As students returned back to school, they were welcomed with a completely new schedule. 

There are 20 mods in a day; each mod is either an A course or a B course. A courses meet four times a week in increments of 63, 63, 63 and 42 minutes (231 total minutes). B course meet three times a week in increments of 84, 84 and 63 minutes (231 total minutes). 

Independent Learning Time, the new addition to every student’s schedule, is designed for students to work on homework, meet with teachers and catch up on coursework they might be behind on during the school. 

With the new schedule, students have had mixed feelings. Through a recent @FSJournalism Instagram poll, students told us how they felt about the new schedule. Out of 128 students, 69 said they liked the new schedule and 59 said they did not.

One of the 69 students who said they liked the new schedule was senior Avery Qualseth. 

“I think it will end up being really nice having work time built in during the school day,” Qualseth said. 

However, senior Mary Green is one of the 59 surveyed students who prefers the old schedule. 

“I tried for days to figure out a way to get a seventh hour class in my schedule, but was unable to rearrange anything due to the weird way they would have overlapped,” Green said. “Aside from that, there is a disproportionate amount of ILT to classes on different days in my schedule.”

With a new schedule comes a new way of taking attendance. Administrators now scan a badge for each student. Senior Stella Grove finds that it is time consuming. 

“I’m not sure keeping all the ILT students in one place and having them scan in and out will work,” Grove said. “I had an ILT today and it took almost the whole time just for one of the administrators to scan everybody in.”

Science teacher Daniel Hissong, is hopeful that the new schedule will help incoming students. 

“With Freshmen, the biggest struggles they have are organization and time management,” Hissong said. “If we can get them to buy into the Flex mod schedule; that will help teach them those skills at an earlier age and hopefully avoid any issues with not using the time correctly and getting work done.”

Change is never easy; however, most students and staff are optimistic that this change will academically benefit students in years to come.