Many rumors have been circulating throughout the high school about changes that will affect 2013-2014 school year.

Among the concerns, students feared that AP classes would be eliminated entirely. Well, all you overachievers can breath a sigh of relief; AP classes are here to stay. The rumor grew out of the knowledge that AP classes tend to have a lower enrollment because few people are willing to push themselves in the classroom. With the budget cut the high school will face next year, many people believed that classes with the lowest enrollment would be eliminated. However, for my sake, as well as for many others, AHS will still be offering the challenging courses we love to take.

While the buzz about AP classes was a bunch of bologna, the rumor about eliminating free periods may not be. For many years, junior and seniors have been allowed to have up to three or four free periods a day. Because most upperclassman have enough credits to graduate a year early, their senior year is composed of just one or two required classes and a whole bunch of free time. Principal Dr. Pat Jones wants to fix this problem because he believes upper-classman are missing out on too many opportunities. He wants to make students’ senior years more relevant. He also said many parents are complaining that their child has too much unsupervised free time during the day which leads to many problems inside of school and outside.

Dr. Jones said that schedules composed of two or three core classes and six or seven free periods are ridiculous. He promises that there will be different guidelines for upperclassman next year, but he can’t say exactly what they will be like.

On another topic, Dr. Jones did say that there will be one set bell schedule next year instead of an A and a B day. His reasons behind the change is that having two different schedules makes the week inconsistent and students use the different schedules as an excuse for being tardy. Also, the distance learning classes AHS provides for other schools brings in a high revenue and having two different schedules makes the distance learning classes much more difficult to correlate between schools and, therefore, other schools don’t want to purchase them.

Dr. Jones also mentioned the possibility of going to a seven period day, without an advisory time, because he believes students aren’t getting much out of the forty minutes spent with their advisory teachers every week. With a seven period day school will release at about 3:00 and after school activities will start an hour earlier and be over an hour earlier. For busy students, this hour can be extremely important.

Every student has his or her own opinion about how the school operates. Dr. Jones said that after he takes care of all the small steps, he would love to get students involved in deciding the schedule next year. If you have an opinion and you want it to be heard, here is your chance!