Since the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, rumors have been circulating the halls of Millard West of a possible schedule change. Now a few months later, principal Dr. Greg Tiemann has officially announced his finalized plan.

Alterations will be made to the schedules of both the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years. These new schedule changes will consist of several new additions such as a ‘flex time’, shorter passing periods, and even a brand new AB schedule. 

“This whole idea came out of our site planning process,” Tiemann said. “We had a research team come help develop a strategic plan, where we took into consideration how our time is structured at Millard West High School and how we can meet the challenges we are facing and adapt to them.”

In order to maximize the time of both students and staff, minimal changes will be made to the 2022-2023 school schedule. This includes taking Quality Time completely out of the schedule, to allow for a Flex Time, which consists of a 30-minute extension to second block. This time will allow students to communicate with teachers for assistance, catch up on schoolwork and collaborate with their peers. 

Another change to the upcoming school year schedule will be the duration of passing periods. The time between classes will be changed from the current eight minutes to six, with hopes that students will spend less time congregating and more time heading to class. With these two new changes being put in place, both have received positive and negative feedback from students and faculty at the school. 

“I’ve seen quite a few schedule changes come and go,” sophomore Ella Shilder said. “However I like this schedule the most out of all of the ones we’ve had before. Having that extra 30 minutes a day to catch up on homework or ask for help from teachers would really benefit my studies and overall productivity at school.”

Aside from the developments of next year’s schedule, an entire reconstruction will be made to the schedule for the following year. Starting at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, the 4×4 block schedule will be removed and replaced with an ABC schedule. With this new ABC schedule, students will have four classes a day Monday and Tuesday and a separate four classes Wednesday and Thursday; however, on Fridays, both schedules will come together and create a school day that consists of eight 45 minute periods. 

“A driving factor for the ABC schedule was the opportunity for students to be in a course from August to May,” Tiemann said. “We want our students to have what they’ve learned fresh in their memory so they are prepared for the following courses that they take. For instance, it would benefit students who are taking their AP exams in May and aren’t being tested over information that they learned last fall.”  

Although this new plan has its positive effects, it has also been seen as a problem for many students.

“I’m personally not for the new ABC schedule because it would negatively affect academy,” sophomore Delaney Lohr said. “Normally during Academy, we would go to our designated school for two blocks, and come back to Millard West with only two classes left; however with the new ABC schedule, we would have an additional four classes a week instead of just two. And because Academy is already very time-consuming, I don’t see how this new schedule could positively impact myself or others.”

Despite the various opinions of students, the adaptations to the future Millard West schedules are inevitable, and as the 2021-2022 school year comes to an end, students and faculty will look toward these changes in the near future.