For two weeks last March, WA students and faculty experimented with a brand new type of school schedule. Rather than a typical class after class day, school days consisted of a ten minute break after the second class, as well as an extra minute of hallway passing time.

According to WA Principal Jim Antonelli, as of now, there is no room in the school day to implement the new type of schedule.

“There is no opportunity for me to make any changes to the time frame we are in right now. We have something called time on learning and it is 990 minutes we have to be in the classroom […], and we are just making that,” Antonelli said.

According to Antonelli, if he were to take away ten minutes, the school would not be meeting these standards.

Furthermore, Antonelli recently met with WA building representatives to discuss the implementation of the trial schedule.

“There is an opportunity for them to say ‘We’d would like to add a few minutes to the day,'” he said.

However, Antonelli does admit that there are other pieces of negotiation that need to be taken into consideration.

“[We] can’t just make a unilateral decision. It has to be done in a systemic way so that everybody is involved with it,” Antonelli said.

Additionally, Antonelli believes that many WA faculty members enjoyed the new schedule, but those who weren’t in favor of it were mainly concerned over child daycare situations.

“We have such a young faculty. They’ve got a lot of underage kids, elementary age kids […],” he said.

Also, if the trial schedule were to be implemented, there is a question as to where in the day the ten minute break would occur.

During the two week trial, the break occurred right after second block. However, pending on student input, there is a potential it would go somewhere else. Antonelli says that he doesn’t want to be the only one making that decision, as he would like the students to have it where they feel they would like it best.

“We put [the break] into a place that I thought was appropriate, after second block. […] so I would like to do a survey to students saying ‘Where do you guys want it?’,” Antonelli said.

Finally, according to Antonelli, this new schedule has the potential to be implemented by next school year. However, it first needs to be discussed and agreed upon in order to be put in place.

As for one junior, Rachel Cline, she enjoyed the trial schedule, but thinks there are pros and cons to it as well.

“I think it was a good idea to try a different schedule. […] I think students appreciated the thought of administration to come up with a schedule that helps [with stress] and the fast pace of high school,” she said. “If the administration were to replace the current schedule with this new one, I think there would be generally a positive reaction because of the change, but then a negative reaction because of the slightly longer school day.”