By Kelly Ohriner
Today is Day One of a new five-day schedule at the Upper School.
When a school day is missed due to a religious or national holiday, the schedule picks up afterwards with the next day of the cycle. For example, if Wednesday is a Day Two, and school is closed on Thursday, then Friday will be a Day Three. As a result, no class will be missed.
This schedule is modeled after the Middle Schoolâs six-day rotation.
”Itâs much less disruptive for students when classes are taught in sequence,” Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said.
The idea of the five-day rotation was first suggested 10 years ago, but the faculty turned it down then.
Last year, however, the faculty came to a consensus, decided that a five-day rotation would be a service to students.
The only drawback that Huybrechts sees that the schedule could possibly pose is the difficulty some teachers will face if they teach at both the Middle School and Upper School campuses. These teachers will have to balance the different schedule rotations on the two campuses.
Junior Prefect Christine Kanoff said that the school should have kept the old schedule, in which classes met based on days of the week.
“I prefer the old schedule because it was routine,” Kanoff said. “You knew what was going to happen. The new schedule requires you to check your planner consistently.”
Although Kanoff said that the old schedule was easier, she made it clear that in the new schedule, Days One through Five will generally fall on the same days of the week for long stretches of time. This will only be changed a few times a year, primarily due to three-day weekends.
“Itâll be fine,” Science Department Head Lawrence Axelrod said. “Itâll just take some getting used to.”
Wednesday breaks have also been changed. Whenever there is no Monday break, there is a Wednesday break, Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church said.
Church and other faculty members felt that many Monday breaks were taken up by assemblies and that the students needed a guaranteed break once a week, he said.
“You will have a break once a week no matter what now,” Church said.
