In this school year, a recent concern developed for Brunswick High School students and instructors—the schedule.
The new connections bell schedule is a new feature for the year of 24-25. Most members of the community are aware that the school had connections everyday for 30 minutes in previous years. This allowed students to make up for missed work, retake tests, receive tutoring from their teachers, go to clubs of their interest, or have a break to relax from their hectic school day. Connections is now only on Wednesdays for every period for 45 minutes—which is half of the class time.
This has resulted in numerous challenges for both staff and students. For example, a student may seek tutoring from a specific teacher, but must also attend a club, which simply does not work. It’s flu season, meaning dozens of students will be absent for days, missing crucial class time and finding it more difficult to catch up than the previous school year. Most high school students participate in extracurricular activities, along with others who work jobs that leave them with little to no time at home to complete their homework—which means a half-day of connections with clubs included once a week will not benefit them much.
Most people of the Brunswick community do not prefer the new schedule.
A biology teacher, Mr. Garrison states his opinion on the matter, “I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Fitting everything in is difficult.”
Teachers haven’t been able to pull their students one on one during connection time. He also said, “There’s a lot of benefit to pulling students. Being in the whole group setting is one of the problems in the first place. Some students won’t work in front of a group. Having a chance to pull a student and put them in a different environment gives options for progress.”
Another staff member expresses that, “In theory it made more sense but in practice it’s a lot harder for every single individual student and staff member. It makes our classes longer and we have less time to recoup on an non-academic time frame. We had that break in the middle of the day and now we don’t. It’s all forced into Wednesday on top of clubs. I think kids need that break […] It’s more difficult for them to get through the work for the day—especially fourth block. Also, it gives kids less opportunities to work on school affiliated things like banners for games or work on stuff for honor societies. They are torn between what clubs to go to and extra class help.”
Multiple students have different perspectives. Calah Kaufman, a sophomore, states, “I don’t have time to do the missing work and it’s being shoved in with my extracurriculars after school.”
Another sophomore, Elijah Price, exclaims, “I don’t like it. You barely get time to prepare for other classes or do homework inside of school and I really need that because I’m not the [most disciplined] student.”
Tymire Speed, sophomore, says, “I hate it, if I’m being real. I don’t get why they changed it, it was working perfectly fine last year.”
On the other hand, Max Foltz, Brunswick sophomore, communicates that, “I personally like it. It gives us more time to do work in all of our classes. While it doesn’t leave a lot of time for after school activities. If you’re not in clubs, it actually gives you a lot of time to catch up on work.”
Another sophomore student believes that, “I like it because it makes Wednesdays really easy.”
A step forward for our Brunswick High School community could be returning back to the original connections schedule and the majority of our community seems to believe this.
A large section of students and staff feel that this addition has no real benefit or place in our school.
On a final note, the school and community urges the administration to recognize the staff and student opinions and reconsider how our school time is being used.