Wednesday now early release due to tardies

Isabel Paez, Reporter

Chelsia Mathew

As we begin our second semester, we are met with the changes of the Wednesday schedule. For the first semester, Wednesday classes started later. This semester Wednesday classes will start at the same time as any other day of the week but release earlier. Late Start Wednesday was created as a means to give teachers time to catch up on their work and be able to plan their days. However, Wednesdays ended up becoming the day that a sharp increase of tardy students would occur.

“I think late start Wednesday made more kids tardy because it interrupted our normal routines for school and also hindered many parents who had to get their children to school before they had to be at work.” North High senior Brenna Rodriguez said about why she thought Wednesday had more tardy students.

Another North High senior Maleah Evans posits another theory why more students were late to school on Wednesdays.

“I think it led to tardy kids because they thought they had more time to sleep in and ended up oversleeping,” they said.

To remedy this, North has implemented early release Wednesday. Overall, early release Wednesday has had a positive reaction from students.

“I believe early release Wednesday will be more beneficial because the start time will be the same all week long so there’s no easily forgotten changes.” Rodriguez said.

Evans added that they,” love the idea of it”. Believing that “it’ll give kids more time in the afternoon to do homework and hang out with friends.”

Regardless of the reaction, it will be a difficult change to accustom.

“I think it’ll be harder the first couple of times with kids getting used to the switch, then it’ll become easier. The early release gives less opportunity for kids to be late and it might give them more incentive to show up Wednesday if they’re able to leave early,” Evans said.

Yet, there is an issue that early release creates, specifically for students who participate in sports and who seek tutors help in the cafeteria after school on Wednesdays. Classes release early, however, practice for sports still start at the same time and as does tutoring. This means that for kids who don’t have their own car or live too far away from North to travel home and back, there is forty minutes where they are essentially ‘stuck’ at school.

The question remains on if early release will be better than late start and if North will continue this schedule next school year.