As seniors at HMHS we’ve started to notice a scheduling pattern that we feel needs addressing. Whenever we have a different schedule due to homeroom or an assembly, the student’s lunch time is usually the first thing to be taken off of. While academics are the point of attending school, lunch time is an important time for students to decompress. It allows them to talk with their friends and clear their minds for 45 minutes out of the 342 minutes of their school day.  Taking off of the students’ time is something that doesn’t make us feel valued. To know that our time is the first choice to take off makes us not feel like a priority to the administration. Additionally, most often this occurs on block days. Block days are already very taxing for students. We have four eighty minute classes and our only break is lunch. On block days, lunch is a full hour, but when shortened, it is only forty minutes. Having such a short break after two back to back eighty minute classes is exhausting. Not to mention, they also start our block days earlier by cancelling Dawg Time if they need to fit something in. The only other benefit of block days for the students is the late start, but this is also stripped from us. 

Considering all of this, there are a few ways to approach this issue. One would be to take more time off of classes during the day. Although this may mess up the teacher’s plan for the day, if we took three minutes off each class on an eight period day, that’s twenty-four minutes for homeroom. On a block day, if we took six minutes off each class that would allot twenty-four minutes for a homeroom as well. While this does take off of class time, it is minimal. We also believe that taking off of class time would make students more open to homeroom. Usually, when homeroom takes off of lunch time, many people are bothered and won’t even go to homeroom. This then puts students in a bad mood for the day with less time to decompress over lunch.

Overall, we believe that it is important for the students to receive a break during the school day. If the administration finds it important to include homeroom once a month, they should take off classes to compensate. But, to take away the very limited time we have during the day to chat and de-stress, is just wrong.