There have already been many changes in place this year. Many of these changes have been very welcome to Platte County, while some of the other changes have been a bit less well received.

The removal of the block schedule has been difficult for many. Block days were two days within the school week, typically Wednesday and Thursday, that divided the traditional seven-hour schedule into even and odd schedules, and featured much longer class periods. Students now have less time in class for work than they used to, as homework has become a necessity. Even for teachers, they have now been forced to shorten their curriculum. 

One student has a plan to fix many of the issues associated with this new shortened schedule. However, for him, the solution does not lie in reinstating block days. It instead lies somewhere beyond any traditional high school schedule. 

“I am the first [but hopefully not only] student who will be participating in a discussion on the optimal approach to the school day,” senior Ethan Lee said. “I originally did research on start times as an independent project to convince the administration to push back the time we started school.” 

Lee has been working with the school district to not only improve the shortened school schedule, but also the school day in general. 

“While that did not necessarily pan out [how I planned],” Lee said. “It gave me enough knowledge to join the [district calendar] committee.” 

His informed grasp of the school schedule allowed him to bring a unique student-led perspective to the committee. 

 “[My research] gave me enough knowledge to be able to join the committee, as I was recently invited by Dr. Duff,” Lee said. “During our first meeting we looked at Dr. Duff and other staff’s research and preparation, so we haven’t begun discussing different approaches yet.”

Lee has been closely working with Dr. Aaron Duff, head of secondary education at the District Education Center, to begin working on the schedule. 

“Mr. Lee is serving on a committee to help study the viability of a wide variety of school schedules,” Dr. Duff said via email. “Our current committee includes teachers, building-level admin, and district-level admin.”

The eventual goal of this committee is to transition from a seven-period schedule to a schedule that manages to expand students’ meaningful experiences and post-secondary preparation by the 2027-2028 school year. Lee’s new schedule proposal is also not like block days at all, but will be more college-esque in nature. 

“I personally think [this schedule is the] most flexible for the teachers, since classes like Foods and the Science Labs [want the block] time, they should have longer class periods, but classes like English and Spanish […] wouldn’t need to be super long.”

Lee’s work with Dr. Duff and his committee is still fairly early along, but he hopes that through student-led collaboration with the school’s administration, such as his own, the district will not only be able to make necessary changes to the school day but will also invoke even more changes at Platte County.