I am adamantly opposed to this schedule change. The current schedule is part of a formula that has served Uni students extremely well for a number of years. There are a number of other public schools with shorter schedules on the market, of course they aren't producing the same quality high school graduate, so buyer beware. Hopefully the incoming Director will recognize that a shorter schedule would be a huge mistake.

If the classes are shortened, then all students will need to take seven classes to comply with the 300 minute rule. I think it is nice, especially for seniors, to have two free periods.

I am disappointed that this point is not even raised in the survey.

1. At any other high school students would jump at the chance for a shortened school day. That there is 'no student consensus' makes me suspicious of the proposed change.
2. It's also enough for me to note that Mr. Butler and Mr. Sutton are against the proposed changes. They are some of the best teachers I've ever had! Way to go guys!

Recently while traveling I learned that in Austria and Italy at least, students get out as early as 12:30pm staying later only once or twice a week, yet take more classes than an average U.S student by the time they graduate partly because, like in Scotland, students do not have the same schedule every day (e.g. 1st math, 2nd English, 3rd PE....) though they do have the same schedule every week. Therefore they can actually take more classes by having them meet only once a week instead of consuming a whole period every day.

I am not particularly advocating for this type of schedule, it certainly takes much longer to learn your schedule since you have to learn 5 days instead of one! However, if such an approach were taken it might be an interesting change to how Uni operates and might provide opportunities for smaller, more specific courses as well as large lectures with later discussion periods ect.

I think the faculty are doing a good thing to examine the schedule and look for ways to improve our education. In another discussion of building changes, I was struck by Mr. Rayburn's comment that "maintaining the status quo eventually leads to deterioration. Atrophy sets in. It is true of the curriculum. It is true of the building." While I have no problems with our current schedule as it is, I am open to a new schedule if we can see benefits to how we are taught and it provides more opportunities.

Your position seems to shift over and over again, so the real purpose behind shaving 5 minutes off of each class is now so you can sleep. (Per your doctor's instructions.) And not, as you would have us believe earlier, so you could take a UI class or for more extracurriculars (of course thereby losing even more precious sleep).

You don't cites any source for your "studies". Sleep "devprevation" (your spelling) causes difficulty focusing for "long periods of time", which we are to believe is precisely 50 minutes.

Yes, "many factors affect one's ability to focus", including the pretty girl/guy in the front row, a desire to smoke, lack of a proper nutritional breakfast, excess caffeine rushes from downing a mountain dew, need to urinate, and so on. For each of these, even 45 minutes can seem like forever.

Points for honesty are certainly in order now as the real motivation for the change is revealed: less class, more sleep.

You seem to be painting with a broad brush and making sweeping generalizations, just shorten class and everyone will get more sleep. That's simply not true. If you want to present facts and sources, please do so. But also realize your position is not where you started and in each case fails to answer reasonable and grounded criticisms. (Please read earlier posts.)

"self-directed learning outside the classroom is more important than classroom learning with regard to college admissions", if that were true then skip Uni and go to a "normal" school with shorter days. Problem solved.

"If you're the most talented piano player, fastest runner, or wrote a book, you stand out", if that's true and you are one of those, just put your head down on your desk and take a well deserved rest in each class, your academics aren't going to matter anyway.

Thanks for the lesson on college admissions, but you've got zero experience to make that claim. I think you missed my earlier point, so i will try one more time: Sometimes they just need a fast runner, sometimes they need a tuba player, but for the 20 applications for one slot, they can easily eliminate half to two-thirds of them, the last 6 - 8 applicants are identical in terms of being qualified. (They might be very different and have varying accomplishments, but these finalists are in the game.) Often it comes down to matching talents and aspirations of the individual to the needs and expectations of the institution.

In any case, Uni has been extremely successful, more so than many other schools, in admits to excellent schools, why would anyone want to change momma's chocolate chip cookie recipe that she's been using all her life? Nobody makes cookies like mom (or dad).

You've got yours, and I don't see any reason to deprive future seniors from getting theirs.

This whole conversation just seems to smell of sour grapes and it shouldn't. When you got your college admission, there were a half a dozen others (likely just as qualified, and I mean that with all due respect to you, please know that) who were turned down. These are precious slots and the fact that the finalists for that slot were even considered is their reward for all of the years of hard work. The first few cuts of the admission process are easy, that last cuts are extremely painful, it is indeed a lottery.

Reflect on the fact that you have benefited from those that have come before you and from the great tradition that is Uni. I hope you appreciate your Uni education, it is a very precious gift. The current schedule and the success of that schedule was no accident.

"Revisiting Ivy admissions briefly: going to Uni actually hurts admissions prospects into Ivys. If you don't believe me, ask Uni's college counsellor Lisa Micele for yourself. Although it can certainly be said that Uni produces many students that could be successful candidates for admissions to Ivy schools, the expectation for Uni students is higher. It's harder to standout from your classmates when they are all exceptionally talented. In this regard, it's actually easier to gain admissions to Ivys from a "regular" public school. The reason Uni happens to have such a high concentration of top-school admissions is because Uni has such a high concentration of top-quality students."

