Debating the new block schedule

By Eden Conner

In sophomore year, students are asked to build a three-year plan for the classes they will take during their time at the school. Faced with a spreadsheet and suggestions from too many people about what classes they should take, the empty boxes to fill with classes feel a lot less like opportunity and more like obstacles. Layers of complexity add to a growing pile of decisions: athletics, after-school activities, more than four hours of sleep a night. The schedule change for the 2023-2024 school year of having a rotating last block rather than the same block seven every day represents a larger problem at the school of the pressure for students to fill their schedules as a measure of their academic success, since the primary reason behind the change is student burnout by the end of the day.

The school announced that the block schedule for the 20232024 school year will have an alternating end period, meaning that block seven will no longer be the standing 1:45 p.m. to 3 p.m. class as it has been since the implementation of the block schedule in 2020. The stationery seventh block was created to ensure athletes missed less school time and for teachers traveling from the middle school to the upper school to teach specialized classes. The goal of the change was to help with end of day burnout in the same class over the course of the year. Many teachers disliked teaching seventh period classes because they dealt with less engagement.

The greatest problem created by this change exists for students who play sports like baseball and softball who have long commutes to their practice fields and limited time for practice as their facilities don’t have field lights. With the new block schedule, the programs have requested putting in field lights before next season to accommodate for later practices, which will ultimately lead to extremely late end times. Since the practices can be as long as four hours, ending the day at three and having to travel in heavier traffic means some nights