Beep! There goes the bell.

The time has come once again: the end of class. Students used to have three minutes to travel between classes. Do keep in mind, however, that sentence was written in the past tense.

This is because when the newest and currently active schedule was introduced, passing time, or time between class time was reduced from three minutes down to two minutes.

I think that this is a bit counter intuitive, as hallways were suffering overcrowding issues even before CMS arrived, and now we have 300 plus more kids, and one less minute to switch classes.

Students say that their teachers understand why they are late for class, but as BMS 7th Grader Madeline O’Neil says, “My teachers usually understand why I’m late, but I do have a few encore teachers who do not understand and believe I should still be on time.”

This is the problem. Students are being negatively impacted for something that ultimately is not their fault.

Because we do not need much time to transfer between core classes, two minutes is okay. However, we do need more time to change between encore than core, especially when returning from PE, when you have to change clothes before you can leave for class, and shortened transfer time can be tough for students to arrive on time.

A lot of students agree that they are arriving late. Not only that, but this shortened time can cause increases in running in halls. Running in halls can start when someone is not only late, but far from where they need to be, they start to run, which can cause them to trip, or run into people.

With all this you can see that two minutes to change classes is way too short, and should be reversed upon the next revision of the schedule.