I believe if you crunch the numbers, the hard numbers, and look at school populations for this area and then look at Uni's numbers, Uni gets way more Ivy admits, significantly more. Jump in anytime Lisa. (I would certainly credit Lisa for her Herculean efforts and success in this regard.)

Next time I see Lisa I will ask her if she encourages those who are serious about the Ivy hunt to go elsewhere.

If you want to help Uni kids, tell them about your Harvard interview. Who did you meet with and where? How long did it last? What do you think helped in the interview? And what do you think you could have done better in the interview? This is obviously a critical part of the process and Uni students tend to fall down here. (I'm pretty sure you didn't tell the interviewer that you couldn't stay focused the last five minutes of every class.)

Here are my thoughts on this matter:

1) Since Uni is not in a district, it is open to students from all over the place. I live about 45 minutes away, and I know I'm not alone in that. I don't get home until around 5 every day, and that's when I don't have play rehearsal or something else after school. Shortening the school day would allow me to have more of a life after school.
2) Was Uni designed to really be college? People keep saying "well, no college has classes that are 45 minutes long." So? Uni isn't college. Maybe it's prep for college, but it's not actual college.
3) Not everyone cares about Ivy Leagues! And employers should care about your abilities and how well you present yourself, not where you went to college, so who even cares? It's where you're happy and where you can find yourself to be successful. Why do we keep going back to the Ivy argument? Seriously why do we care so much? It's just a name. In the end, it's not going to matter that much.
4) High school is a place for learning, sure. But is that its only purpose? Are we only going to high school so we can go to college? High school is also about learning to function in the world, about learning who you are, about finding your interests. Many Uni students are so bogged down with work and a rigorous school day schedule that they end up loading themselves with too many things in a day and don't get a chance to relax. Here at the end of my senior year, I can safely say that the experiences I have valued most from high school took place far away from a classroom. I don't think that shortening class periods by 5 minutes would have changed any of the things I learned, since so much time is wasted anyway. I do, however, think I could have benefited from more time after school - to sleep, to do homework, to socialize.
5) Uni is a so-called lab school with a serious lack of experimentation from what I've seen. This schedule change, to me, seems like a worthwhile experiment. If we don't try it, we'll just be having these arguments again next year.

Anonymous, I don't know who you are, but I can certainly say that comments like yours anger and frustrate me more than I have the words to convey civilly. I don't even know why, since the fact that you're too cowardly to identify yourself indicates that I have no reason to take any stock in what you're saying.

People, put your name on your comment, even if you don't actually know us. Though if that's the case, then some of these comments really need to be rethought anyways. Perhaps naming yourself would encourage you to think harder about what you're saying. We all have our names up there in big blue letters. Why are you so afraid to tell us yours?

Like Lauren said: this proposed schedule change is intended to be an experiment for the beginning of next school year. This is not yet a permanent change. The point of this proposed change is to see what the actual effects are so that we can discuss it with some firsthand experience.

Part of Uni's vision is to "evaluate programs on a regular basis to embrace our successes and to drive new thinking." The administration is right to investigate if schedule changes might be beneficial to the school. While there is merit to the position that if it isn't broken, it shouldn't be fixed, at this point we're so used to doing things one way that we might not see how they could be optimized. If Uni changes the schedule for a semester next year, there are two possible long-term outcomes:
1) The schedule is permanently revised using the experience gained from the semester-long trial, taking into account college admissions and everything else.
2) The schedule is reverted back to the current system, possibly pending further thought.

While there is no independently verifiable objective evidence that changing the class schedule would be beneficial, there is also no evidence that it would be detrimental. On the surface it appears that spending less time with teachers would be detrimental, but it is difficult to predict the result of such a small change. The reduced time with students could force teachers to see what's really worth having in their curriculum, for example.

As important as it is to tread carefully around substantial changes in policy, too much theorizing is a poor of analytical thought in this particular situation. It's acceptable to occasionally try something new - how else will we determine if what we're doing is the best for everyone? The risk from changing the schedule for one semester is apparently considered an acceptable one by those who make their career of teaching.

There is some useful data is the comments above, particularly the verifiable data about teenage sleep and the reasonable thoughts about effect of workload reduction on college admission decisions. This information is more relevant to actual changes of policy than to test-drives. After the new schedule has been implemented for a semester we can look at this again with hindsight: did colleges look askance at us for reducing the workload? Did people actually get more sleep? Did the frequency of meaningful extracurriculars change? These are questions that cannot be answered at the current time.

In the discussion, Isaac has mentioned a primary benefit of this new schedule being the reduction of early dismissals for athletics which disrupt 8th period. He also brings up the issue of block scheduling. As I mentioned above, several countries in Europe have a schedule that gets out earlier than Uni and also has a type of block schedule that varies which classes are on which day, and at which time.

Personally, I see a possible solution to the early dismissal problem that borrows from these other schools. If Uni switched up the schedule so that some classes meet less than 5 times a week or at different times rather than always 8th period (or any other period) and classes were shortened experimentally, it could be that on some days athletes are still dismissed early, but it is not always the same class they are missing.