The extended school day was an absolute disaster. In theory, a longer day seemed like a wonderful idea. It should have allowed the school to implement programs to benefit the students; however, at Grady, the added time was completely ineffective and totally wasted for the short time it was implemented. Instead of being added in the afternoon - as had been the leading idea at the end of the previous school year, Grady moved the first bell to 7:45 am, an hour earlier than last year. Grady was the only Atlanta Public High School to start this early.
The original design was to add class time to the day as additional time to each class or perhaps an additional class period. The proposition, however, was to use the added time for SAT, GGT tutorial, as well as for classes to improve study skills for the freshman.
Yet these classes did not become available until the third week of school, when the new and extremely confusing scheduling system went into effect. Until this schedule came into operation, students received extra time in homeroom - a time that is generally a waste anyway - and an extra fifteen minutes of lunch - probably the one bonus that students received from the new schedule that is missed now.
This new system involved a complex two week rotation of classes in which one class every other day became an hour and a half long. The rotation involved some logic that escaped most of those students who actually heard about it. This was a very small number, since no announcement was made to them save for a single copy of the schedule that may or may not have been posted in their homeroom. Very few of the teachers seemed to understand the schedule, either. Thus, the usual channels of information for students were completely closed off by ignorance and misinformation.
Besides the misappropriation of time, there were two major problems caused by this new schedule. The first was a confusion during the first week of school as to exactly what time students had to arrive at school; the second was a massive hassle involving the bus pickup schedule in the morning.
On August 13, a news bulletin was mailed to all teachers and staff members of the school announcing the new changes to the schedule. Yet a newsletter mailed to all students on the same date listed the new time as 8:15. Absolute chaos erupted, despite the attempts to make the facts clear at the two orientations held before school began. Many students did not know about the changes until they arrived at school fifteen minutes late on the first day.
The second problem resulted because the usual allotment of time used for picking up students who rely on APS bus transportation had to be changed. The resulting time, however, placed the schedule in conflict with elementary stud ents' bus pickup time. Also, this late pickup resulted in these students often arriving 45 minutes late to class.
All of these problems coincided with the predominate complaint that was heard from students: the morning time is simply too early and too inconvenient to be of any good, despite the supposed benefits of the added time. The late warning of the change in time (Jess than a month before school began) threw the well-adjusted schedules of many students' mornings into chaos. The new schedule proved to be a particular problem with those students who work in the morning or rely on their parents for transportation. Many students were already acclimated to starting school at 8:45, and the change was incredibly stressful for them. Students were falling asleep in many of their classes, as well as arriving late to school, and missing the valuable instruction of their morning classes.
The added time would have been a wonderful addition to the school day had it not been so wasted during the firs few weeks and had it not caused such a plethora of problems as a result. Ye there is some hope in the fact that the administration relented and realized the error of their ways. Perhaps the types o changes the administration wished to implement could work, but only with more planning and better judgment.