High school students in Austin are
in school for 7 hours and 20 minutes 5 days a week, yet the school boards
across the Unites States are discussing the idea of extending school hours for
the 2016-17 school year. However, increasing time in school would not be the
best decision.
With school
starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 4:20 p.m., students who go to public high
school in Austin do not normally get home until around 5:00 p.m.. Having only a
few hours after school to get through traffic, complete homework, eat dinner,
and relax, the students already tend to struggle to complete everything on
time.
If the
school board were to extend school days, they would be able to avoid making up
missed days due to weather or other circumstances. Although not having to make
up these days would be ideal, the majority of students would agree that it
would be worse to have longer school hours.
If students
were required to be at school longer, they would have more time in class, which
could result in better learning. However, if they had to be at school with the
entirety of the student body congregation, there would be fewer opportunities
for one-on-one tutoring that many students need.
The people
who support the extension of school hours and days say that they want the
students to have longer times for learning, but according to USA Today the
executive director of The Coalition for a Traditional School Calendar Tina
Bruno said that ‘If we are really concerned and feel kids need more academic
time, we can better use the time we have.’
I believe
that the public schools would better benefit from keeping the school hours as
they are because the students would have more time outside of school to do
homework, get tutoring if necessary, and participate in extracurricular
activities.
Another
possibility that has been discussed is the removal of a few of the students’
late start days and this would help with the issue of make-up days.
If they were to take away some of
the late starts, they could solve the problem without having to add extra
hours. Although students would prefer their late starts to not be taken from
them, having hours added every school day would be much worse.
There are
solutions to the issue of make-up days that do not require late starts to be
taken from the students.
If the board were to follow through on this
plan to extend school hours and days, the students would spend about 224
additional hours and 4 more days on the school premises according to USA Today.
This means that the students would lose that much time that they could be
getting one-on-one help, doing their assigned homework, and doing things that
every teenager should do like hanging out with friends.
When that option is taken away from
us, we won’t function as well and students’ attitudes toward school will become
more negative than ever.
The
extension of school hours is not necessary and in the end, it would cause more
problems than it would fix.
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