This year’s extremely chaotic schedule has deprived students of valuable class time. Teachers continually struggle to keep class lessons consistent and students are forced to deal with the odd daily schedules. By failing to think ahead, the district and administration have lowered the quality of education at Gunn.

This school year’s irregular schedule began with the first week of school. With school beginning on Tuesday instead of a Monday, periods B, G and A were already disadvantaged. Since this happens every year, it should have been easy enough for those periods to catch up.

However, the very next Friday ended up being a minimum day because of Back to School night. The common belief amongst students is that minimum day periods are too short for anything of substance to be taught. Teachers usually end up showing class-related movies on these days, or even worse, try squeezing a 60-minute lecture into a period nearly half that time.

Also, to the delight of students this year, there have been more long weekends than usual. According to instructional supervisors, this means more rest and fun for students. But on the flip side, teachers continually end at different places in lectures for different periods.When resuming a lesson from a previous day, teachers can easily confuse where each class ended. It takes up precious class time to sort out exactly where each class ends, and to make up for this time, the teacher resorts to either cutting the lesson short or cramming a lesson into inadequate periods.

In this rush, valuable information is sure to be lost between classes or assigned as homework. It is unfair to these students, since this material could be included in assignments and tests even if not adequately covered.

In the entire year, a couple of periods do indeed have fewer days than other periods. In general, there have been more E and C periods because of long weekends and different scheduling on Wednesdays. For any Advanced Placement or Honors class in which the set curriculum must be taught at a faster pace, the shortage of a few days hugely impacts the students’ education.

The teacher must make sure that all class sections are caught up before continuing with the lesson and spends fewer class periods teaching new material. This is not a constructive use of students’ time and detracts from the learning experience.

Or instead of free periods, more homework may be assigned to classes that are behind as catch up work. This is unfair to students. This year’s schedule has done nothing to improve the academics of the school and only frustrates and confuses both teachers and students alike.

Understandably, the disorganized schedule is not entirely the administration’s fault. The schedule is set by the school district and the administration must follow it.

This year, however, the administration itself has changed the schedule even more, inadvertently making it harder for teachers to do their job. The PSAT testing day was imposed by the school, as was the seven-period day for the social norms survey. This made schedules especially hard to plan because C period has had at least four extra days. Although the administration has its reasons for putting special schedules on these specific days, it must keep in mind what truly benefits the teachers and students best.

Students’ education must be the highest priority of any school. The whole point of attending school is to learn everything the school has to offer. If the administration does not pull its act together soon, students’ education will continue to suffer.