After years of using the 1-9 schedule system that provides students numerous opportunities to take the classes they desire, the South Orange-Maplewood School District is considering switching to a schedule that would abolish the first period that begins at 7:30, instead having an 8 period day with a later start time, which will produce disaster. For many students, including myself, a 1-9 schedule is crucial in order to get in both the necessary credits and the classes the individual pupil has chosen to pursue during a time in their life where finding one's passion is heavily emphasized. Many students would be affected negatively by a schedule change, not just a select few who would hopefully be able to manage.

• Any student taking both a world language and a music program such as orchestra, chorus, or band, will be left with a completely filled schedule with no space to spare for the required 5 credits for the Practical Arts, and especially not for any electives that would be taken in order to explore their interests. Switching schedules will force students to pick between what they value and what society values, rather than pursue both as this community has fostered for so many years.
• Not only will removing a period prove troublesome for credit fulfillment, but also for the ever increasing class sizes. Especially with the increased incoming class sizes, classrooms that used to be in the low twenties have risen to the point where low thirties is the norm. Removing another period will just create even higher class numbers, forcing students to sacrifice personalized learning or create more classes out of the little space available in the school.
• Switching to this class level will make the already difficult scheduling process that much harder and force specialized classes to no longer be specialized, leaving the program as a whole forced to submit to mediocrity and decay. The hard work of teachers to build up their programs will be lost and wiped away with the loss of time that can be put into improving the program and school's image, just as these programs were beginning to grow and expand at an exponential rate.

In a school district that places just as much emphasis on the arts and creativity as academics, to do away with the current schedule would essentially result in undoing the years of hard work to promote the arts as well as creating and pursuing one's dreams and passions.