The Advisory period (2:20pm-2:50pm) in the Rush Henrietta Senior High School is used by students to get extra help from teachers during school hours, retake tests that were missed, study to attain better grades, run school clubs and organizations, and for music students to get extra practice, either by sectional practice based on their vocal/instrumental section, or individually in order to improve.

However, as of March, the Senior High School has announced that they will be removing the advisory period in school and lengthening the duration of classes by three minutes, primarily due to students excessively wandering in the hallways during this time. This poses a risk to students that properly utilize the time to improve their grades, practice to get better at their vocal or instrumental abilities, or facilitate clubs and organizations that improve the livelihood of the student body, the Rush-Henriettan community, and/or prepares students for their future careers.

Everyone can agree that the main purpose of school is to become more educated, and to improve on one's academic prowess. However, by removing the Advisory time frame, all students, each of the 1,330+ students will lose opportunities to receive help from their teachers face to face. This will easily lead to grades dropping, as students will have to find an alternative to getting undivided help from their teacher, for instance in study halls, which not everyone has, and the ones that do aren’t guaranteed to have a specific teacher available at their needed time. This will also robs students from personal connections from their teachers, which in many cases inspires students towards their future goals.

At Rush Henrietta, we pride ourselves in our music department. We are a music driven school. Our Symphonic Orchestra, Band, Jazz Band, and many other ensembles have received silver, gold, and even gold with distinction from NYSSMA Majors the past recent years. For the high school specifically, this is due to the fact that we receive daily rehearsals, weekly lessons, and objectively most important, weekly sectionalized practices based on vocal/instrumental sections. However, due to this change of removing the advisory period, all music students alike will lose vital school-mandated rehearsal time. Not only will many musically inclined individuals struggle with their ensemble as a whole, but as a result of the lack of sectionalized practice, all the ensembles will struggle to integrate each portion of their ensemble to work in unison. It will be like solving a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded. Students will also lose the convenience of advisory, as sectionals will most likely take over an actual period, meaning that students will not be able to take some of the classes that they need that aligns with their intended future career goals. There most likely wouldn’t be enough space.

The Senior High School’s 40+ clubs and organizations will also become jeopardized in this new change. A great majority of the clubs at the high school meets during advisory, such as Model UN, Bible Study club, Student Council, Sophomore through Senior class councils, African-American Leadership League, SAT club, First Robotics, Mock Trial Club, and many more. It is no exception at Rush Henrietta Senior High School that students join clubs to foster smaller communities, bring impact to the greater community, and aid in preparing them for the real world, such as DECA for business, HOSA for medical occupations, Robotics for STEM fields, and so much more. This even includes school-ran organizations such as Rush-Henrietta’s Link Crew, which has the purpose of introducing the upcoming sophomore class each year, and helping them adjust well to their new environment; this clearly means that anything pertaining to Link Crew affects the entire current and future population of the high school. As Link Crew uses advisory to plan for upcoming events for the sophomores, this will also lead to a scramble to find another best-suited time to do so, which will be extremely difficult. Everything from the meetings, the placement of the Link Crew members and commissioners, and all planned events such as the annual Sophomore ice cream social and the 100th day of school event happens annually during advisory. The upcoming Sophomores alongside the future Sophomores will likely have a lower quality experience compared to past years due to this change.

It should also be mentioned that from the reaction of the staff, not a single teacher or student was involved in the making of the decision of the administration. It is understandable that some may believe that students may be immature regarding their input on such matter; however, the fact that the administration have not in the very least taken the consideration of a single staff member—many of which have been employed at Rush-Henrietta Senior High School longer than almost all of the administration team—shows that they are not taking the input of the people that have been there seriously, and do not have the students' or the teachers' best interests in mind.

Once again, the administration cites that one of the issues that led to this decision is of individuals leaving their advisory class unprompted, which is the equivalent of walking out during class unprompted. However, if this is the true partial reason that advisory is being discontinued, this shows that instead of dealing with the core issue at hand that deals with these individuals directly, they choose to delete advisory, which will affect everyone. This also shows that the administration team, the head adults of the building, cannot place necessary mandates to handle this issue as authoritative figures. This is equivalent to only placing a bandage to an untreated bullet wound, which may lead to lead poisoning. Yet, this still won't truly solve the issue at hand at all, as individuals that leave their advisory unprompted will simply do it at a different time. Now does this make any sense at all to do this? Why punish the majority of the school population for something that a minuscule fraction of the population does? Why not step up with the authority they claim to have and use it on this issue?

The entire Rush Henrietta Senior High School body would like to emphasize that we respect the administration team and all of their decisions that are meant to improve the high school. However, this decision clearly shows that the high school administration is not considering the full effects of this decision on each and every one of the students and staff here. This decision will become detrimental to students, staff, and eventually, the administration team themselves. We would like to preserve the advisory period, as with it, we can grow academically, socially, mentally, and thus, embody the meaning of Royal Comets.