.
This has also been something that students have to adjust to. However the new 7th graders may be used to something similar with the cell phone bucket at North Lawn, while the 8th graders are used to what the high school had last year, being allowed to have their phones during lunch and passing periods.
About the reasons for the new policy, Mr. Swanson stated, “The phone policy was changed for middle school because we were seeing too many discipline issues that involved phones and posting/communicating during school hours. It still happens at the high school level, but not as frequently.” Now both 8th and 7th have to adjust to the new phone policy.
Overall, the new school year has started off with a few new things for students to adjust to. The new phone policy primarily affects middle school. The new schedule will be something to get used to over time.