For the last few years, Fridays have been the go-to for half days. However, this year the school in charge people decided to change that. Now instead of the Friday half once a month days we have Monday early releases every other week. The change from Friday to Monday is the most irritating thing about this change. 

Having early releases on Fridays would benefit most if not all of the students at triton. By doing this the school extends students’ weekends. Allowing for more family time, time to decompress from the weekly stress, as well as more time to do homework.  

Having early releases on Mondays is the least beneficial day for an early release. Having to go to school between the weekend and the extra time gained by an early release immediately negates any possible homework extra homework time that could be gained because no teachers assign homework that’s due on Tuesday. However many teachers assign work to be due on Fridays or Monday mornings. 

By being on Friday’s early releases would help with many students’ mental health. After a long week of school, having a day where all your classes are shorter allows you to get out of school nearly 2 hours earlier. The school could even say that they are making the change back to Fridays for students’ mental health. This would make the school seem empathetic towards students as well as make early releases an event to look forward to rather than one most people are indifferent towards. However early releases as they are right now only make Mondays harder for students. Teachers go through half of their normal class knowing that we will finish the rest tomorrow or rather giving extra homework because you have a whole extra hour to finish it. 

Superintendent Bryan Forget explained how the reason the day was changed was that early release days are used for teacher development. and the school committee believed that rather than having teachers participate in this course at the end of the week when they were tired they would benefit from it being at the beginning of the week. However, this argument is weak at best. because it does not take into account how these early releases affect students and parents. Also, this argument leaves an easy counterargument which is why should students have to be in school when they are tired at the end of the week. The teachers are staying the extra time no matter what day of the week it is on while students are not.

The payoff of a few extra hours added to your weekend may be small right now. However, this is something that will affect the rest of the school year. the fact that this could potentially benefit students’ mental health and the overall mental health benefits from this change alone is reason enough to change it.