There is always a debate on the start time of schools, the ending times, and how many periods in a day  students should have. There are many factors that contribute to making these decisions such as, teacher planning time, after school sports and activities, and how it impacts students as a whole. Manville has been looking into enforcing a different time frame schedule than it currently has.

Block scheduling is replacing a more traditional schedule of six or seven 40-50 minute daily periods with longer class periods that meet fewer times each day and week. “A school period is a block of time allocated for lessons, classes in school. They typically last between 39 and 60 minutes, with around 3-10 periods per school day.“ The benefits of block scheduling could be that students wouldn’t have to worry about more than the 3 classes that are in the block day as compared to now where students have 7-8 classes per day. This allows for students to stay on top of their work since they will have more time in each block class. 

There are many possible benefits that come with block scheduling. The longer class time could allow for students to accomplish more work, therefore students will potentially have more free time outside of school. Teachers will get fewer students within a semester and being that its less students, they will have less papers to grade and more time to devote towards their students and the curriculum.

Some downfalls about block scheduling is that it can be boring if its “teacher focused,” meaning the students are not doing much interacting with other students nor are they doing the classwork because they are listening to one teacher talk for almost an hour, really 90 minutes. This can cause students to have drowsiness, decrease engagement, lack of focus, and many others. 

Based on Manville’s decision, the high school will be starting to have a 9 period day, including a homeroom, however Manville  is not participating with block scheduling as of now.