Westerville South rang in the new year and semester with two new early release schedules. One schedule was created for a one hour early release. While the other schedule was made for half an hour early releases. 

According to the Westerville South High School’s principal Mike Hinze’s announcement on schoology, this change is in order to maximize class time. 

The announcement also reported that Westerville City Schools transportation may be able to do 30 minute early releases many of the days South cannot operate on a normal schedule.  Some days may still require the full one hour. So, in addition to a slightly modified one hour early release schedule, South may also use a 30 minute early release schedule, when possible. 

With the use of these new schedules, some students are struggling with…when classes should end or even the next period begin. “It was definitely pretty confusing… All the students are playing a guessing game; all the teachers are playing a guessing game; no one really knows what’s going on,” senior Will Pyle said. 

While also confusing, these frequent early releases are beginning to pose a disturbance to some students and teachers schedules. “It makes it hard to get all my work done and then teachers assign it as homework. The workload becomes more for me after school instead of in school,” Junior Madinah Binraymond said. 

Another issue is that the schedule for returning career center students does not fit with the early release schedules. 

“When we have a one hour early release, my 7th period Algebra 2 class has returning career center students and some of them have to eat lunch. They will go ahead and get their lunch and bring it to class. They miss about half of the class while they are eating lunch here in class,” math teacher Tim Bates said.  “Other students that eat in the cafeteria miss everything but ten or fifteen minutes of the class. They are losing instruction time because the career schools schedules and our schedule do not match up,” he added.

On Jan.19 an additional schedule was introduced so that returning students next school year could schedule their classes. According to Hinze’s schoology announcement this was called the extended homeroom schedule. 

“It got even more confusing with the extended advisory schedule. I have lunch out so each day I have to figure out which schedule to use, now I have four options,” senior Megan Hamlin said. 

Most days that South has early release, the schedule on powerschool does not match up with the bell schedule. 

Often students rely on Powerschool to confirm when their class begins or ends. Therefore, students arrive during another class or attempt to leave before class has officially ended.

“I looked at powerschool and it was wrong, so my teacher had me sit down,” Junior Milan Gautam said. 

The consistent message seems to be that a more consistent schedule is needed.