Opinions expressed in editorials on The Central Trend are the view of the individual writer and are not the opinion of the entire staff of The Central Trend or the Forest Hills Central staff or administration.

COVID-19, while mostly awful, taught me just how short school should be. All the busy school work that used to take up seven hours of my day was finished in just an hour or two. 

Coming back into the school environment has made me realize that a full day of being in school isn’t usually necessary. 

During online school, I would get all of my work at once for class, and I would be done by ten in the morning. Now I finish some of my assignments with nearly thirty minutes of class left over. The only thing stopping me from leaving school early and having a lot of my day left is school rules and passing periods. 

If a student understands the subjects and has a good grade, there should be no reason to keep them sitting in a classroom. Seven hours is a long time, especially if they have extracurricular activities or jobs they have to go to afterward. Often, students go home and sit for ten or twenty minutes, then leave for work and get home late, only to have to go right to bed for a good night’s sleep. 

Yes, school is essential, and there are many classes where the work and learning go from bell to bell for the entire hour. But there is no reason to keep students who don’t benefit from the extra five hours in class. It is no secret that sleep is beneficial to everyone, so why not allow students to sleep with the spare time they have if they’re doing everything you ask. 

I know writing this won’t make a change in any way. The district and state wouldn’t listen even if I had the whole school on board. There need to be many changes within the schedule. Every kid has to base their entire plan off of this incredibly flawed schedule. We should allow students with specific grades in a class or teacher-picked students to be authorized to leave school early. Again, there is always so much going on after school for most kids. 

While at younger ages this is necessary regarding rides and parents working throughout the day, some high schoolers who already have a lot on their plate can drive themselves. 

I don’t blame administrators for this necessarily either. I know they’re required to follow specific laws, but we could always try to implement a new system. AP Computer Science is a hybrid class where students are authorized to leave on a particular day of the week and are given the assignment for that day immediately if they have a B or higher. I think we could truly benefit from a hybrid system like this for most of our classes.