Change is a good thing …right?

The Lawrence School District will be facing some drastic changes over the next year. There are many questions that students and parents have. Like why is this occurring? What is the benefit of this? What is the harm in all this? How is this going to play out? Is it worth it? Lawrence High School Principal Dr. Jennifer Lagnado answered many of these questions for us.

Districts like Lawrence need to make cuts due to the financial constraints of their budgets, including the state mandated 2 percent tax cap levy. Dr. Lagnado said the following about the possible harm and benefits of the eight period school day: “Well I’ve noticed there’s been much analysis of our schedule and we’ve noticed that number of students had study halls and free periods. So the eight period day will really help to make our schedules more efficient and it would also give us more time per period so we could have longer instructional periods and that could be very beneficial to us too, because the more time spent in the classroom results in higher scores. Each period will be about six minutes long. Over the four years, students would probably not be able to take two electives out of their schedules all four years. There’d be two electives less. And that’s pretty much it — that’s one of the potential negatives we’ll be facing.”

So hey it is not as bad as it seems right? Wrong. Many students, parents, and staff are upset about this. There was a rumor going on that four science teachers have been laid off but apparently they have not been laid off, just given a “notice” that informs them of the potential risk; so they can look for other jobs. High school junior Sergio Caceres, circulated a petition against this eight period school day which had 277 signatures and presented it to the Board of Education. We were told that no AP courses will be cut, but let’s keep in mind that not all of the high school student body is in the AP program. So for the majority of the students, taking away electives is taking away opportunities to discover themselves.

For students; grade school is just the beginning of a future and discovery of a perfect career. But for these teachers, this is it. This is the future and career they prepared for. The four science teachers that have been “notified,” they have to look for other jobs and finding good jobs is not an easy task. These people have families to support so basically four families have been given this notice, not just four people.

Students as well as teachers are very upset about this change. On the district’s website Superintendent Gary Schall said in one of his addresses to the community, “necessity is the mother of invention.” So in this case the necessity is to remove some people because keeping them would result in a high opportunity cost. But is the potential risk of any opportunity cost worth taking away from others? You decide. But whether we like it or not, this change will occur.