Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut has a plan to introduce a new schedule. Some key points include:

• 75 Minute Classes
• 3-4 Classes per day
• Merged MS and SS Lunch waves
• Merged MS and SS Athletics
• Moving JS Athletics to the end of the day
• Moving SS Athletics to be 2nd to last
• Adding athletics to Wednesday
• Big common "flex time" block for the entire school
• School starts at 8:30
• Assembly and Advisory are moved to be later in the day

As you can see, this new schedule, while it seems to have lots of fun gimmicks, is going to cause overcrowding of common spaces during free time, longer, more grueling classes, and loss of senior privileges due to the possibility of having a G Block class last instead of Athletics. 

Following conversations with several faculty and staff members, the consensus seems to be that most are against this change. Some points they made include

• Prioritizing J-Schoolers over Middle and Senior Schoolers
• Less time to meet with students one-on-one
• Students having the same, if not more, homework despite less class time per week
• Teachers and students getting antsy towards the 60 minute mark

Some student concerns include

• Teachers giving more homework
• Not having anywhere to be during flex time due to the library and upper heath being full
• Certain teachers not using the extra 20 minutes of class time the way it was intended
• Loss of senior privileges
• High schoolers being left behind while J-Schoolers thrive

Some proposed changes include:

• Swap athletics blocks so that High Schoolers end the day with athletics, that way everyone benefits
• Shortening classes to be 65 minutes
• Create a 3rd lunch wave to ensure everyone can find a table
• Strengthen or maintain Senior privileges
• Find ways to add more seating options in the Library, Thompson, and Heath to allow for everyone to have a comfortable place to relax or study
• Lift the phone ban

While these changes won't make a perfect schedule, it will be much better than it is currently being proposed. We need to hold this school accountable and make them listen to the concerns of students, not just steamroll over us. We are at a critical point at Hopkins where morale is at an all time low, and this new schedule, if kept the same, will severely worsen it.