Dear School Administration:

We address you as a general body of students with a world of new responsibilities during this pandemic, and an obligation to figure out how to make it work nearly wholly on our own.  With an education streamlined by submission interfaces such as Google Classroom, AP Classroom, and Albert.io, students have ample weight placed on their shoulders already to keep up with multiple classes and assignments in various locations. Though teachers are also designated to self-educate about the platforms they use, their use should be the most effective and just possible for their students in the interest of reducing stress for all parties. Deadlines define this dynamic, as they determine time allotted to students to meet the expectations placed on them. However— we feel that this standard is not the same for teachers, since a vast majority of assignments are set to close between midnight and the beginning of school. These deadlines are unrealistic, inconvenient, and a hinderance to the plausibility of the virtual educational experience. We demand a mandate be incorporated requiring that teachers set deadlines to 7:30 AM on the due date of the assignment or later — ideally, 1:18 PM. 

Our proposed reasons for doing so are abundant. They include and are not limited to:

- Teachers do not grade assignments between the hours of 12:00 AM and 7:30 AM on the day they are due.
- Deadlines in any other circumstances, including current hybrid-model, in-person days, would be at class time on the due date, and not 11:59 PM the night before. 
- 11:59 PM to 7:30 AM deadlines provide unnecessary stress to rush work and finish before time runs out, reducing quality of work submitted.
- Many students have extracurricular responsibilities alongside others throughout the day, and are only able to begin their homework assignments late at night.
- Several students operate and perform better with a preference to go to bed earlier and do homework before school on a due date instead of before 11:59 PM of the previous day.
- Given our collective circumstances and being in the middle of a pandemic, we beg the authority that oversees the most dominant sector of our lives, academia, allow such flexibility for students in favor of their mental health. This is a change with immediate benefit and no expense!
- In the same respect, mandating that deadlines are set to the beginning or end of class sessions would improve grades by reducing students’ late penalties incurred on assignments.
- This would provide additional time to circumvent and solve any issues concerning online connection or maintenance, which many students face daily. 
- An 11:59 PM deadline is only reasonable for classes that don’t have a set meeting time, which, in our school’s virtual and hybrid models, is not applicable. 
- Certain interfaces, such as AP Classroom, lock students out of assignments after the deadline has passed, rendering them unable to make up missed work and get a better grade than having nothing submitted at all.
- A student might have a study hall before a class in which an assignment is due, and in this case, a deadline at the time that their class begins would be the most accommodating as they would be able to use the time as it was intentioned: to complete work due in the future.

We thank you for the hard work you do each day and commend the incredible effort of every single member of our staff to make this year work as smoothly as possible. It is our greatest hope that we can also be heard and given this simple facet of assistance in our ever-changing lives.

Best,

Walt Whitman High School, Student Body