Every day at Triton High School, when a class ends, students have three minutes to get from point A to point B. Some students are lucky enough to have classes right next to each other, while others have to walk from one side of the school to the other. Students who need to use the bathroom have little time because of the three-minute time limit in the halls. So, because of this, many students have been late because of the small amount of time they have between classes, and it would be beneficial if they were given 2-3 more minutes.
For Junior, Sam France, it’s hard to get from his F-period gym class to his G-period English class in three minutes because of the distance between the gym and the English hallway.
“I have to rush out of gym class every time I have it, so I make sure I’m not late for my next period,” said France. “I have gym during F period and English the period after that. I basically have to try and aim to leave class early so I can make it to English, since the three minutes that I’m given aren’t enough.”
A major roadblock is that Triton already has the minimum number of hours of learning time required by the state. The simple answer to this problem is that Triton could start at 7:30 instead of 7:42. The day would still end at 2:13, and students would be able to have more time before their next class. According to the article, Passing Periods: Three Minutes isn’t enough, Potential Solutions To The Passing Period Crisis by Griffin Knape, of Chatfield High School in Colorado, this could also give students a five-minute grace period, which would allow them more time to communicate with friends, refill water, and ask teachers questions.
However, there is a downside to this schedule, which would be that students who have trouble waking up in the morning are now expected to wake up earlier. A solution could be changing the school start time from 7:42 to around 7:50 am or 8:00 am. This could be beneficial for students with this problem. However, school would then have to end around 2:30 p.m. – 2:40 p.m., which would result in the elementary schools being pushed back with their timeframes as well.
As for Junior Shane Olson, he explains his dissatisfaction with the thought of more school. Still, it would be a worthy sacrifice since this would give students the proper mentality to face the day.
“I think changing the times could be a great idea since I don’t tend to wake up automatically in the morning,” said Olson. “I need at least two or three alarms before I’m actually up. More school would kinda suck, but if you think about it, we’d get more time to sleep, and we’d get more time to process between classes. Which I don’t have a problem with.”
There are pros and cons to changing the school schedule; however, allowing more time between classes would be a great help to students who have trouble getting to class or just need a little time to relax before their next period starts.
